Author: Matt Corallo 2016-05-11 21:01:57
Published on: 2016-05-11T21:01:57+00:00
The debate over whether ASICs are good or bad for Bitcoin seems to be a thing of the past. However, there is still concern over patented optimizations that give one manufacturer or licensor an advantage in the market. This can stifle innovation and make it difficult for competitors to succeed. AsicBoost is an example of this type of patented optimization. Spondoolies was able to independently discover the same optimization, but would not have been able to sell such systems without licensing AsicBoost. Marek Palatinus does not see the need to change the rules just because of a 10% edge. He believes that changing the rules could potentially be dangerous for the health of the network. Sergio Demian Lerner suggested a redesign of the Bitcoin block header to allow increased nonce space in the first 64 bytes. However, he later corrected himself by saying that the idea is to include in the second 64-byte chunk a 4-byte hash of the first chunk, not the opposite.
Updated on: 2023-05-19T23:27:05.005112+00:00