DIGITAL CURRENCY MINING CIRCUITRY

• US 20150294308A1
• Filed: 04/14/2014
• Published: 10/15/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 04/14/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Coinbase, Inc.
• Original Assignee: 21 Inc.
• Inventors: Pauker, Matthew, Drego, Nigel, Kheterpal, Veerbhan, Firu, Daniel
• Granted Patent: US 11,270,298 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/02 involving a neutral party, e.g. certification authority, notary or trusted third party [TTP]
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/0655 e-cash managed centrally
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/3674 involving authentication
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/3678 e-cash details, e.g. blinded, divisible or detecting double spending
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/3827 Use of message hashing
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/3829 involving key management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/401 Transaction verification
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 2220/00 Business processing using cryptography postage metering system using cryptography G06Q2250/05
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2209/56 Financial cryptography, e.g. electronic payment or e-cash
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/3242 involving keyed hash functions, e.g. message authentication codes [MACs], CBC-MAC or HMAC

Abstract

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. The mining circuitry may partition the mined reward between a first digital wallet and a second digital wallet. The first digital wallet may be user-provided, whereas the second digital wallet may be hardcoded into the dedicated mining circuitry. The mining circuitry may include control circuitry and multiple processing core circuits. The control circuitry may control the processing cores to solve the cryptographic puzzle via exhaustive search over possible inputs to the cryptographic puzzle.

Claims

1. A method of verifying digital currency transactions using mining circuitry in a system in which rewards are provided for verifying digital currency transactions and wherein the rewards are maintained in digital currency wallets, the method comprising:

with the mining circuitry, receiving information on a transaction to be verified and information identifying a user wallet; and

with the mining circuitry, generating an additional transaction in which the reward is divided between the user wallet and a profit-sharing wallet.

2. The method defined in claim 1 further comprising:

with the mining circuitry, generating information that verifies the transaction and the additional transaction.

3. The method defined in claim 2 further comprising:

with the mining circuitry, receiving block header information, wherein generating the information that verifies the transactions and the additional transaction comprises;

generating a block header that satisfies a cryptographic puzzle based on the information on the transaction, the block header information, and the additional transaction.

4. The method defined in claim 3 wherein the mining circuitry forms part of a node in a network of nodes that maintains a global chain of blocks in which verified transactions are recorded and wherein the block header information includes information identifying a previous block of the global chain.

5. The method defined in claim 3 wherein, the mining circuitry comprises control circuitry and a plurality of core circuits and wherein generating the block header that satisfies the cryptographic puzzle comprises:

with the control circuitry, partitioning a search space of possible block headers into a plurality of search space portions;

with the control circuitry, assigning each of the search space portions to a respective core circuit; and

with each core circuit, computing hash values of the possible block headers of the search space portion assigned to that core circuit to identify the block header that satisfies the cryptographic puzzle.

6. The method defined in claim 3 wherein each of the possible block headers comprises a first block header portion that is constant across the possible block headers and a second block header portion that is different from other possible block headers, the method further comprising:

with the control circuitry, calculating a first stage of a Secure Hashing Algorithm function on the first block header portion to produce a first stage hash value; and

with the control circuitry, providing the first stage hash value to each of the core circuits, wherein each core circuit calculates a second stage of the Secure Hashing Algorithm function based on the first stage hash value and the second block header portion to compute the hash values of the possible block headers of the search space portion assigned to that core circuit.

7. An integrated circuit, comprising;

mining circuitry that mines digital currency by completing a function according to a digital currency protocol, wherein the mining circuitry receives information identifying a first digital wallet in which to store the mined digital currency and wherein the mining circuitry partitions the mined digital currency between the first digital wallet and a second digital wallet, wherein information identifying the second digital wallet is hardcoded into the mining circuitry.

8. The integrated circuit defined in claim 7 wherein the function comprises a cryptographic puzzle and wherein the mining circuitry comprises:

a plurality of processing cores; and

control circuitry that controls the plurality of processing cores to mine the digital currency by computing solutions to the cryptographic puzzle.

9. The integrated circuit defined in claim 8 wherein the first and second digital wallets are associated with respective public-private key pairs, wherein the information identifying the first digital wallet comprises a first public key of the public-private key pair associated with the first digital wallet and wherein a second public key of the public-private key pair associated, with the second, digital wallet is hardcoded at the mining circuitry.

