Bitmain has released its secret weapon - Asicboost, a way to make Antminer S9 rigs boost their hashrate. The arrival of the new firmware did not go without a glitch - SlushPool, one of the biggest mining pools, warned users against the new firmware. Soon after that, however, Bitmain released a patch:
https://twitter.com/Antminer_main/status/1054611067496591360
Critics of Bitmain have noted that the release of Asicboost was possibly deliberately held back, so it could be used on some pools only, gaining unfair advantage. Bitmain does not hold the patent to the Asicboost software, but instead just used the technology.
https://twitter.com/Excellion/status/1054703752815370241
One of the reasons the upgrade was problematic, was that Asicboost has been known to be incompatible with SegWit, the alternative system of block headers. However, SegWit was seen as increasingly important as a scaling solution for Bitcoin. Lat...
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