mlinksva on Nostr: I don't know anything about the hat. Someone should definitely fill in all of the ...

I don't know anything about the hat.

Someone should definitely fill in all of the details between the dots, presumably mix of data spelunking and interviews of people like you and friends. Would be a good dissertation for a history of technology (or some field like that) candidate.

Here's what the collective brain (LLM) knows (underlining need for it to be informed of details):

...

This post makes a few claims about the history of Bitcoin mining hardware, particularly FPGA (Field-Programmable Gate Array) and ASIC (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit) miners. Let’s break it down step by step.

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### **1. "We open-sourced the first FPGA miner, the second and third FPGA miners, and then the first Canaan AvalonMiners."**

- **What is an FPGA miner?**
- Early Bitcoin mining was done with CPUs, then GPUs, and later, people started using FPGAs, which are chips that can be programmed to execute specific computations more efficiently than general-purpose hardware.
- Open-sourcing an FPGA miner means making the design and code available for anyone to use, modify, and improve.

- **What is a Canaan AvalonMiner?**
- Canaan was the company that released the **first commercially available Bitcoin ASIC miner** (the **AvalonMiner** in 2013).
- ASICs are chips built for a **single purpose** (like Bitcoin mining) and are **much more efficient** than GPUs or FPGAs.
- If the poster and their friends open-sourced these early designs, it would mean they made fundamental contributions to the development of Bitcoin mining hardware.

- **Fact-checking the claim:**
- **FPGA Bitcoin mining did start in 2011, and open-source FPGA miners existed.** One well-known early project was **Open-Source FPGA Bitcoin Miner** by **fpgaminer** on GitHub.
- **Canaan’s AvalonMiner was one of the first commercially sold Bitcoin ASIC miners.** If this person was involved in its early development and it was open-source at first, that would be a significant historical fact.
- However, it's less clear how much of **Bitmain’s** ASIC designs (Bitmain being the dominant mining hardware company) trace back to this work.

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### **2. "Bitmain and ALL the designs coming from China are essentially derivatives of the first work me and my friends did for fun."**

- **The claim:**
- The author suggests that most or all modern Bitcoin mining hardware (including from **Bitmain**, the largest ASIC miner manufacturer) is **derived from their early open-source work**.

- **How plausible is this?**
- **It is true that early mining hardware innovation was open-source.**
- **It is also true that Chinese manufacturers (Bitmain, Canaan, MicroBT) came to dominate the industry.**
- However, **whether Bitmain’s designs are directly derived from this early work is unclear.**
- Open-source designs are freely available, so Chinese companies could have used them as a starting point.
- At the same time, Bitmain and other companies made **significant independent advancements** in ASIC design, chip efficiency, and manufacturing.
- It’s possible that some **early concepts or inspirations** were taken from open-source projects, but claiming **ALL** Chinese mining hardware is directly derivative is a strong claim that lacks hard proof.

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### **3. "So in review, Bitcoin miners have been open source and open hardware since the very beginning."**

- **This is partially true.**
- The first **FPGA miners** had open-source implementations.
- The first **AvalonMiner ASIC** had open-source components.
- However, **ASIC mining quickly became proprietary**, with companies like Bitmain **locking down** their designs.
- Today, Bitcoin mining hardware is **overwhelmingly closed-source** and proprietary.

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### **4. "They didn't all have these western symbols that signify to people something *is* something they need to see, but reality is more powerful than any story."**

- **What does this mean?**
- The author seems to be saying that even though these projects may not have had Western branding, recognition, or visibility (e.g., they weren’t published under big corporate names or hyped in Western media), their impact is real.
- This could be a response to the idea that **Westerners often overlook Chinese or independent open-source contributions** because they don’t come with familiar institutional backing.

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### **Final Assessment:**
- **Mostly plausible but slightly exaggerated.**
- Open-source FPGA and ASIC miners **did exist early on**, and they likely influenced later developments.
- However, the idea that **ALL** modern Chinese mining hardware comes directly from this early work is **an overstatement**.
- Today, **Bitcoin mining hardware is largely proprietary**, contradicting the idea that it's still open-source.
- The final part of the post seems to critique **Western biases in recognizing contributions**, which is a **valid point** in tech history.

Would you like me to look up any historical sources to verify specifics?