24
October 2024
Quantum
Blockchain Technologies plc
("QBT" or
"the Company")
Bitcoin
Mining - Method C
Hardware
AI Oracle Implementation and Performance
Increase
Quantum
Blockchain Technologies (AIM: QBT), the AIM-listed investment
company focused on a R&D and investment programme within
blockchain technology, is pleased to announce a series of
breakthrough achievements with regards its predictive Bitcoin
Artificial Intelligence (AI) model mining tool, Method
C.
HIGHLIGHTS
·
Method C's
AI Oracle successfully and efficiently implemented onto Bitcoin
Mining hardware
·
Method C
performance increased significantly from 30% to 50%, at lower
mining difficulty
·
Lab tests
of Method C's AI Oracle at current level of mining difficulty
confirm the effectiveness of the model
·
The
Company believes this is a major innovation which undermines
industry assumptions and is a significant step forward to
commercialisation
·
Patent
application to be filed before year end
Method
C - Increased Performance
The
Company announced on 13 March 2024
the development of a proprietary AI Oracle, broadly defined by the
R&D team as Method C. While the Machine Learning model has
previously been defined as Method C, the result of its `training'
with relevant data is known in the industry as an AI Oracle. This
Oracle is being used by QBT to implement its prediction
engine.
Method C's
AI Oracle is able to predict the likelihood of an input to SHA-256
(the core algorithm to mine Bitcoins) to produce a winning Hash.
Should the AI Oracle calculate that the current SHA-256 will not be
successful in finding the winning Hash, it skips that calculation
and moves on to the next input. In the March
2024 announcement, the Company reported that irrelevant
SHA-256 computations were being avoided almost 30% of the
time.
It was
further reported on 15 August 2024
that, following further testing, the AI Oracle was performing
real-time simulated mining, at historic lower mining difficulty
levels, for the purpose of industry demonstrations.
The
Company is now able to report that at a lower level of mining
difficulty, the performance of the AI Oracle generated by Method C,
used at the mining rig level, has been materially improved from 30%
to more than 50%. Simply stated, this means that on an average of
100 inputs to SHA-256, more than 50 of them are assessed as not
worth being calculated, since no winning hashes will be generated
from those inputs.
The
Company believes this is a major innovation, which undermines a key
Bitcoin Mining industry assumption that the SHA-256 algorithm
output cannot be predicted. The implications are, therefore,
significant in that a Bitcoin miner operating with the AI Oracle at
a lower level of difficulty than the current one, would be able
to:
·
Double the
mining rate in the same time period, and
·
Keep
energy costs at the same level.
While the
Company is now finally able to demonstrate the above achievements
in real time simulated mining, using QBT's AI Oracle hardware
implementation (see below) and a simulation of the blockchain using
historic data, it has to be noted that recent lab tests have also
clearly demonstrated the effectiveness of the AI Oracle, as a
result of the training of the Method C model, running at the
current
level of
mining difficulty.
From a
commercial perspective, QBT's vigorous testing has demonstrated
that the performance of the AI Oracle on a single mining rig at a
lower level of mining difficulty is such that more than 50% of the
inputs to SHA-256 are discarded, without affecting the chance of
the miner to find a winning Hash.
Detailed
measurements of global efficiency for the AI Oracle generated by
Method C are currently in progress so QBT can benchmark the
improvements against existing mining devices operating at current
levels of mining difficulty using key industry parameters, such as,
energy saving and improved hashing power (Joule per Tera Hash).
The
Company is now focused on two elements which are key to producing a
commercial version of AI Oracle generated by Method
C.
Firstly,
it is investigating a route to maintain the AI Oracle's success at
current and future mining difficulty levels, and secondly, the QBT
Machine Learning team is working on producing a software-only
version of the AI Oracle generated by Method C, that can be used by
mining pools.
Method
C - Hardware Implementation of the AI Oracle generated by Method
C
The Board
recognises that a commercial product is key to the future success
of the Company, and it can report it has now taken a major step
forward with the development of a real-time hardware implementation
for the AI Oracle, which QBT sees as being both innovative and
efficient.
The
Company will be in a position to provide further details of this
technical solution once it has filed a patent application, which it
anticipates doing by the end of 2024.
Following
the filing of the patent application, live demonstrations of the AI
Oracle will be shared with potential partners. These demonstrations
will aim to show the real-time superiority between a mining device
running the AI Oracle compared to the same mining device without
it.
Francesco Gardin, CEO and Executive Chairman of QBT,
commented, "The
combined effort and close cooperation of the Machine Learning Team,
in conjunction with the Hardware Team, has been one of the keys to
unlocking this astonishing and impressive result.
"The
Company's strategy to use AI to improve the performance of SHA-256,
despite the industry's common view that this was impossible, is so
far proving successful and represents a potentially effective new
approach to Bitcoin Mining.
"Once the
new patent application has been filed, we will start to demonstrate
the real-time, disruptive application of the AI Oracle generated by
Method C to potential key partners and clients."
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.
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 a London Stock Exchange AIM listed Research &
Development and investing company focused on an intensive R&D
programme to disrupt the Blockchain Technologies sector, and which
includes, cryptocurrency mining and other advanced blockchain
applications. The primary goal of the R&D programme is to
develop Bitcoin mining tools and techniques, via its
technology-driven approach, which the Company believes will
significantly outperform existing market practices.
Glossary
of Terms
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.
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
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.
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.