New photonic blockchain breakthrough enables profitable mining for ‘everyone’
The process of mining cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, involves verifying transactions and adding new digital currency to the blockchain. However, this operation comes at a significant cost, consuming up to 1% of the world’s total energy. As the popularity of cryptocurrencies and blockchain applications continues to increase, this energy consumption is projected to escalate further.
Cryptocurrencies are decentralized digital currencies that rely on encryption algorithms to create them. They offer an alternative form of currency, different from traditional fiat currencies. The foundation of these digital currencies lies in blockchain technology, which acts as a secure and immutable digital ledger. It records important information such as transactions in a way that is very challenging, if not impossible, to tamper with or breach.
“Currently,” according to first author Sunil Pai, “cryptocurrency mining is only available to those with access to highly discounted energy – below $0.05/kWh.”
In a remarkable development, researchers have introduced an advanced computing system based on light, significantly reducing the power requirements for cryptocurrency mining. This groundbreaking innovation also paves the way for a new photonic blockchain technology, which has the potential to improve the accessibility of cryptocurrencies and enable the use of low-energy optical computing.
“Our low-energy chips will enable individuals around the world to participate in mining profitably,” and it “can also be used for applications beyond cryptocurrency such as the secure transfer of data for medical records, smart contracts, and voting.”
In a publication featured in Optica, the team led by renowned experts David AB Miller, Shanhui Fan and Olav Solgaard from Stanford University unveiled their groundbreaking scheme called LightHash, which harnesses the power of a photonic integrated circuit to establish a photonic blockchain.
Promising remarkable potential, the researchers envision that this approach, with extensive refinement, could provide an astounding tenfold improvement in energy efficiency compared to the most advanced digital electronic processors currently available.
Advancing Sustainable Mining: Leveraging Silicon Photonics for Greener Cryptocurrency Networks
The increasing energy requirements of cryptocurrency mining have become a serious cause for concern, prompting some prominent platforms such as Ethereum to adopt unproven and potentially vulnerable techniques to reduce their carbon footprint.
To discover an environmentally sustainable alternative while maintaining strict security measures, Pai and his team have leveraged silicon photonics to reduce the energy requirements of cryptocurrency networks. The introduction of LightHash marks a notable advance over their previous solution, known as HeavyHash, which currently supports cryptocurrency networks such as Optical Bitcoin and Kaspa.
The secure creation and operation of Bitcoin, as well as its computer network, requires the use of a hash function such as SHA256 or Heavyhash. These functions convert input data into a single output number in a highly intricate manner that cannot be easily reversed, thus contributing significantly to Bitcoin’s energy consumption.
In a recent study, researchers have made progress by modifying Heavyhash to work with a co-designed silicon photonic chip containing a 6×6 network of programmable interferometers. This innovative approach enables energy-efficient optical processing of matrix multiplications, which make up the majority of calculations in Lighthash.
To assess the practicality of implementing LightHash for matrix multiplication, the researchers constructed an optical setup. This rig allowed them to control and monitor the propagation of light by fine-tuning heating elements and projecting grid points onto an infrared camera. In addition, the researchers developed an error-reducing algorithm and established criteria to evaluate the possibility of scaling up this technology.
Promote precise and energy-efficient calculation
According to Pai, the lead researcher, the findings “indicate that LightHash can be computed at scale using current silicon photonic chip technology.”
“Essentially, we have developed a way to use analog optical circuits to perform multiplications with near-zero power loss, yet accurate enough for use in a digital encryption scheme.”
To establish significant advantages of LightHash over its digital counterparts, the technology must be expanded to accommodate 64 inputs and outputs. In addition, the researchers strive to reduce energy consumption by developing low-power electromechanical tuning components and energy-efficient converters to efficiently transform optical signals into electrical signals.
“It will be interesting to see how cryptocurrency technology develops and to what extent photonics can contribute to the increasingly mainstream role of decentralized ledgers in society today,” Pai adds.
Source: 10.1177/19485506231163012
Image credit: Getty
