Block, the financial services and technology company owned by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, has completed the prototype design of its new five-nanometre (5nm) Bitcoin mining chip. The San Francisco-based company claims that the chip is key to decentralizing the supply of Bitcoin mining rigs, which is currently concentrated in the hands of a few companies.

Block plans to make Bitcoin mining technology open source by selling standalone ASICs and other hardware components to optimize innovation and maximize the size of the Bitcoin mining hardware ecosystem. The company has purchased a large batch of ASIC chips from Intel to fast-track the development of its proprietary 3nm chip, which it claims will be the most advanced chip to date.