In a post on Tuesday, Jack Dorsey confirmed that the global tech firm Block finished the development of its own standalone 3 nanometer (nm) bitcoin mining chip to develop a complete bitcoin mining system.
Announcement Of The Development
Jack Dorsey from the payments company Block, previously known as Square, announced that it is expanding its Bitcoin mining ambitions from designing chips to developing a complete Bitcoin mining system.
On Tuesday, a post was shared in which the Block announced that it had finished the development of its own privately owned 3 nm Bitcoin mining chip. It was now working through the design with a “leading global semiconductor foundry.”
The company also revealed plans to broaden the scope of its mining project to include system design.
Jack Dorsey said, “We’ve spent a significant amount of time talking to a wide variety of bitcoin miners to identify the challenges faced by mining operators,” Block writes. “Building on these insights and pursuant to our goal of supporting mining decentralization, we plan to offer both a standalone mining chip as well as a full mining system of our own design.”
we’re building a mining rig https://t.co/IKOQHNSHgO
— jack (@jack) April 23, 2024
It will democratize access to Bitcoin mining, creating new bitcoins by solving increasingly complex computational problems. It is a big part of the mission statement of this project.
Implications On Bitcoin Mining
When Block first began building mining hardware in 2021, Dorsey wrote, “Mining isn’t accessible to everyone,” “Bitcoin mining should be as easy as plugging a rig into a power source. There isn’t enough incentive today for individuals to overcome the complexity of running a miner for themselves.”
The Bitcoin community members have been concerned for a long time about hardware vulnerabilities that might compromise network stability. The ASIC chips are manufactured in China and used in mining rigs, a country that has proven hostile to the crypto sector in recent years.
On Tuesday, the Block shared a memo saying that this project aims to decentralize the supply of Bitcoin mining hardware and the hashrate distribution, a proxy for industry competition and mining difficulty.
With this development, the fintech firm is solving one significant barrier to entry: mining rigs are complex to find and expensive, and delivery can be unpredictable.
Details Of The Mining System
The company shared the details in its latest announcement; however, in 2021, Dorsey posted that it was considering a “bitcoin mining system based on custom silicon.” During that time, Dorsey shared his thoughts about the need for increased focus on vertical integration and silicon design, which he says is too concentrated among a few companies.
Thomas Templeton, the general manager for hardware at the Block, previously disclosed plans to improve reliability and the user experience of mining that addressed the common issues around heat dissipation and noise production.
The idea of increasing the accessibility of the mining process has much more to do with than just generating new bitcoin. Instead, Dorsey sees it as a long-term need for a decentralized and permissionless future.
