110. April Fools, Real Progress: Open Firmware, Open Pools, and the Path to Decentralized Mining

About this episode

The episode discusses real updates in open-source Bitcoin mining, including projects, innovations, and community efforts.

In this lively April 1 episode of POD256, we cut through the April Fools noise to share real updates from the open-source Bitcoin mining front. We preview the Bitcoin 2026 conference in Las Vegas, celebrate renewed grants for the 256 Foundation’s four core projects (Mujina firmware, Libre Board, Ember One hashboard, and Hydra Pool), and discuss our all-Bitcoin treasury experiment paying developer grants in sats based on cost basis. We dive deep on unlocking Bitmain control boards, porting Mujina to Amlogic-based Antminers, model guardrails, and running AI-assisted development workflows. We also highlight the power and resilience of open source—from LLM client code leaks to community forks like Ashigaru/Whirlpool—and give shoutouts to our Hydra Pool hashers and the slick new Bitaxe Touch. For show-and-tell, Skot unveils the Bitaxe Bonanza: an open-source miner built around Intel BMZ2 chips donated to the 256 Foundation, targeting ~1.2 TH/s with a robust heatsink, 12V fan, and a clever sidecar for Intel’s 9-bit serial protocol. We discuss why accessible, non-Bitmain chips matter for home miners and heat-reuse projects, how UTXOracle can provide price data without third-party APIs…

Topics covered

• Bitcoin mining
• open-source technology
• decentralization
• community collaboration
• developer grants
• hardware innovation

Keywords

• Bitcoin mining
• open-source
• decentralized mining
• developer grants
• Bitmain
• hardware
• community forks

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: 256 Foundation, Bitmain, UTXOracle

Products: Mujina firmware, Libre Board, Ember One hashboard, Hydra Pool, Bitaxe Touch, Bitaxe Bonanza, Intel BMZ2 chips

Places: Las Vegas

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• 114. Open Source Wins in Vegas: $100k Boost, DoomAxe Demo, and Telehash #4 · May 13, 2026 · 51 min
• 113. Touchscreens, Thermostats, and Doom: A Weekend of Open Mining Hacks · April 22, 2026 · 41 min
• 112. Stratum v2, Nonce Space, and the DIY Miner’s Comeback · April 15, 2026 · 1h 24m
• 111. Open-Source Overdrive: Mujina Breakthroughs, Public Pool’s First Block, and LibreBoard v3 · April 11, 2026 · 1h 30m