Proposed Hard-Fork to Nullify ASICBoost Patent
Bitcoin Core contributor, Peter Todd, announced that a hard-fork had been proposed to negate attempts to patent the ASICBoost method. According to a message sent out by Peter, this proposed idea sprang from an agreement made at a Bitcoin-oriented round-table in February. The round-table was attended by a slew of representatives from the Bitcoin development and industry, and focused on a variety of different subjects. The intent of this fork is to make ASIC boost optimisation useless, and ideally the change would be SPV compatible. However, according to Peter, if a change to SPV clients....
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Peter Todd, backed by Matt Corallo, has proposed hard-fork changes to the bitcoin network to make “useless” patent pending algorithmic improvements which give mining an Asicboost of 20%, leading to increased profits of some $30 million if used by one of the biggest mining pools. In a striking post to the bitcoin mailing list, Todd states: “As part of the hard-fork proposed in the HK agreement we’d like to make the patented AsicBoost optimisation useless, and hopefully make further similar optimizations useless as well.” Arguing that the patent pending optimization may lead to mining....
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