AsicBoost Exploit Claims Put Bitmain in Hot Water
Bitcoin gained $40 in two hours on Wednesday evening as news broke that a bug was allowing miners - specifically Bitmain - to unfairly economize on costs. Through the use of so-called AsicBoost technology, Bitmain’s miners were able to exploit a loophole in Bitcoin’s proof-of-work system. Jihan Wu, the company’s CEO, is a known staunch opponent of Segregated Witness as a solution to Bitcoin’s scaling problem, with sources now asserting that the AsicBoost benefits could lie at the heart of his position. The vulnerability was first discovered and relayed to Core members by Blockstream’s Greg....
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In a post on the Bitcoin development mailing list today, Blockstream CTO and long-time Bitcoin Core contributor Greg Maxwell laid out the case that an unnamed Bitcoin mining hardware manufacturer is using a flaw in Bitcoin’s proof-of-work implementation to gain an efficiency advantage of up to 30 percent over other miners. Moreover, this could explain why Segregated Witness (SegWit), the Bitcoin protocol upgrade proposed by the Bitcoin Core development team, is blocked by some miners. Many therefore suspect the hardware manufacturer in question is Bitmain, whose CEO Jihan Wu is a staunch....
According to the statement posted by one of the Bitcoin Core developers, this change will be made to fight the centralization of Bitcoin mining. An interesting statement was posted on Twitter by Olivier Janssens, as he explained an upcoming change in the Bitcoin Core client software. A patented optimization for ASIC mining – called AsicBoost – will be made obsolete in the next client update. That news did not go over well with a lot of members for sure. Bitcoin Core Developers Dislike AsicBoost. This news is part of a substantial debate on Reddit for the past few days, as the AsicBoost....
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....
On Friday, the well known nonprofit charitywater.org announced the launch of a celebrity-funded Bitcoin Water Trust initiative. The trust will be allowed to hold bitcoin donations to fund water projects worldwide until 2025. Charity Water Launches Bitcoin Water Trust A number of announcements were revealed at the Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami and one announcement was from the global safe drinking water nonprofit, charity water. The organization charity water is a nonprofit that helps provide clean and safe drinking water to citizens living in developing countries. On June 4, charity....
How can you put your Bitcoin to good use? In so many ways! One opportunity that you have to consider today is donating to the BitGive Foundation's Water Project Campaign. The Water Project recently began accepting Bitcoin and focuses on delivering clean water to Sub Saharan Africa. As a 501(c)(3) organization, the Water Project seeks to build a foundation in communities in need of a sustainable water supply. You can be apart of this project. Most of us simply take our running faucets and clean water for granted, but many do not have access to clean drinking water. I agree with the Water....