India's new Bitcoin mining pool GBMiners obtains 3% of the total network computing power and is optimistic about Bitcoin Unlimited

Nearly 3% to 4% of the Bitcoin network’s hashrate is now directed to an Indian mining pool, which is now ranked among the top 10 in the world. The Indian mining pool is GBMiners, which recently received an undisclosed amount of funding from co-founder Amit Bhardwaj.

The vast majority of the mining hardware that GBMiners has recently added comes from Bhardwaj.

Although some media reports say that GBMiners has become the largest Bitcoin mining pool outside of China, Bitfury and Slushpool still account for a larger share of the total network computing power.

In addition to its interest in Bitcoin mining, GBMiners also plans to mine Ethereum and Zcash networks.

A brief history of GBMiners

According to Sanjay Goswami of GBMiners, the mining pool mined its first Bitcoin block on August 30, 2016. Goswami explained how GBMiners came together:

“Nikunj [Jain] and Sahil [Baghla], the two founders of Darwin Labs, were introduced to Amit Bhardwaj at a party. Bhardwaj was running a lot of hashrate across various mining pools. We were both interested in cryptocurrencies, and we were planning our first product, and Bhardwaj said, ‘I have an idea, we can work on it together.’”

Goswami said it was an offer he couldn’t refuse, mainly because Bhardwaj is a veteran in the bitcoin space. As someone who mines in multiple mining pools, Bhardwaj was able to share some insights on how a new mining pool could improve its computing efficiency.

Goswami claimed:

"We started doing research, bringing up our test servers, and our findings were mostly consistent with what Bhardwaj was saying."

Details of the mining pool

While some other independent miners are currently using GBMiners, most of the mining hardware in the pool is owned by Bhardwaj. According to Bhardwaj's personal website, the Bitcoin mining hardware owned and operated by his Amaze Mining and Blockchain Research Ltd. accounts for more than 5% of the total network computing power.

Although the GBMiners mining pool is based in India, the mining hardware pointing to this pool is located in China.

Bitcoin Unlimited

Bitcoin Unlimited (BU) is a Bitcoin software client that intends to hard fork the Bitcoin blockchain once it gains enough support to increase the block size limit. ViaBTC and Bitcoin.com, two large mining pools, are currently pushing for BU's hard fork.

In a recent AMA, ViaBTC founder and CEO Yang Haipo claimed that GBMiners and some other mining pools are planning to switch from Bitcoin Core to support BU. However, when asked about GBMiners’ views on the Core and block size limit debate, Goswami responded,

"We haven't formed a specific opinion yet, but we do have a positive attitude towards BU."