Quantum Blockchain reports progress with 'ambitious' crypto project

Quantum Blockchain Technologies updated the market on its cryptocurrency mining research and development project on Wednesday, in its bid to deploy a proprietary technology for the “more efficient” mining of cryptocurrency.

The AIM-traded firm said the primary goal of the project was to develop Bitcoin mining tools and techniques which would “significantly outperform” existing mining equipment, both in speed and energy consumption.

While it understood the goal to be “extremely ambitious”, the company claimed the “radically advanced” technologies being used, being quantum computing, artificial intelligence (AI) and “deep learning”, among others, rendered the goal “achievable”.

Quantum Blockchain said it has assembled a team of 13 sector experts, which was now fully operational.

The members of the team were selected from across the UK and Italy, and included “highly skilled” professionals, Ph.D students and university professors, with expertise in quantum computing, machine learning, cryptography, and algorithms optimisation theory.

Quantum Blockshain said it had entered into formal agreements with a number of university departments to retain the services of the new team.

It confirmed that any intellectual property and patents developed during the project would belong exclusively to the firm.

A number of working groups had been formed to address the key technologies at the core of its cryptocurrency mining strategy, the board said, focusing on quantum computing, cryptographic optimisation, deep learning and AI, FPGA and ASIC design, algebraic and boolean equation reduction, ‘very large’ big data, and high-performance computing architectures.

As it said in an update in June, Quantum Blockchain had secured the services of an “expert” specialising in cryptocurrency mining blockchain optimisations.

The development of half of the optimisations previously created by the unnamed expert had proven a 9.56% speed improvement using a commercial graphics processing unit (GPU), compared to the standard Bitcoin mining algorithm on the same GPU, the company claimed.

It said that, while it was “never intended” to use a GPU processor for Bitcoin mining, it was providing “invaluable quantitative feedback” on the optimisation techniques discovered by the in-house expert.

A second, and “more impactful”, set of optimisations for the Bitcoin mining algorithm had now been identified by the expert, which would be filed as an international patent within the coming weeks.

That, Quantum Blockchain said, was ideally the first of several patents it was planning to file in the upcoming months.

The board said the field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA) and application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) expert it had retained would start implementing the first set of optimisations on FPGA by the end of the month, with early completed versions of the FPGA due by the end of October, while the optimisations covered by the patent being filed would be due by December.

Based on the performance achieved by the FPGA chip, it could be decided to use it as the company’s first mining engine, Quantum Blockchain said.

ASIC development work would start concurrently in October.

“Assembling a new team and taking this project to operational status within four months has been a difficult challenge and has required a tremendous effort,” said chief executive officer Francesco Gardin.

“However, thanks to our exceptional team, we have been able to achieve this.

“Over the past few months we have resisted the temptation to mine for cryptocurrencies using ‘standard’ methods as it is not part of our current strategy.”

Gardin said Quantum Blockchain was looking to be a “highly disruptive influence” in the £75bn market of 2.21 million Bitcoins yet-to-be-mined, with its recent months of “intensive” research and development believed to be “crucial” in achieving that.

“Our strategy for Bitcoin mining is knowledge intensive, rather than capital intensive, based on the unique, combined interaction between our human experts and our innovative AI systems.

“I would like to thank our shareholders for their patience and state that our roadmap is clearly defined and we will pursue it with determination.”

At 1109 BST, shares in Quantum Blockchain Technologies were up 4.08% at 1.28p.