PANews reported on February 10 that according to Cryptoslate, Bitcoin Core developer Luke Dashjr has raised concerns about the finality of Bitcoin transactions, saying that the widely accepted six-block confirmation rule is no longer applicable. According to him, transaction finalization now takes more than a week, which questions Bitcoin's anti-censorship capabilities. Dashjr believes that due to the increasing centralization of Bitcoin mining pools, traditional standards are no longer applicable. He explained that he tried to update the six-block confirmation target in Bitcoin Knots, an alternative to Bitcoin Core. However, his calculations show that due to Antpool's significant share of the network hash rate, it now takes more than 800 blocks to achieve 95% security - equivalent to about 5.5 days.
Data from HashRate Index shows that Antpool controls about 16.67% of Bitcoin's total hash rate, lagging behind Foundry USA's 33.12%. Other major mining pools include F2Pool (8.87%), MARA Pool (6.06%) and SecPool (5.19%). However, Dashjr disputed these figures, claiming that several mining pools such as Braiins and ViaBTC act as proxies for Antpool, giving it greater influence. He also pointed out that many miners operate under centralized mining pools, unknowingly contributing to potential network reorganizations. Industry experts have expressed similar concerns, warning that the growing dominance of a few mining pools puts Bitcoin at risk of potential censorship and even 51% attacks. Bob Burnett, CEO of Barefoot Mining, said that if a single entity controls a large portion of the network's hash rate, it can manipulate the blockchain by reorganizing transactions.
Meanwhile, not everyone agrees that the problem is as serious as Dashjr says. Daniel Roberts, co-founder of Iris Energy Ltd, downplayed these concerns, arguing that Bitcoin is designed to self-regulate over time. Roberts added: "Bitcoin may not be perfect, and we should continue to try to improve it, but these types of issues are usually self-correcting or intentional in the design."
