The Asicboost optimization has been steadily making its way into the mining industry and now the protocol is being used on the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) chain. So far six mining pools are using the version-rolling Asicboost technology to mine BCH blocks. The operations currently using Asicboost on the BCH chain comprise Antpool, BTC.com, Okminer, Prohashing, Viabtc, and an unknown pool. According to the data website Asicboost.dance, since the Oct. 22 firmware release, both BTC and BCH blocks have seen a significant spike in Asicboost usage. The creator of the data website has built another portal called Cash.asicboost.dance, which measures the metrics of Asicboost used on the BCH network.
Asicboost was once controversial because some individuals assumed the technology was being used covertly. Now that mining operations are overtly using the technology, a slew of mining pools have adopted the protocol in order to improve efficiency. This is because Asicboost can speed up the mining process by a factor of approximately 20 percent by reducing the gate count on mining chips. Essentially, the protocol is also applicable to all types of ASIC chips according to the whitepaper written by Dr. Timo Hanke. Initially, the use of Asicboost had occurred solely on the BTC chain and last week there were 111 version-rolled blocked mined on the BTC network. This accounts for 11 percent of the BTC hashrate and 5.87 exahash per sec (EH/s).
Bitcoin Cash miners are slowly starting to increase usage of the protocol and last week there were 63 version-rolled Asicboost blocks mined on the BCH chain according to the Cash.asicboost.dance website. This means that on the BCH network mining pools have processed 0.23 EH/s or 6.25 percent of the overall hashrate. The pool processing the largest share of Asicboost blocks on the Bitcoin Cash network is Okminer, a mining operation that currently commands roughly 10.3 percent of the global BCH hashrate. The lead held by Okminer is followed by Bitmain’s Antpool and then the mining operation BTC.com.