The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) published 21 Inc’s patent application for “Digital Currency Mining Circuitry” last week. Matthew Pauker, Nigel Drego, Veerbhan Kheterpal and Daniel Firu are named as the inventors.
The application states that the invention in question relates to mining of digital currencies such as crypto-currencies. Mining circuitry and mining operations may be used for any digital medium of exchange such as digital currencies, credits, rewards, or points.
It says, “Mining circuitry may be used to mine digital currency such as bitcoins by computing solutions to a cryptographic puzzle. Successful computation of a solution to the cryptographic puzzle may provide a reward of the digital currency.”
Describing the mining circuitry, the application said that it may be part of an integrated circuit or electronic device that serves as a node of a network of nodes that collectively govern or support the digital currency.
The cryptographic puzzle may be determined by a protocol such as the Bitcoin protocol that is implemented by the network of nodes. Information provided by a user (e.g., a user wallet, user account, user data structure, or other user-provided information), a profit-sharing wallet, account, or other data structure may serve as a parameter of the cryptographic puzzle.
Moreover, the application describes systems and methods that introduce profit-sharing (reward-sharing) techniques with dedicated cryptocurrency mining circuitry. Profit sharing may help to offset the substantial costs associated with designing the mining circuit.
21 Inc has raised $116m in funding till date and recently announced its first product, the 21 Bitcoin Computer, the first computer with native hardware and software support for the Bitcoin protocol.
