Latest updates: 3nm chip headed to the foundry, our new mining system, and more

We previously shared that we were developing an advanced bitcoin mining chip, with the goal of decentralizing both the supply of bitcoin mining hardware and the distribution of hashrate. Today, we are pleased to announce that we have finished development of our three-nanometer (nm) bitcoin mining chip and are in the process of completing a full tapeout of the design with a leading global semiconductor foundry. This marks an important milestone in our bitcoin mining project. Additionally, with our chip design complete, we are excited to share that we are developing a full bitcoin mining system. As we pursue our system design, we strongly welcome input from the mining community on the problems faced with existing solutions. 

In a prior update, we disclosed that we had moved forward with manufacturing a five-nanometer mining chip prototype. Last fall, we received silicon samples back from our foundry partner. These samples met our design targets and gave us valuable learnings, validating our architecture and design approach. Since then, we have been working heads down on our 3nm design. With our design showing competitive performance, we are proceeding with the full tapeout. Our mining chip will utilize the most advanced semiconductor process currently available and will deliver the performance required for mining operators of all types to survive and thrive in the fifth mining epoch (the period following the recent 4th halving of the block subsidy) and beyond.

As our mining program has progressed, we’ve listened closely to the feedback we’ve received from the mining community. We’ve spent a significant amount of time talking to a wide variety of bitcoin miners to identify the challenges faced by mining operators. Building on these insights and pursuant to our goal of supporting mining decentralization, we plan to offer both a standalone mining chip as well as a full mining system of our own design. 

With a standalone mining chip, we will represent the only large, well-capitalized mining hardware vendor with such a solution. We hope this will help unlock mining system innovation and support the much-needed development of new mining system form factors and use cases. 

With our bitcoin mining system, we will build on our product and software development expertise, system engineering competency, supply chain experience, and aftermarket support capability, with tens of millions of devices shipped. We intend to use this experience to bring a compelling, differentiated mining solution to market. For context, you can see the initial directions we shared on the mining software front. 

While the learnings we’ve gained so far have given us some initial ideas for what our system should look like, we’d love more input from the mining community. Specifically, we’d love to hear about the pain points or issues you are experiencing in the following areas: 

• Pre-sales discovery. What challenges do you face when evaluating potential miner purchases? Are there sufficient data and resources available? What might help improve the process?
• Purchasing. What problems does the current purchasing process present? How might it be improved? 
• Reliability. What are the most common reliability problems you face with your mining hardware? What are the biggest challenges you face with maintaining miner uptime? What failure modes are most costly in terms of lost uptime or repair cost?
• Maintenance. What are the biggest challenges you face in maintaining your miners? 
• Software features. What are the biggest problems you face with existing mining software? What features do you think are most lacking with current mining software? What features would you most like to see? 
• Transparency. Where is lack of transparency or clarity most problematic with mining hardware and software? Where would you most like more transparency and why?
• Post-sale support. What are the biggest problems you’ve faced with your mining hardware after purchasing? What kind of post-sales support would you like to see? 

We’d love to hear your input. Please feel free to reach out to us at mining@block.xyz to share your thoughts. Stay tuned for more updates on our mining hardware program in the coming weeks and months!