17
January 2025
Quantum
Blockchain Technologies plc
("QBT" or
"the Company”)
Bitcoin
Mining - Method C AI Oracle
New
AI Oracle version with FPGA implementation: From simulated mining
with historic blockchain blocks to real-time pool mining with
current blockchain blocks
Quantum
Blockchain Technologies (AIM: QBT), the AIM-listed investment
company focused on a disruptive R&D and investment programme
within the blockchain sector, is pleased to announce a breakthrough
achievement for its predictive Bitcoin Artificial Intelligence
(“AI”) model mining tool.
This tool,
known as Method C AI Oracle (“AI Oracle”), is now performing live
Bitcoin mining of current blockchain blocks, (i.e.,
around block count 879,000, after Method C has been “retrained” to
deal with current blockchain blocks).
The
Company’s board of directors believe this is a significant
milestone, since this proprietary technology has been used in
trials to mine Bitcoin with a competitive advantage against the
same hardware without the AI Oracle implementation. The material
competitive advantage in mining enabled by the AI Oracle may be
achieved either by (i) reducing the energy cost of mining by
approximately 30%; or (ii), accelerating the mining speed at
current energy consumption and costs with approximately a 30%
greater hash rate.
Method
C AI Oracle – Performance and Implementation
The AI
Oracle achieves these material advantages through being able to
predict the likelihood of an input to SHA-256 to produce a winning
hash above a certain level of difficulty. Should the AI Oracle
calculate that the current SHA-256 input will not be successful in
finding the winning hash, it skips that calculation and moves on to
the next input. In the Company’s announcement of 24 October 2024, it reported that irrelevant (or
non-winning) SHA-256 computations were being avoided almost 50% of
the time, but that performance result was obtained through lab
tests simulating historic mining blocks, i.e.,
not real-time mining on the current blocks of the Bitcoin
blockchain.
The
Company has now “retrained” the AI Oracle to operate on current
blocks of the bitcoin blockchain and it has completed work on a
Field Programmable Gate Array (“FPGA”) implementation of the AI
Oracle, as per the patent application filed by the Company (see
announcement dated 15 January 2025
:“Implementation
of Binary Decision Trees”) which
is now mining current
Bitcoin
blockchain blocks and avoiding irrelevant SHA-256 computations
approximately 30% of the time.
As a
result of this improvement, QBT’s proprietary logic gate
architecture implementation of AI Oracle has commenced mining in
real-time with a Bitcoin mining pool, which is already
demonstrating quantitative material advantages compared to the same
real-time hardware mining without AI Oracle.
As the
Company is deploying AI Oracle on limited hardware resources
available to the Company at this time (i.e.,
an FPGA chip), the pool mined shares of Bitcoin are comparatively
minimal but the same FPGA chip with the AI Oracle results in an
approximate 30% advantage over an FPGA chip without the AI Oracle
version.
In other
words, had the AI Oracle been implemented on ASIC chips, the
Company believes it would boost an ASIC chip’s mining performance
by approximately 30%. As of today, QBT is using an FPGA, which has
the hashing power of a very small fraction of an ASIC, but is still
showing an approximately 30% improvement which is the Company’s key
goal, mainly for validation and demonstrative purposes.
Following
the filing of its new patent application referred to above, the
Company is now in a position to demonstrate its FPGA-based live
Bitcoin mining, via a mining pool, to potential clients who it
anticipates primarily will be hardware manufacturers.
The board
of directors currently believes that working in commercial
partnership with a major hardware manufacturer via a licensing
agreement, will be the most logical route to market, principally
due to the cost benefits to QBT when transferring its disruptive
technology from an FPGA to the most competitive ASIC in the
market.
Francesco Gardin, CEO and Executive Chairman of QBT,
commented, “Following
almost three years of R&D efforts, the AI team working on
Method C has delivered its first irrefutable result, with a new
version of Method C AI Oracle, which can now be used to mine the
current blockchain blocks in real-time with an approximate 30%
improved performance. This has been made possible thanks to
retraining the Method C model and to a very efficient hardware
implementation of the AI Oracle, which forms the core of the
“Implementation
of Binary Decision Trees” patent
application.
“We
believe this has the potential to be a major breakthrough for the
entire Bitcoin mining industry, as QBT has developed an AI Oracle
which can either reduce the energy cost of mining or increase the
speed of mining at current energy costs, by approximately 30%,
which it can prove through live demonstrations.”
This
announcement contains inside information for the purposes of
Article 7 of the Market Abuse Regulation (EU) 596/2014 as it forms
part of UK domestic law by virtue of the European Union
(Withdrawal) Act 2018 ("MAR"), and is disclosed in accordance with
the Company's obligations under Article 17 of MAR.
-ends-
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 +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 a disruptive R&D and investment programme in the
dynamic world of Blockchain Technology, which includes Bitcoin
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.
Block:
Blocks are files stored by a blockchain, where transaction data are
permanently recorded. A block records some or all of the most
recent transactions not yet validated by the network. Once the data
are validated, the block is closed. Then, a new block is created
for new transactions to be entered into and validated.
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.
FPGA:
A field-programmable gate array is an integrated circuit designed
to be configured by a customer or a designer after manufacturing –
hence the term "field-programmable". The FPGA configuration is
generally specified using a hardware description language (HDL),
similar to that used for an application-specific integrated circuit
(ASIC).
Method
C: A
Machine Learning based development by QBT R&D team which is
composed by an AI model to be trained and an AI Oracle (the result
of the training of the model). The Oracle assesses in real time the
likelihood of an input to SHA-256 to generate a winning
Hash.
Oracle:
It is an intelligent system which is designed for only answering
questions and has no ability to act in the world.
Retraining:
Model
retraining refers to updating a deployed machine learning model
with new data. The aim of retraining an AI
model is
to ensure that it consistently provides the most correct
output.
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.
