This page draws every mining pool on the Bitcoin BLAKE2b network as a galaxy: each pool is a star system, each DATUM gateway a world orbiting it, and the chain rises out of the black hole at the centre. The picture needs sight and a mouse; the star chart below lists the same pools and gateways with their block counts, and every figure it shows comes from /map/data.json.
A long time ago, at block 961,640, in a mempool far, far away....
EPISODE XBT
THE BLAKE2B AWAKENS
It is a period of civil war. On the thirtieth day of August the chain broke from SHA-256 and was reforged in BLAKE2b.
Wherever a pool runs a public stratum, the GALACTIC EMPIRE plants an outpost: one armoured red world that builds every template itself. Its hashers may still be paid fairly, share for share, but the block is the outpost's: what goes in it was never theirs to choose.
Across the spiral arms, the REBELLION runs DATUM and pays every miner in the coinbase itself: each gateway a free world that builds its own template and answers only to its own node.
Beyond them, in the OUTER RIM, lone miners run their own nodes and claim whole blocks for themselves....
At the centre waits the black hole every block falls into. What climbs back out along its axis is the chain itself, one block at a time....
Every system is a pool. Every planet is a gateway. Every flash of light, a block.
Stellar cartography · BLAKE2b Bitcoin network
Calibrating long-range sensors…