Jack Dorsey's Block payment company has completed the development of a 3-nm chip for mining the first cryptocurrency.
we’re building a mining rig https://t.co/IKOQHNSHgO
— jack (@jack) April 23, 2024In May 2023, the company announced the creation of a prototype ASIC for bitcoin mining based on the 5 nm process technology.
According to the statement, Block received the corresponding silicon wafers from a manufacturing partner in the fall.
"These samples met our design goals and provided valuable knowledge, confirming the chosen architecture and approach. Since then, we have been working on a 3-nm design," the team clarified.
Now the company has started to create a full-fledged bitcoin mining system based on its own chip.
In 2021, Dorsey said that Block (at that time Square) was considering developing a device for mining the first open source cryptocurrency.
The team noted that as the program progressed, they spent a "significant amount of time" communicating with miners to identify the technical problems they were facing.
"Based on this information and in accordance with our goal of supporting the decentralization of mining, we plan to offer both a separate mining chip and a complete system of our own design," the developers stressed.
The production of the devices will be handled by an unnamed "well-capitalized supplier of mining equipment," follows from the statement.
During the program to create ASICs for bitcoin mining, Block purchased mining chips from Intel.
In February 2022, the technology giant introduced its first mining integrated circuit Bonanza Mine and an installation based on it.
Two months later, the corporation announced the launch of the second generation of a chip called Blockscale. Among the customers, in addition to Block, were Argo Blockchain, Hive Blockchain Technologies and GRIID Infrastructure.
Deliveries of the product to selected customers began in July. But already in April 2023, Intel announced the discontinuation of the Blockscale release.
Recall that in March 2024, the Bitdeer company founded by Jihan Wu tested the SEAL01 bitcoin mining chip using 4 nm technology.