Author: Matt Corallo 2016-10-02 22:51:06
Published on: 2016-10-02T22:51:06+00:00
In an email thread on the Bitcoin-dev mailing list, Sergio Demian Lerner asked Peter Todd to explain his views on a patent for hardware design for ASICs. Lerner notes that there are at least three similar patents filed by major Bitcoin ASIC manufacturers in three different countries. Todd responds that the comparison is misleading and he is not aware of any other patents on Bitcoin-specific ASIC technology which are practically enforceable or which the owners have indicated they wish to enforce. Of the two patents which Lerner pointed out which were filed on essentially the same optimization that ASICBoost covers, Todd says that Lerner's predates both of them, invalidating both the Spondoolies one and the AntMiner one. Todd claims that only Lerner's patent is practical and likely to be enforced in the vast majority of the world. Todd believes that optimizations to the hashing algorithm are not themselves "attacks" on Bitcoin. But only when they are used in a rent-seeking fashion to push for more centralization and lower miner revenue do they become so. One of the biggest advantages of SHA256 in the context of mining is exactly that it is a relatively simple algorithm, allowing for fewer large algorithmic optimizations. This opens the doors to more competition in the ASIC market than if only few people had the knowledge (or a patent) to build efficient ASICs. Todd claims that while the high-end ASIC-manufacturing industry is highly-centralized, making it worse by limiting those who can build Bitcoin ASICs from anyone with access to such a fab to only those who can, additionally, negotiate for patent rights and navigate the modern patent system, is far from ideal. Todd criticizes Lerner's proposal for a hard fork, with the only argument given as to why it should happen being that he thought there was an attack, but couldn't yet "really tell if they could affect Bitcoin". Instead of following up with more information, as he indicated he would, he went and patented the optimizations and has gone on rent-seeking behavior since. Todd concludes that if Lerner had acted in a way which indicated even the slightest regard for centralization pressure and the harm it can do to Bitcoin in the long-term, then he doesn't think many would be blaming him.
Updated on: 2023-05-19T23:59:59.855092+00:00