Definition
DATUM (Decentralized Alternative Templates for Universal Mining) is a mining protocol developed by the OCEAN pool that lets individual miners construct their own block templates locally while still receiving smoothed, pooled payouts. It directly attacks one of Bitcoin's most serious centralization risks: the fact that a handful of large pools currently decide which transactions go into nearly every block.
The problem it solves
In conventional pooled mining, the pool operator builds the block template and the miner just grinds hashes on whatever transactions the pool chose. Because a majority of hashrate flows through a few pools, those operators hold outsized power over transaction inclusion — a censorship vector. DATUM moves template construction back to the miner: you run a full node and the DATUM Gateway, build your own template, and submit it for reward accounting only.
How it works in practice
The DATUM Gateway speaks three protocols at once. It pulls a block template from your Bitcoin node via getblocktemplate, talks to your ASIC over Stratum (with ASICBoost support), and communicates share data to OCEAN's coordination layer over an encrypted channel. The block you build is effectively solo, but your payout is pooled and smoothed — giving you decentralized template control without the brutal variance of pure solo mining. DATUM went live in 2024 and is open source.
DATUM advances the same decentralization goals as next-generation pool protocols — see our coverage of Stratum V2 and our mempool entry for what goes into a template.
In Simple Terms
DATUM (Decentralized Alternative Templates for Universal Mining) is a mining protocol developed by the OCEAN pool that lets individual miners construct their own block templates…