15 August 2024
Quantum
Blockchain Technologies Plc
(“QBT” or
“the Company”)
R&D
and Business Update
Quantum
Blockchain Technologies (AIM: QBT), the AIM-listed investment
company focusing on a R&D and investment programme within
blockchain technology, is pleased to provide an update of its
recent R&D activities for the development of its disruptive
Bitcoin mining technologies.
Overview
The
R&D activity during the past four months has been focused on
two main directions:
·
Further
improvement in the results obtained in the laboratory for the three
Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) Methods: A, B and C, and
·
The
porting of these Methods onto existing commercial mining
hardware.
The
short-term strategic goal is to achieve real-time bitcoin mining
via one, or more, of the existing Bitcoin mining pools, through a
collaboration or in partnership with a leading Bitcoin
miner.
In
addition, the team is continuing to apply to secure patents for its
IP by working with the Company’s Patent Attorney as
follows:
·
to extend
the two existing patent applications by applying for international
patents,
·
by
continuing the work on its third patent application, and
·
by
defining the scope for a new, fourth patent application.
Finally,
Chief Research Officer, Francesco
Gardin and senior colleagues have recently attended two of
the major US Bitcoin conferences. As well as showcasing QBT’s
technology, the Company met with a number of potential North America mining partners and consultants,
in order to consolidate its existing business contacts and
establish new ones, in preparation for the planned commercial
deployment of the three Methods.
R&D
Activity
While
QBT’s AI-based mining technology has shown consistent results under
laboratory conditions, supported by verifiable experimental data,
the Company’s research teams are continuously challenging the
efficiency of the obtained results to further improve
them.
QBT’s
software engineers are continuing to attempt to successfully port
the Methods to existing commercial ASIC-based mining hardware and
software system, via CGMiner. This remains challenging due to the
severe limitations of most current ASIC architectures for
implementing SHA-256. These limitations are mainly due to the speed
and power consumption inefficiencies created by the designers,
which impact the ability to use any arbitrary input to
SHA-256.
A decision
has been taken, therefore, to migrate away from CGMiner to AxeOS
(ESP-miner), a more recently developed and, in the Company’s
opinion, a better designed public domain operating system software
for Bitcoin mining devices. The Company has found that CGMiner,
which is considered the leading operating system for Bitcoin
mining, added elements of unpredictability to a number of
processes, due mainly to the code being developed over the last 13
years by a large number of contributors, each adding a new elements
to the mining software. Therefore, while CGMiner was initially used
by QBT to achieve the porting of its Methods, its high-level of
inefficiency has now been recognised and the change to ESP-miner
has been implemented.
ESP-miner
was created by Open Source Miners United (OSMU), of which QBT is a
sponsor, and incorporates the essential firmware-like
functionalities of the FPGA component, which is the second
processor of the current mining rigs’ control boards that provides
time communication with the hashing boards.
ESP-miner
uses the same processor for both the operating system and the
firmware-like functionalities: the ESP32-S3 Espressif MCU (micro controller
unit).
The
combination of ESP-miner and the new family of BM1366 ASIC is now
QBT’s new real-time operational environment for porting and testing
the three Methods in a real-time mining mode. Other hardware and
software platforms from OSMU are currently being
assessed.
Method
A
The key
data from Method A’s neural network training dataset is the
accurate real-time measurement of the hashing time; specifically,
the more precise the measure, the better the performance of the
Method.
The
Company’s main objective has been to collect such information in
real-time while hashing is taking place on the ASIC chip. This was
obtained by developing specific modifications to CGminer, replacing
indirect time measure with direct measure.
The same
functionalities will be implemented in ESP-miner and the Company
believes it will lead to even better real-time hashing time
measuring, given the easier access to the firmware-like
functionalities of this new software environment.
Method
B
The
porting of Method B will continue using the new ESP-miner software
platform, making the control of the BM1366 chips easier, more
efficient, stable and reliable.
In
parallel to this, a new tool has been developed by QBT for
real-time mining testing which will bypass CGminer and any other
mining operating systems, reducing potential errors introduced by
the complexity of this mining operating system. This tool is likely
to be ported directly onto the ESP32-S3 Espressif MCU.
In
addition to the porting activity, a new major alternative
performance improvement technique has been developed, based on
solid mathematical theory, which has been tested off-line in the
laboratory, with consistent positive results. Once the ESP-miner
porting has been completed, this new version of Method B will
undergo real-time mining testing.
Method
C
The
laboratory results of Method C continue to be confirmed, while the
R&D team is working on perfecting both the underlaying AI model
used by the Method and the selection of data used for training
it.
Tests have
been conducted, so far, off-line on historic data, ‘ex-post’, by
using a simulation of a Bitcoin pool operating in the
past.
The reason
for this approach is due to Bitcoin’s current level of mining
difficulty; that is, the probability of finding a winning hash is
statistically almost impossible, unless using hundreds of mining
rigs simultaneously. Therefore, by using the difficulty level of
old blocks of the Blockchain, combined with current mining
hardware, a real-time testing of Method C would, the Company
believes, be possible.
The
Company has therefore adapted Method C to enable live
demonstrations, by finding winning hashes at lower levels of
difficulty, i.e. in the old blocks of the Blockchain, in order to
give real time evidence to potential partners, or clients, within
the average ten minutes new block hashing time to prove the hashing
advantage of Method C, compared to standard non-AI-based
hashing.
Patents
Both
existing patent applications have been filed internationally. As a
result, UK patent protection can be sought through the European
Patent Office rather than through the UK Patent Office.
