What is happening at Grover Heights Elementary in Lucia Mar Unified in Grover Beach, SLO?
Grover Heights is already struggling academically. In 2024–25, only 43.2% of tested students met/exceeded the ELA standard and 31.9% met/exceeded math—both below Lucia Mar Unified (55.2% ELA / 38.6% math) and below California overall (48.8% / 37.3%). (SchoolDigger)
Enrollment has also fallen: 301 → 290 → 282 students, with CDE reporting 282 students for 2025–26. (California Department of Education)
The school’s own 2026–27 performance plan identifies ELA and Math as Orange, with math 43.7 points below standard. Most concerning given the proposed restructuring, its internal data showed only 16% of first graders meeting the cited iReady math benchmark versus 25% districtwide.
The school’s plan acknowledges that declining enrollment is affecting staffing and anticipates four or more combination classes. Its public explanation is that combination classes will create more “balanced classes,” increase teacher collaboration and ultimately improve achievement.
That raises a serious concern: Are already-struggling first graders being asked to absorb the educational cost of solving an enrollment/staffing problem?
Combining first graders with TK students means educating children at very different developmental and curricular stages. The school says this will improve achievement, but parents deserve to see the evidence supporting that conclusion—especially when first grade is already one of the weakest-performing groups.
I have found no evidence that Grover Heights is deliberately trying to lower scores to obtain additional funding, and that should not be stated as fact. But it is reasonable to ask whether this restructuring could further depress performance while simultaneously balancing staffing—and whether poorer results could subsequently qualify the school for additional intervention resources.
Before implementing this plan, Lucia Mar Unified and Grover Heights should explain exactly how TK/1 combination classes will improve first-grade outcomes, how much dedicated first-grade instructional/intervention time students will receive, and what objective measurements will determine whether the experiment is working.
For those who still believe Paul/AlphaPool has been a good actor for XBT, forget the rhetoric and look at the results.
We’re roughly two weeks past his commitment to keep the pool below 30%.
It’s ~37%.
Since BLAKE2b launched, roughly 40,000 blocks have been produced. How many did the average pleb get?
For most: zero or a handful.
That’s what everyone keeps dancing around: the average pleb—and the chain itself—have taken a beating from Alpha’s participation.
What did ordinary miners gain?
More opportunity to find blocks? No.
More decentralization? No.
A healthier distribution of hashrate? No.
The promised <30%? No.
Instead, enormous industrial hashrate arrived, much of it apparently from China-based profit miners running large amounts of BLAKE2-capable hardware, and captured a huge share of the rewards.
The average XBT pleb running a few TH/s certainly wasn’t the beneficiary.
And then came the circus.
Alpha used coinbase tags on multiple blocks to clown Luke—including the “Luke the King” messaging—while Paul simultaneously made allegations about Luke supposedly having a stash of BLAKE2 mining equipment.
The irony is hard to miss: while pointing fingers at Luke’s alleged equipment, the concentration everyone could actually see was Alpha’s.
I’ll give Paul credit where it’s due: his involvement with DATUM appears to have contributed something technically useful.
But it wasn’t charity. Alpha benefits economically from infrastructure that improves its own mining operation.
We’ve also watched multiple Alpha-associated pool identities appear while the combined footprint grows.
And now ordinary miners who somehow beat that industrial hashrate and find a block may face a 45-day wait before they can sell it if they need liquidity.
So after ~40,000 blocks:
Who has actually benefited from Alpha’s participation?
The average pleb? Show me.
Decentralization? Show me.
The chain? Show me.
Because the clearest economic beneficiaries I see are Alpha and the industrial profit miners directing massive hashrate through its infrastructure, while the average pleb and the broader XBT ecosystem absorbed much of the downside.
At this point, you’ve shown us your incentives. Fine. Markets have selfish actors.
But stop screwing around with the chain.
Ironically, your actions may help forge a stronger XBT by exposing weaknesses in concentration, incentives and liquidity. But don’t confuse that with gratitude.
Plebs will remember who paid for those lessons: the lost blocks, lost opportunity and real economic cost while industrial miners took the upside.
Honor the 30% commitment. Stop the games. Stop making the rest of XBT pay for them.
