Quantum Blockchain reveals new mining method, warns of porting difficulties
By Josh White
Date: Wednesday 13 Mar 2024
(Sharecast News) - Quantum Blockchain Technologies shares were in the red on Wednesday afternoon, after it issued an update on its research and development endeavours in advancing Bitcoin mining technologies.
The AIM-traded firm said a significant breakthrough, named Method C, had emerged from its efforts.
It said Method C harnesses machine learning and predictive artificial intelligence (AI) oracle technology, showing promising results during testing phases.
Demonstrating predictive capabilities in about 30% of cases, Method C aimed to determine if an input to SHA-256, the core algorithm for Bitcoin mining, would generate a winning hash.
The potential achievement suggested substantial energy savings, which the company said would be a significant advancement for the SHA-256 algorithm and the Bitcoin mining industry as a whole.
Quantum Blockchain said it was evaluating Method C's potential cost savings for end-users, considering the need for additional logic gates on ASIC chips to execute the method.
Despite the energy requirement, the reduction in SHA-256 computations by nearly 30% could lead to considerable energy savings overall.
Unlike previous methods, it said Method C necessitated direct implementation onto ASIC chips during the manufacturing stage.
However, Quantum Blockchain said it was exploring avenues to potentially integrate Method C without hardware implementation, streamlining its application in the mining process.
At the same time, Quantum Blockchain said it had initiated discussions with prominent Bitcoin rig manufacturers and mining companies in the US under non-disclosure agreements.
Additionally, Quantum Blockchain said it had started developing a proprietary ASIC chip tailored for Bitcoin mining.
The prototype would integrate optimised versions of SHA-256, and Method C, confirming the feasibility and performance of the company's intellectual property.
It said the porting of Method A and Method B onto commercial mining rigs had meanwhile proven challenging, with its research and development team actively seeking solutions for reliable product delivery.
Despite complexities, the company said it was committed to advancing its patent applications, including a third application for a proprietary quantum version of SHA-256.
"The exceptional lab results achieved with Method C represent further evidence that QBT's approach, of applying advanced AI and machine learning techniques to improve the SHA-256 algorithm performance for Bitcoin mining, is correct," said chief executive officer and executive chairman Francesco Gardin.
"All of che Company's current efforts are now focused on turning Methods A, B and C, into commercial products.
"This has proved a very time consuming, due to the tremendous reverse engineering efforts involved in using totally undocumented third-party ASIC chips."
Gardin said all of the large North American and Chinese Bitcoin mining and chip manufacturing companies with which the company had engaged were waiting for the results of the live tests, in particular with Method A and B, using currently available commercial mining rigs, before moving to the commercial stage.
"As announced on 20 October, we can confirm that Method A and B have been redesigned to be technically available as a software-as-a-service client-server cloud application."
At 1404 GMT, shares in Quantum Blockchain Technologies were down 18.81% at 1.2p.
Reporting by Josh White for Sharecast.com.
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