Last Updated on May 1, 2023 by Bitfinsider

Block, the financial services and technology firm founded by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, has announced the completion of the prototype design of its new five-nanometer (5nm) Bitcoin mining chip, which it claims will be critical to decentralizing the supply of Bitcoin mining rigs.

Block explained in a blog post published on April 28 that constructing Bitcoin mining ASIC machines is both financially and technically difficult. As a result, “the excessive concentration of custom bitcoin mining silicon” in the hands of a few companies has occurred. This centralization, according to Block, is bad to both miners and the Bitcoin network as a whole.

Notably, the San Francisco-based company stated that it intends to make Bitcoin mining technology “open source” to the greatest extent feasible by selling standalone ASICs and other hardware components in order to “optimize innovation and maximize the size of the Bitcoin mining hardware ecosystem.”

The actions taken in recent months, according to the post, will allow the company to experiment with new designs and help them deliver more efficient and affordable Bitcoin mining chips to market. Block also stated that it has ordered a huge batch of ASIC processors from Intel in order to expedite this development drive.

As part of cost-cutting initiatives, Intel said on April 18 that it would stop accepting new orders for its Blockscale 1000 Series ASICs by October 20 and finish deliveries in April 2024. Block argues that Intel’s enormous intake of ASICs will help hasten the development of its own 3nm device, which it claims will be the most advanced chip to date when released.