Oman unites legal miners: a national pool with a capacity of 10 EH/s and strategic centralization of mining.
Oman is taking a decisive step toward state control over cryptocurrency mining. The Ministry of Transport, Communications and Information Technology, together with Frontier Technologies, has launched a national mining pool that all licensed digital asset miners in the country are required to join. Enegix Global provided the technological foundation and liquidity infrastructure for this project.
Initial Capacity and Scale of Investment
In the first phase, the pool will accumulate approximately 10 EH/s of computing power. This is a significant figure, considering that since 2022, total investments in mining and data centers in the Salalah Free Zone have exceeded $700 million. This amount includes, in particular, the construction of a mining facility with hydro-cooling worth $370 million — one of the largest projects of its kind in the region.
Strategic Significance and Implications
Oman's decision reflects a global trend: states are increasingly seeking to regulate and centralize mining, transforming it from a decentralized industry into a controlled sector of the economy. Mandatory connection to the national pool gives authorities a direct tool for monitoring transactions, distributing revenues, and managing energy consumption. For miners, this means reduced flexibility, but in return — legal status and access to highly secure infrastructure.
In my view, Oman has chosen a pragmatic path: instead of bans or high taxes, it is creating its own ecosystem where the state acts as an operator. This could attract large institutional players who value legal certainty. However, it is vital for the pool to prove its efficiency in terms of fees and payout speed — otherwise, some of the hashrate may leak into gray schemes or abroad.