The world’s second-biggest Ethereum mining pool has been suspended due to the recent Chinese decision related to cryptocurrencies.
Sparkpool launched in China back in 2018. It has the second-highest hash rate behind Ethermine, specifically 22%. It has become one of the biggest and one of the best mining pools for ETH. Ethermine has a share of 24%, meaning that the difference between the two is not that big.
The mining pool recently announced that new users can no longer access the pool in China. This occurred after China’s new regulations regarding cryptocurrencies.
Sparkpool is continually shutting down its services for users in China, and eventually, no one in China can be able to access Sparkpool’s services.
The main reason for this approach is to ensure the safety of users so that the Chinese Government does not punish them. The former is following all the policy requirements imposed by China’s Central Bank.
Sparkpool is not the only entity to change its regulations due to China’s new announcement. Cryptocurrency exchanges such as Binance have also suspended account registrations from Chinese users, even though some users in Hong Kong are still able to do so.
Ethereum’s long-anticipated update has also largely affected Sparkpool. With the Ethereum 2.0 update, the consensus mechanism is going to shift from Proof-of-Work (PoW) to Proof-of-Stake (PoS). Therefore, this could be another reason why Sparkpool is continually shutting down its services.
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