Chinese mining company Bitmain has released a firmware update that allows Bitcoin miners to enable the Overt AsicBoost feature, which improves operating efficiency and reduces production costs.
There are two types of AsicBoost that can be used by miners - open and hidden (overt and covert). Many community members consider hidden Asic Boost to be extremely harmful to the Bitcoin protocol, as it can allow miners to produce small or empty blocks.
Hidden AsicBoost also has some anonymity features that hide the identity of the miner. This is why miners and organizations that are trying to avoid the attention of law enforcement agencies use this type of AsicBoost.
Open AsicBoost (overt), on the other hand, demonstrates excellent performance and also does not incentivize miners to create dummy blocks, so this type of AsicBoost is a win-win for them.
Bitmain's latest blog post explains why the company took so long to activate this feature:
We initially decided not to enable this feature in mining devices manufactured by us, largely due to legal uncertainties associated with the use of AsicBoost. As an organization, we didn't want to break patent laws. Instead, we are focusing our efforts on R&D and creating the most efficient mining chips.
The company notes that their decision to allow miners to use this feature is due to the growing competition in the market, as well as the fact that other manufacturers have already enabled this feature.
In March 2018, we noticed that several new manufacturers began to advertise the “AsicBoost” feature, and after some time we discovered that using AsicBoost blocks were mined on the blockchain. In order to give our users the opportunity to mine with AsicBoost, we are adding support for this feature on both BTC.COM and Antpool.
Bitmain representatives believe that neither party can obtain a patent for AsicBoost, since all miners must “decide for themselves whether to use AsicBoost technology.” They also emphasized that their decision to enable AsicBoost will not harm the Bitcoin protocol in any way and will help maintain the transparency of the network.
According to newsbtc.com
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