Crypto Mining Giant Bitmain is Now 1 of 21 EOS Block Producers Processing Transactions

Bitmain Has Become One of the 21 Entities Processing EOS Transactions

Bitmain, which is considered to be a very controversial company, has recently become one of the 21 entities in the world that will process transactions on the EOS network. The company, that is based in China, is known as a mining hardware manufacturer and miner. It supports a big-block approach to Bitcoin as a scaling method.

The company has recently received enough votes to become an EOS block producer. This will allow Bitmain to receive compensation for processing and enforcing transactions that will constitute the EOS network.

Bitmain Is Also The Major Bitcoin Miner

The block producer candidate is called EOS AntPool and it is run by AntPool, which is one of the largest mining pool subsidiaries of Bitmain together with BTC.com. Bitmain is also a financial investor of ViaBTC.

What does this mean? That more than 50%of the BTC blocks mined over the past few days have been mined by either BTC.com (24.9%), AntPool (15.3$) or via ViaBTC (9.9%). This level of centralization is unseen in the cryptocurrency market so far.

While there is a lot of debate whether this really means control over Bitcoin mining or not, the fact is that the pool users must construct block headers using the templates that are provided by these companies and some of them are even calling for radical changes in how Bitcoin is mined and on its consensus algorithm.

The Influence of Bitmain Will Be Small In The EOS Ecosystem

While Bitmain is being consolidated as the most influential company in the Bitcoin market, it is clear that its influence is considerably smaller in the EOS ecosystem. Even though, there is certainly some potential for the company to become a more prominent block producer in the future, especially as there will be block producer elections again in the near future.

EOS AntPool was the 11th block producer after the voting, earning 845 EOS (about $7300 USD) daily or $2.7 million per year. While this sum is not irrelevant, the company is worth $12 billion USD and had a $2.5 billion profit in 2017, so the money coming from the EOS mining is only a fraction of what the company is able to get.