Reviving P2Pool: Welcoming Johnny Santos as a Vinteum Grantee

We’re excited to welcome Johnny Santos as the newest grantee supported by Vinteum.

Johnny brings more than a decade of software engineering experience and a long-standing involvement with the Bitcoin ecosystem. He previously spent five years at OpenNode, working on Bitcoin payment infrastructure, and has been a regular participant in the São Paulo BitDevs since its early editions, where he deepened his understanding of the Bitcoin protocol and its surrounding ecosystem.

Johnny later joined the Bitcoin Dev Launchpad (BDL), Vinteum’s intensive training program designed to guide developers through Bitcoin’s architecture and open-source development workflows. While he already had a strong background in Bitcoin, the program helped provide the final push toward focusing full-time on open-source development and mining infrastructure.

His grant will support work on P2Poolv2, an effort to revive and modernize the original P2Pool concept with new mechanisms designed to make decentralized mining economically viable and easier to operate.

P2Poolv2

Bitcoin mining has become highly concentrated. Analysis from b10c shows that 96% to 99% of blocks are mined by just six pools, a level of centralization that raises concerns about censorship, policy control, and systemic risk.

P2Poolv2 aims to address this by enabling miners to collaborate without relying on centralized pool operators. The project builds on the original P2Pool design while introducing two key innovations:

Uncle blocks via the GHOST protocol Reducing orphan risk by allowing near-miss blocks to still contribute to the reward distribution.

Atomic swaps of shares Creating a decentralized marketplace where miners can exchange shares for bitcoin without relying on custodial pool infrastructure.

Together, these mechanisms aim to preserve miner sovereignty while maintaining the economic stability miners expect from pooled mining.

Contributions Ahead

With support from Vinteum, Johnny will focus on advancing P2Poolv2 toward a usable early version, including:

Core protocol development Implementing compact block relay, P2P messaging infrastructure, and communication with Bitcoin Core via IPC.

Path to MVP Stabilizing share-chain consensus, implementing uncle block validation, and building the atomic swap engine for share trading.

Ecosystem integration Contributing to related tools such as Mujina, Stratum V2, and Bitcoinfuzz, which support decentralized mining infrastructure and testing.

Why This Matters

In traditional mining pools, the pool operator ultimately decides which transactions go into blocks. This concentrates power over block template construction in the hands of a few large entities.

Protocols like P2Poolv2 aim to restore miner-level sovereignty, allowing participants to collaborate economically while retaining control over their own block templates and policies.

Strengthening decentralized mining infrastructure is a critical piece of ensuring that Bitcoin remains censorship-resistant and resilient over the long term.

Looking Ahead

Over the coming months, Johnny will focus on expanding and stabilizing P2Poolv2’s protocol and building toward an MVP that early adopters can begin testing.

By supporting developers working on open and decentralized mining infrastructure, Vinteum continues to invest in the long-term health of Bitcoin’s most fundamental layer.

You can follow Johnny’s work on:

GitHub: **https://github.com/johnnyasantoss**

X: **https://x.com/johnnyasantos**

Nostr: https://njump.me/npub1j0nyf54ndc6keq80xfyeqfumn2l23e3k79f33x5jsqxnut6a8dyqp74mu0