Marek “Slush” Palatinus

Someone buying a Trezor may have no idea what a mining pool is. Yet both stories involve the same person: Marek Palatinus, known as Slush. In one, he helped miners combine their efforts and receive smaller rewards more often. In the other, he worked with colleagues to make it easier for ordinary users to protect their own bitcoin. A common thread runs through his work: turning something Bitcoin makes possible in theory into something people can actually use. [8] [1]

By late 2010, a slower computer could mine for a long time without finding a single block and earning its reward. A block is a batch of transactions that is added to Bitcoin’s history after verification. Mining does not pay by the hour: machines repeatedly try calculations, and success arrives unpredictably. In a BitcoinTalk thread dated 27 November, Palatinus explained why combining participants’ computing power could help. In December he launched Bitcoin.cz Mining Pool, generally described as the first public bitcoin mining pool. It became known as Slush Pool; today that history continues under Braiins Pool. [12] [1] [14]

Imagine Anna running a small mining machine. Alone, she could wait a very long time for a reward; in a larger group, she receives smaller portions of the group’s earnings. The pool measures her contribution through shares: calculation results that meet an easier condition than finding a Bitcoin block. It then distributes income according to its rules. Pooling creates no extra bitcoin and, other things such as fees being equal, does not increase the expected reward for the same work. Its main benefit is smoothing irregular income. Anna now depends on the operator to account for contributions and pay correctly, however. [12]

In March 2012, an attacker compromised servers at hosting provider Linode and stole 3000 BTC from the pool’s wallet. Earning bitcoin and keeping it safe were clearly separate jobs. A pool could distribute mining work correctly and still lose money held on a server. In its historical account, Braiins describes the incident as a reason to professionalize operations and separate funds more effectively from online infrastructure. Bitcoin’s rules had not been broken; the weak point was the environment with access to the keys. [1]

As miners became faster, the older getwork communication method struggled to keep up: machines repeatedly requested new tasks. On 11 September 2012, Palatinus introduced the mining protocol Stratum, later called Stratum V1. Here, a protocol is a shared language: the pool sends work and machines return results. The new approach reduced unnecessary communication and served faster equipment more efficiently. It still had limits. V1 itself did not encrypt the connection, and the pool usually chose the transactions for a block. Making mining more practical did not resolve every question of trust. [4] [5]

The search for safer custody had begun before the Linode attack. Brmlab is a shared workshop where people develop software, build electronics and exchange knowledge. In 2011, Palatinus met Pavol Rusnák, known as Stick, at Prague’s brmlab hackerspace. They explored a device that would keep private keys separate from an everyday computer and sign payments internally. This became Trezor, a Hardware Wallet. Together with Alena Vránová they founded SatoshiLabs in 2013 and financed production through preorders; the first devices reached customers in 2014. It was a shared journey from prototype to manufacturing, rather than a finished product created by one person. [8] [7] [11]

A device can break or go missing. Protecting keys therefore also requires a way to recover them. BIP39, assigned on 10 September 2013, names four authors: Marek Palatinus, Pavol Rusnák, Aaron Voisine and Sean Bowe. It describes encoding computer-generated randomness and a small error-checking value as a word list from which a wallet’s starting secret can be derived. Users know this as a Seed Phrase, often containing 12 or 24 words. The wallet should generate these words from unpredictable random data. Do not make them up from a favorite sentence: keep the exact words the wallet shows you, in the same order and without translating them. Recovery requires the correct format and any passphrase originally used: an additional secret text. [9]

In 2013, Jan Čapek and Pavel Moravec of Braiins took a majority stake in the pool and full responsibility for its operation. Palatinus could devote more attention to Trezor. Braiins acquired the remaining stake in 2020; in January 2021, Palatinus publicly said he was no longer affiliated with the pool. The name Slush Pool therefore did not mean that Slush personally ran it throughout its history. When choosing a service today, it matters to distinguish its founder from the current operator and that operator’s rules. [1]

Mining communication kept evolving. Stratum V2, introduced in 2019, emerged at Braiins with contributions from Pavel Moravec, Jan Čapek, Matt Corallo and others. It drew on experience with V1 and Corallo’s BetterHash proposal. Among its features are secure communication and the ability to separate transaction selection from the pool operator, provided participants use the relevant parts of the protocol. Those features are not automatically enabled everywhere. Palatinus’s contribution to the original Stratum matters, but it does not make him the author of the entire next generation. [6]

A SatoshiLabs announcement in May 2026 described Palatinus as a co-founder of SatoshiLabs Group and Tropic Square, which develops security chips with an open architecture. This continues the question of whom we must trust to protect money and what can be checked independently. Openness alone does not guarantee a flawless product, however. For a newcomer, the practical results of this history matter most: people can share mining work, hold keys in their own device and prepare a recoverable backup. Each option brings its own rules and responsibilities; a famous founder’s name cannot replace understanding them. [13]