Bitmain CEO Jihan Wu has stated the miner “may likely accept” a code to permanently halt the covert use of AsicBoost technology.
In a tweet on Thursday, Wu said he “didn’t really pay attention to AsicBoost that much until the recent drama.”
“You can write the code to ban it,” he said, “and we may likely [...] accept.”
@desantis @alansilbert I didn't really pay attention to Asicboost that much until the recent drama. You can write the code to ban it. And we may likely to accept.
— Jihan Wu (@JihanWu) May 5, 2017
Wu had found himself at the center of controversy after it became known Bitmain’s hardware was “backdoored” to allow potential covert cost-saving and an ensuing network monopoly.
Having vehemently defended the company’s stance, he nonetheless faced a barrage of criticism from many community figures.
Even Andreas Antonopoulos joined in the debate with a challenge to Bitmain to “turn off” AsicBoost.
“If you’re going to do [Asicboost], do it with the overt version; that way, everyone can see you’re doing it and adjust their business plan accordingly,” he said during a recent Q&A session.
“The covert version damages the market, damages the protocol development and since nobody’s using it, let’s turn it off.”
A Bitcoin Improvement Protocol proposal would include a code to disable covert AsicBoost.
“After activation of the BIP, covert AsicBoost is dead,” a top Reddit comment on Wu’s latest stance reads.
“Then, his best option becomes to support segwit which is a blocksize increase meaning more fee income and likely a huge price boost (although however likely is still speculative).”