Bitmain publishes policies, pledges to ‘fair and transparent cryptocurrency ecosystem’

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Bitmain is fighting back against those who have taken advantage of the ‘communications gap’ between those in China and the West.

Throughout the year, Bitmain has been taking a more active role in discussions in the cryptocurrency community. In their effort to further build trust, they have published a list of policies yesterday, which they vow to uphold.

“As many of you have no doubt noticed, Bitmain has started to explore policies and behaviors that aim to increase transparency and foster greater dialoguebetween us and the cryptocurrency communities at large,” Bitmain wrote on their blog. “To put it plainly, we believe that communities served by Bitmain and its products should be supported and served as transparently as possible.”

“Our intent is to both reflect and reinforce the philosophies that brought all of us here in the first place. We look forward to continuing the dialogue.”

According to Bitmain, they have previously restricted order quantities, as well as blocked IPs that they suspect to be hoarding their hardware. They’ve also streamlined their processes to ensure that shipments are prioritized based on who paid first, and that customers can easily see updates on their orders.

Now, the mining hardware behemoth is pledging its commitment to additional efforts to ensure a “fair and transparent cryptocurrency system.” Among their pledges are as follows:

1. Bitmain will regularly publish any algorithms they are mining themselves, and the total hashrate they hold.
2. Bitmain will maintain their zero-tolerance policy against self-mining—a practice wherein an ASIC manufacturer mines using newly built hardware before it is released to the market in order to gain an unfair advantage.
3. Bitmain will never intentionally mine “empty blocks,” and will investigate in case there is an “unusual or excessive rate.” They also pledge to disclose any findings they may have.
4. The company will disclose full shipping and volume information every time a first model for a new miner is launched to the public through the Antminer Twitter account.

By improving their communications with the community, Bitmain CEO Jihan Wu hopes to dispel malicious accusations that have been rampant in the cryptocurrency space and have turned users unreasonably suspicious of Wu and Bitmain. In a forum linked in the release, this problem was pointed out.

“Jihan said that they are in China and there is a large communication gap between them and the West, so that they don’t know how to communicate to Westerners. I agreed that this communications gap is a major reality, since that I have the reciprocal problem: I don’t know how to communicate to people in China,” user Zooko wrote on the ZCash forum.

“Jihan said that a specific group had taken advantage of this communication gap to spread a lot of lies and conspiracy theories about Bitmain (note: by telling you what he said in our conversation, I’m not endorsing it. I’m just telling you what he said), and Bitmain didn’t know how to counteract those lies over the communications gap, so they had adopted a policy of just not engaging, being quiet and just releasing their products without saying anything.”