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It's been over 12 years since first development, and 6 years since anyone has dusted off the codebase for this legacy Bitcoin project. But its finally back, thanks to a new Bitcoin hub on the Western Coast of the USA called "localhost research."

Dubbed the "Fast Internet Bitcoin Relay Engine (FIBRE)," it helps address Bitcoin's thorny mining centralization tendencies on the protocol level, by offering a method for miners to relay blocks as quickly as possible across the Bitcoin network. The project was first developed in 2014 by OG Bitcoin developer Matt Corallo, before being abandoned in 2020 due to maintenance constraints.

More technically speaking, FIBRE was designed to improve how bitcoin blocks are produced and distributed, plus reduce some toxic behavior incentives for bitcoin miners.

Now it’s back, operated by localhost, and has some modest upgrades.

First, some Bitcoin 101.

In “vanilla” Bitcoin, when a mining node finds a block, it sends that block to the nodes it’s connected to which then sends the block to the nodes they’re connected to, and so-on. Another mining node sees that block and starts mining on top of it.

But that’s often slow. And with blocks worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, there's a solid recipe for shenanigans: information dislocations, arbitrage, and possibly toxic behavior.

One of these toxic behaviors is “selfish mining:" where a miner uses that time delta to mine on their own blocks. When you have large mining pools, this can create an unfair advantage and more centralization pressure. Selfish mining can lead to a list of issues, including censorship of transactions.

-CMH

Bitcoin miner MARA (NASDAQ: MARA) closed its $168 million acquisition of French state-owned energy subsidiary Exaion, the first significant AI/HPC deal for the Bitcoin miner.

The acquisition is an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $107.3 million based on Nakamoto’s February 13 closing price of $0.2951. Under the terms, Nakamoto will issue approximately 363.6 million shares to security holders of the two target companies.

The Bitcoin network’s mining difficulty increased 14.7% Thursday, reversing recent margin relief for Bitcoin miners. The upward adjustment forces operators to consume 14% more electricity to mine the exact same amount of Bitcoin. Hashprice, a measurement of how much revenue Bitcoin miners make, is now below $30 / PH / day, according to Hashrate Index.

The designation allows the organization to accept tax-deductible charitable contributions to fund open-source privacy protocols. The foundation maintains a dedicated budget to recruit talent directly for deep technical work. This strategy bypasses the delays of external grant processes the organization termed “Bitcoin Grant Purgatory.”

Harvard Management Company reported a reduction in its holdings of the iShares Bitcoin Trust (NASDAQ: IBIT) while simultaneously establishing a new position in BlackRock’s Ethereum-based fund.