Intel was courting industrial-scale miners with chip specs topping out at 580 GH/s and power efficiency of around 23 J/TH. Intel pitched the chip as a scalable building block, designed to be chained into 256-unit rigs capable of competing with Bitmain’s Antiminers. But the market moved fast, and Intel abruptly killed Blockscale a year later.

Now, two years after Intel pulled the plug on Blockscale, the chips are set to be repurposed for DIY rigs and open-hardware projects. According to 256 Foundation, the full batch represents roughly 76 PH/s of aggregate hash rate — assuming a conservative 0.3 TH/s per chip at 0.7 volts.

Distribution is limited to four open-source hardware projects in the U.S., each receiving 54,000 chips. The recipients were selected from a small pool of developers who had reached out after the donation was first announced in January.