10. The integrated circuit defined in claim 9 wherein the cryptographic puzzle involves identifying an input block of data to a hash function that produces an output satisfying a predetermined condition, wherein the control circuitry partitions a search space of possible input blocks of data into a plurality of search space portions, and wherein the control circuitry assigns each search space portion to a respective processing core.

11. The integrated circuit defined in claim 10 wherein the plurality of processing cores each performs an exhaustive search across the assigned search space portion by calculating a hash value for each possible input block of data across the assigned search space portion and determining whether that hashed, value satisfies the predetermined condition.

12. The integrated circuit defined in claim 11 wherein the control circuitry receives information on a set of transactions, generates a coinbase transaction that assigns a first portion of the mined currency to the first digital wallet, and assigns a second portion of the rained currency to the second digital wallet, and wherein the hash value for each possible input block of data includes information on the set of transactions and the coinbase transaction.

13. The integrated circuit defined in claim 12 wherein the control circuitry generates a Merkle tree root value based on the set of transactions and the coinbase transaction and wherein the Merkle tree root value is included in the input block of data.

14. The integrated circuit defined in claim 13 wherein the information on the set of transactions comprises a Merkle tree edge and wherein the control circuitry generates the Merkle tree root, value from the Merkle tree edge and the coinbase transaction.

15. The integrated circuit defined in claim 7 wherein the digital currency comprises bitcoins and wherein mining the bitcoins comprises verifying transactions of bitcoins by computing the solutions to the cryptographic puzzle with the transactions as input parameters to the cryptographic puzzle.

16. The integrated circuit defined in claim 15 wherein the bitcoins are governed by a digital currency protocol that specifies an amount of new bitcoins to be created for verifying the transactions of bitcoins and wherein the mining circuitry partitions the amount of new bitcoins between the first digital wallet and the second digital wallet that is hardcoded at the mining circuitry.

17. The integrated circuit defined in claim 7 wherein the mining circuitry assigns a predetermined proportion of the amount of new bitcoins to the second digital wallet that is hardcoded at the raining circuitry.

18. The integrated circuit defined in claim 7 wherein the mining circuitry assigns a fixed amount of the new bitcoins to the second digital wallet that is hardcoded at the mining circuitry.

22. The electronic device defined in claim 18 wherein the at least one digital wallet comprises a plurality of digital wallets and wherein the circuitry assigns the portion of the reward to at least a selected one of the plurality of digital wallets.

19. An electronic device that forms a node in a peer-to-peer network of nodes that support transactions in a digital currency, the electronic device comprising:

circuitry that processes transactions of the digital currency, wherein successful processing of the transactions provides a reward of the digital currency, wherein, the circuitry includes dedicated logic that identifies at least one digital wallet, and wherein the circuitry assigns a portion of the reward to the digital wallet.

20. The electronic device defined in claim 19 wherein the circuitry verifies the transactions of the digital currency according to a digital currency protocol in processing the transactions.

21. The electronic device defined in claim 20 wherein the network of nodes operate according to the Bitcoin protocol, wherein the circuitry generates a coinbase transaction that assigns the portion of the reward to the digital wallet and assigns a remaining portion of the reward to a user wallet, and wherein the electronic device records the verified transactions and the coinbase transaction in a global ledger maintained by the network of nodes.

23. A method of verifying transactions in digital currency with mining circuitry, wherein successful verification of the transactions provides a reward of the digital currency, the method comprising:

with the mining circuitry, receiving information identifying an authenticated profit-sharing wallet;

with the mining circuitry, receiving information on a transaction to be verified and information identifying a user wallet; and

with the mining circuitry, generating an additional transaction in which the reward is divided between the user wallet and the profit-sharing wallet.

24. The method defined in claim 23 wherein the mining circuitry is hardcoded with a cryptographic key, the method further comprising:

with the mining circuitry, verifying the profit-sharing wallet with the cryptographic key.

25. The method defined in claim 24 wherein the profit-sharing wallet comprises a public-private key pair, wherein receiving the information identifying the profit-sharing wallet comprises receiving a public key of the public-private key pair and a keyed hash value, and wherein verifying the profit-sharing wallet with the cryptographic key comprises:

calculating a hash of the public key and the cryptographic key; and

comparing the calculated hash to the keyed hash value.