Intel redefines the essence of Bitcoin and wins praise from the blockchain industry

In addition to a large number of design proposals, the construction of new financial databases requires a lot of peer opinions, testing and time to come up with interesting ideas. Such a complex process has not stopped technology giants such as IBM and JPMorgan Chase from moving forward. They are still continuing their research and development work and trying to compete with the purpose and ambition of open source ideas (including Bitcoin and Ethereum). Although these works have received widespread attention, they have rarely received praise in the open source field and among enterprises.

Bucking this trend is Intel, which has won the support of the most erratic experts for its lack of arrogance, and even more so, some say it will redefine the company's Bitcoin technology.

Earlier this year Intel announced a system adjustment that will allow Bitcoin to reflect transaction changes on the website.

Christopher Allen, chief architect at Blockstream, a member of Hyperledger and one of the largest financial backers of bitcoin development, said Intel offers a variety of options and consensus algorithms that will allow users to build a private blockchain to suit their needs.

Allen mentioned that the working group has been discussing how to create the best architecture to support users in choosing from a variety of consistent algorithms.

The main criticism is that participants need to use Intel hardware (such as SGX) to execute code in a protected area that cannot be inspected or tampered with.

This is what is said in theory, blocks filled with transactions will be distributed at certain intervals, and those transactions are correct. It cannot be tampered with because there is encryption.

"PoET uses this special processor capability to throttle block frequency instead of computation," said Dan Middleton, Sawtooth Lake project manager, adding that by using silicon protected areas, the code can execute as designed.

“This is what creates the return to a one-to-one vote,” he continued, echoing an idea invoked by Satoshi Nakamoto’s bitcoin white paper.

However, there are significant differences when compared to PoW. While PoW enables a trustless system, Bishop calls Intel’s approach “trust maximization.”

This is why Bishop and Allen are skeptical that the consensus algorithm can be used on a public algorithm like bitcoin or ethereum.

"It's like giving away the keys to Intel," Bishop said.

Participants said, “We trust Intel not to cause system inflation or otherwise interfere, and we trust Intel to shut down before complying with government orders to disrupt systems using SGX.” But while that’s not enough to reassure decentralization advocates, it’s not stopping Intel’s work from being part of the conference circuit session.

In fact, it's time for the wider market to consider how the technology can be extended, for example, how it can be used in other processors.

In terms of testing the protocol, users don’t necessarily need to purchase a TEE. Middleton added that anyone interested in the protocol can test how the blockchain works over a distributed network.

Allen believes that TEE is proof that PoET is not as mature as PoW or PoS, because the latter are more attractive because they require participation through specific types of computer hardware.

But he agrees that other possibilities could arise if other hardware vendors implement the new algorithm.

"One day we could see a multi-vendor standard for PoET, such as the multi-vendor RISC-V Alliance," he said.

As with all ideas, it will be up to the market to decide. But for now, it seems Intel's work has passed a milestone and is just waiting for a "review panel" to review it.