Bitcoin mining pool Ocean has faced a transaction censorship allegation after developer Kruw accused an individual miner of excluding his transaction from block 973,817 and leaving transaction fees 7.68% below an expected template.
Summary
- Kruw accused Ocean miner Powre of excluding his consolidation transaction from Bitcoin block 973,817.
- A comparison he shared showed transaction fees 7.68% below the expected block template.
- Coinjoined Chris defended miners’ control over transaction selection through Ocean’s DATUM setup.
- Kruw argued the pool should reject work that deliberately sacrifices participants’ fee income.
Kruw raised the complaint in an Oct. 30 exchange on X, sharing a block comparison and asking Ocean’s Coinjoined Chris to intervene. Their discussion developed into a disagreement over whether a pool should enforce fee collection when individual miners choose which transactions to include.
Chris said he supports CoinJoin and wants miners to collect economically attractive fees, but opposed using pool payouts to control their choices.
Bitcoin block comparison fuels censorship allegation
In his initial post, Kruw identified the miner as “Powre” and described the excluded transfer as his consolidation transaction.
“My consolidation transaction was censored by OCEAN miner ‘Powre’ in block 973,817,” he wrote.
The comparison accompanying his accusation displayed an expected block containing 3,580 transactions against an actual block containing 1,698. Displayed block weight fell from approximately 3.99 million weight units to 2.93 million, while rounded transaction fees were 0.017 BTC and 0.016 BTC, respectively.
The fee comparison showed a 7.68% shortfall. Kruw argued that leaving fees uncollected hurt other miners participating in the pool, calling the block “partially emptied.”
His allegation concerned transaction fee income. The percentage shown in the comparison was not a measure of the entire block reward or a documented 7.68% reduction in every participant’s payout.
The transaction highlighted in his screenshot carried a fee of 223 satoshis and a displayed fee rate of 0.15 satoshis per virtual byte. The comparison labeled it a consolidation transaction and indicated that it had first been seen four minutes before the block.
Although the discussion repeatedly referred to CoinJoin and financial privacy, Kruw’s initial post identified this particular transfer as a consolidation transaction.
Ocean’s DATUM defense centers on miner choice
Responding to the complaint, Chris said Ocean’s DATUM setup lets miners construct their own block templates. Some prioritize the highest available fees, while others apply their own transaction selection policies.
He defended their ability to make that decision even when he disagreed with the result.
“I’m a strong supporter of coinjoins, and I believe financial privacy is fundamental to Bitcoin and we should further this wherever we can,” Chris wrote.
He agreed that leaving transaction fees uncollected was economically questionable, particularly when the income could benefit participants in TIDES, Ocean’s payout system.
Nevertheless, Chris said the pool should not decide which valid transactions individual miners must include. Imposing a pool-level selection policy, he argued, would undermine the control DATUM gives miners.
In a subsequent response, he addressed payouts directly.
“TIDES rewards contributed pow according to our payout rules, not whether OCEAN approves of a miner’s tx selection.”
Chris said he wanted more CoinJoin, PayJoin and anchor transactions included in blocks. His objection was to giving the pool authority to enforce those preferences through payment decisions.
Kruw argues payouts can enforce fee collection
Kruw rejected the distinction between transaction selection and pool control, arguing that Ocean could refuse work carrying fewer fees than it considered acceptable.
He suggested the pool could respond with “Rejected share, check mempool connectivity” instead of paying a miner whose template collected 7.68% less in transaction fees.
The proposed rejection was part of his argument about what Ocean should do.
Chris challenged the premise that every block has a universally agreed “correct” fee total. Different nodes receive transactions at different times, he said, and can apply different relay policies or have access to transactions other miners have never seen.
“A block earning 7.68% less than some hypothetical maximum is not, by itself, proof of censorship,” he wrote.
He questioned who would set an acceptable threshold, offering 99% and 95% as examples, and how a pool would handle private transactions, propagation delays, and legitimate differences between mempools.
Kruw explicitly supported centralized profitability checks when Chris described that approach as rejecting otherwise valid work and withholding payouts.
“The only purpose of allowing a miner to create their own templates is so they can include additional profits that the centralized authority might have missed,” Kruw replied.
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