Author: Jared Lee Richardson 2017-04-06 17:31:13
Published on: 2017-04-06T17:31:13+00:00
The debate surrounding the ethical implications of Bitmain's mining optimization continues. While some argue that if a miner finds an optimization and keeps it for themselves, that is their prerogative, others point out that such optimizations could discourage growth and improvement of the Bitcoin protocol in unforeseen ways and hurt its future. The situation has been compared to the DAO fork, with developers proposing to modify the code in order to negate gains made by Bitmain. While some believe this is justified, others argue that rule changes should not be used to disempower and impoverish particular entities without very good reason. The question of whether patenting a mining optimization qualifies as such a reason remains open.
Updated on: 2023-06-11T23:43:27.815585+00:00