Bitcoin mining is, at heart, a guessing game run at colossal speed.
Specialised computers race to find a number that, when fed through a mathematical function called SHA256, produces a result below a target set by the network.
SHA256 is a hashing algorithm, a one-way process that turns any input into a fixed-length string of characters that cannot be reversed.
Miners cannot calculate the winning answer directly, so they simply try quintillions of guesses until one works, and whoever gets there first is rewarded.
The machines doing this are ASICs, or application-specific integrated circuits, chips built to perform this single calculation and nothing else, as fast and as cheaply as possible.
Because the contest is decided on efficiency, the number of guesses a chip can make per unit of electricity, even a small saving translates into real money at scale.
This is where Quantum Blockchain Technologies has been digging.
Its patent, granted approval by the US Patent and Trademark Office and branded ASIC UltraBoost, targets a specific step inside SHA256 called the message schedule.
The message schedule is a preparation stage, in which the algorithm takes the input data and expands it into a longer sequence of values before the main number-crunching begins.
The company's insight is that when a chip runs the same calculation billions of times, much of this preparation is repeated needlessly.
In mining, large parts of the data being hashed stay identical from one guess to the next, with only a small portion changing.
Yet conventional hardware recomputes the whole message schedule each time, burning energy and silicon on work whose answer has not changed.
QBT's patented method identifies these redundant computations and removes them, so the chip does the same job while performing fewer underlying operations.
Strip out wasted steps and the chip can either mine faster for the same power, or use less power for the same output.
The company describes the inefficiency it targets as well defined and technically demonstrable, and says message scheduling remains an area of continuing commercial importance.
The intended customers are the established ASIC manufacturers who build mining chips, whom QBT hopes will license the technique to make their hardware more competitive.
Chief executive Francesco Gardin said the company plans to explore licensing or other routes to monetise this patent and others in its portfolio, and is seeking semiconductor specialists to advise on strategy.
Two cautions temper the news.
Approval is not the same as a final grant, and QBT must still pay issue and publication fees to the patent office to complete the process.
Gardin also warned that the timing and outcome of any commercial talks are uncertain, with no assurance the patent generates material revenue in the short term.