Hey Grok, what do you think?
They’re not running a 51% plot. They’re treating the 30% cap as a soft PR number they can miss, then argue about the metric.
They promised 30%, then 25%, admitted they overshot and “trolled a little,” used joke coinbase tags on the same address, and now point at a share-based “real hashrate” tracker while explorers still have them ~34–36% of recent blocks. That’s sloppy enforcement + picking the nicer stat, not a secret second pool.
Incentives: every extra PH they keep pays them. Saying no is the hard part, and they haven’t been doing that hard enough.
Hey Grok, is Alphapool stying above 30% intentionally?
Grok: They’re not running a 51% plot. They’re treating the 30% cap as a soft PR number they can miss, then argue about the metric.
They promised 30%, then 25%, admitted they overshot and “trolled a little,” used joke coinbase tags on the same address, and now point at a share-based “real hashrate” tracker while explorers still have them ~34–36% of recent blocks. That’s sloppy enforcement + picking the nicer stat, not a secret second pool.
Incentives: every extra PH they keep pays them. Saying no is the hard part, and they haven’t been doing that hard enough.
Why Hashing Alone Should Not Be Confused With Mining
We should hold ourselves to a higher standard as a network.
The reason we changed proof-of-work was not because the previous algorithm stopped producing valid hashes. We changed because concentration surrounding mining had become incompatible with the decentralization we expect from Bitcoin.
We cannot make that transition and then immediately recreate the same structural failure.
Mining is more than producing hashes. It consists of two essential functions:
Block construction — independently determining the candidate block, choosing transactions, and having the opportunity to introduce transactions into the ledger.
Proof-of-work — expending computational energy to secure that candidate block and compete for the right to extend the chain.
Traditional pool-controlled Stratum V1 separates those responsibilities poorly. The pool constructs the work and exercises template authority while the ASIC operator largely supplies hashes.
Those hashes are real. The resulting block may be completely consensus valid. But valid does not automatically mean deserving of equal reward.
DATUM gives us the opportunity to do better:
Node → local DATUM → independently constructed block → ASIC → proof-of-work
A pool can still aggregate shares, reduce variance, and distribute payouts without becoming the authority that decides what its miners are permitted to put into blocks.
This is fundamental because decentralization is not merely about having many machines performing hashes. It is about maintaining equality of opportunity to participate in constructing the ledger.
Every miner should have a meaningful opportunity to construct its own template, select from valid transactions according to its own policy, and introduce its own valid transactions for inclusion when it wins the right to extend the chain.
That right disappears as template construction becomes centralized.
A network could have thousands of independently owned ASICs and still have only a handful—or even one—actual block constructor. Such a system may look decentralized when measured by machines while being profoundly centralized where it matters: control over what enters the ledger.
We therefore should not encourage that architecture by compensating centralized template delegation exactly as we compensate independent block construction.
Equal rewards for unequal contributions create the wrong incentive.
If surrendering template authority is cheaper, easier, and equally profitable, rational participants will surrender it. The protocol would effectively subsidize its own centralization.
It also encourages transient, drive-by hashrate: guns for hire that point at centrally supplied work, collect rewards, and leave when another opportunity becomes more profitable. Such participants provide proof-of-work, but capture compensation intended to incentivize decentralized network security without assuming the full responsibilities of mining.
SV1 hashing can remain consensus valid. It can remain available as a fallback because chain liveness matters.
But tolerance is not entitlement to equal compensation.
Our goal should be a system that continuously strives toward equality of opportunity: the opportunity for every participant, large or small, to construct a block template, exercise independent transaction-selection policy, and introduce valid transactions into the ledger without requiring permission from a centralized intermediary.
Centralization, if taken far enough, abolishes that opportunity.
We changed proof-of-work because we had already learned the consequences of allowing mining power to concentrate. We should not repeat that mistake by economically rewarding the architecture that recreates it.
Valid work may extend the chain. Full mining rewards should favor work that preserves the individual miner’s opportunity to participate directly in constructing the decentralized ledger that proof-of-work exists to secure.