The first
international patent application has already been filed at the
European Patent Office. If granted, the patent will include UK
protection and the original priority date will not be affected. The
first international patent application has also been filed in the
US, Canada, Australia and South
Korea. When the deadline for the national phase of the
second international application approaches, the Company will file
that international
application at the European Patent Office and will decide on any
additional jurisdictions to choose.
Drafting
of the third patent application, the proprietary quantum version of
SHA-256, continues. The subject matter is particularly complex,
hence the delay in finalising the document.
A fourth
patent application, related to Method C, but not on the nature of
the Method, will start to be drafted very soon, with a filing
expected to be made by the end of 2024.
The
Company’s decision for the IP protection of Methods A, B and C is
to keep them as industrial secrets, although patent applications
which preferably make use of those methods could be filed, as in
the case the one related to Method C, without the need to reveal
those Methods.
Business
Developments
Over the
past few months, the Company has continued its discussions with the
major Bitcoin sector companies, which are mainly located in
North America. These discussions
have now reached a level where the Company is looking to provide
live mining test demonstrations, as soon as any one of the Methods
is available for real-time mining, as confirmed by recent meetings
in the US at Mining Disrupt 2024 in Miami and Bitcoin 2024 in Nashville.
The
Company believes the recent decision to migrate onto the ESP-miner
operating system, running on ESP32-S3
Espressif MCU and using Bm1366 ASIC chips, is expected to achieve
successful real-time mining testing of methods A, B and
C.
Once this
technical milestone has been completed, the Company expects to
commence conversations with the small number of companies who have
developed their own versions of the mining operating system,
firmware and drivers, that operate the current crop of commercial
mining rigs. The plan is to port QBT’s client version of its
Methods to the miners’ proprietary software environments, providing
access to a potential market of millions of currently operational
mining rigs.
Francesco Gardin, CEO and Executive Chairman of Quantum
Blockchain Technologies commented:
“Most
of the current and recent efforts of the Company are focused on the
porting of the Methods on to commercial hardware mining
platforms.
“The
skill set for the porting projects is completely different from AI
know-how used in the design and development of the three Methods by
our R&D teams.
“A
very experienced software engineer from Milan University joined the core software
engineers’ group nine months ago, and we feel this group now has
all the necessary skills to successfully undertake the porting task
to a real-time Bitcoin mining environment.
“This
complex technical step of the process is the precondition for
deploying QBT’s technology and entering into pragmatic partnership
and commercial discussions with the major players of the sector,
all of whom are very aware of QBT’s technology and all of whom are
just waiting for real-time.
“The
decision to switch to the ESP-miner operating system, running on
ESP32-S3 Espressif MCU and using
Bm1366 ASIC chips, will definitely accelerate moving in this
direction.”
For
further information please contact:
Quantum
Blockchain Technologies Plc
Francesco Gardin, CEO and Executive
Chairman +39
335 296573
SP
Angel Corporate Finance (Nominated
Adviser & Broker)
Jeff Keating
John Mackay +44
(0)20 3470 0470
Leander (Financial
PR)
Christian Taylor-Wilkinson +44
(0) 7795 168 157
About
Quantum Blockchain Technologies Plc
QBT (AIM:
QBT) is an AIM listed investment company with a strategic focus on
technology related investments, including a special regard towards
Quantum Computing, Blockchain, Cryptocurrencies and AI sectors. The
Company has an aggressive R&D and investment programme in the
dynamic world of Blockchain Technology, which includes
cryptocurrency mining and other advanced blockchain
applications.
Glossary
of Terms
ASIC:
An Application-Specific Integrated Circuit is an integrated circuit
chip customized for a particular use, rather than intended for
general-purpose use. ASIC chips are typically fabricated using
metal-oxide semiconductor (MOS) technology, as MOS integrated
circuit chips.
Bitcoin
Mining: Bitcoin
mining is the process of using computer hardware to do mathematical
calculations for the Bitcoin network in order to confirm
transactions. Miners collect transaction fees for the transactions
they confirm and are awarded Bitcoins for each block they
verify.
CGminer:
Is the most popular software system for GPU/FPGA/ASIC based miners.
CGminer is an open-source GPU miner written in C available for
several platforms like Windows, Linux and OS X.
Hash:
A hash is the output of a hashing function, which is a mathematical
function that converts an input of arbitrary length into an
encrypted output of a fixed length.
Method
A: A Machine
Learning based development by QBT R&D team, aimed at reducing
the SHA-256 search space, compared to the brute force method used
by BTC mining rigs today.
Method
B: A Machine
Learning and statistical optimisation technologies developed by QBT
R&D team, reducing the SHA-256 search space, but radically
different from Method A.
Method
C: A Machine
Learning based development QBT R&D team is an AI Oracle
with
to assess
in real time the likelihood of an input to
SHA-256 to
generate a winning hash. (Method A, Method B and Method C,
collectively, the Methods.)
Neural
networks: A neural
network is a machine learning program, or model, that makes
decisions in a manner similar to the human brain, by using
processes that mimic the way biological neurons work together to
identify phenomena, weigh options and arrive at
conclusions.
Porting:
In computer science, it is a process of adapting, sometimes with
modifications, a software component to enable its use on a platform
different from the original one. Porting is done when the software
is somehow adjusted, not when the source code is completely
rewritten in a different programming language.
SHA-256:
Secure Hashing Algorithm (SHA)-256 is the hash function and mining
algorithm of the Bitcoin protocol, referring to the cryptographic
hash function that outputs a 256 bits long value.