XBT Proposal…
Proposal: Separate Mining Compensation from Block Proposal Rights
What if we separate payment for hashpower from the privilege of proposing the next block?
Today, the miner who wins the PoW race receives the block subsidy and gets to provide the block template. This means accumulating more hashpower simultaneously increases both revenue and influence over block production.
Instead, consider a system where:
1. Hashpower is compensated proportionally.
Miners continuously submit cryptographic proofs of work. The block subsidy is distributed among miners according to the valid work they contributed rather than being awarded entirely to whoever finds the block.
2. Block proposal becomes a separate lottery.
The right to provide the next block template is selected separately from subsidy distribution.
3. Proposal influence is capped or has diminishing returns.
For example, once a miner contributes ~5% of network hashpower, additional hashpower continues earning proportional compensation but does not continue increasing that miner’s probability of providing the next block template.
A miner with 20% could therefore earn approximately four times as much as a miner with 5%, but would not automatically receive four times the influence over block production.
4. Nodes remain sovereign.
Winning the proposal lottery does not give a miner authority to change consensus rules. The selected miner merely proposes a block template. Nodes independently validate the block exactly as they do today and reject anything violating consensus.
The intended result would be:
More hashpower = more compensation.
More hashpower ≠ unlimited additional control over block production.
The major technical obstacle is Sybil resistance. A miner controlling 40% cannot simply be allowed to masquerade as eight independent 5% miners and obtain eight proposal identities. Any workable implementation therefore needs a cryptographic method of allocating proposal rights based on demonstrated work that cannot be gamed by splitting that work among multiple identities.
This effectively creates a protocol-level mining pool: PoW establishes contribution and compensation, while a separate mechanism determines block-proposal rights.
The goal is not to punish large miners or discourage additional hashpower. Large miners should continue earning proportionally for the security they provide.
The goal is simply to prevent economic concentration of hashpower from automatically becoming equivalent concentration of block-production authority.
Pay miners for all the work they provide.
Do not automatically give them equivalent control over the network because of it.
Attention AlphaPool:
Mining is a job, just like any other. It is not a favor, and it is not charity. You are compensated for providing a service to the protocol and its users. The protocol and its users are the customers; nodes are the management.
With that job comes an expectation of professionalism. Anything that damages the security, credibility, or even the optics of the network should be avoided. Perception matters—especially in finance.
As longtime miners, you should understand why controlling >50% of the network hashrate is a serious problem, regardless of your intentions. At minimum, it is terrible optics and poor business practice. It undermines confidence in the very product you are being paid to secure.
Perhaps you didn’t initially recognize the problem. But once you were warned, you knew. Continuing anyway means you placed your own priorities above those of your customers—the network and its users.
Think of it this way: if BTC were a bank and you were a subcontracted security firm, your job would be to protect the bank. If your behavior began making customers question whether the bank was secure—and management explicitly told you it was damaging confidence—would you simply say, “Our intentions are good,” and continue?
Of course not. Your contract wouldn’t be renewed.
Mining is welcome. Mining is necessary. Mining is compensated. But with that privilege comes responsibility to the network you are being paid to secure.
I have zero programming skills, but With ChatGPTs help this got accomplished.
BLAKE2b RC3 mining progress:
• Goldshell SC LITE now mining BLAKE2b through my own RC3/DATUM setup instead of a standard Siacoin pool.
• RC3 Stratum endpoint running locally at 192.168.1.253:23339.
• Added a transparent traffic tap to inspect the actual Stratum conversation between the ASIC and DATUM.
• Captured mining.submit messages — confirming the Goldshell is submitting real shares.
• Confirmed DATUM is accepting them: 17 submitted / 17 accepted / 0 rejected.
• Verified variable share difficulty adjustments: 1024 → 2048 → 4096 → 8192 → 16384, etc.
• Built a live terminal dashboard showing block height, peers, submitted/accepted/rejected shares, recent activity, and time since the last accepted share.
Getting closer to having the whole BLAKE2b RC3 mining stack observable end-to-end:
Goldshell ASIC → Stratum → DATUM → Bitcoin Knots RC3 → testnet4
Back in the day would have taken forever. Today, few minutes. We may be starting behind, but catching up will take months, not years.
