Bitcoin Gold (BTG) is a hard fork separated from Bitcoin’s Blockchain at block 491407 on October 25, 2017. The Bitcoin Gold project was launched with the aim of improving Bitcoin’s technology, changing the way competition for mining rewards of miners participating in the mining process. Bitcoin Gold is the second fork of Bitcoin after Bitcoin Cash on August 1, 2017.
The Bitcoin Gold development team wants to solve mining problems using the Proof-of-work (PoW) algorithm. The PoW chosen by BTG is Equihash – an algorithm used in Zcash’s network, resistant to ASIC. This improvement of BTG will help ordinary CPU and GPU users exploit well, without the need for expensive specialized excavators.
How is Bitcoin Gold different from Bitcoin?
Bitcoin Gold is a fork of Bitcoin, in addition to the basic points similar to Bitcoin, it has some differences:
- Bitcoin Gold uses the Equihash algorithm instead of Bitcoin’s Proof-of-work (PoW), so the BTG coin will be mined primarily by the CPU.
- Bitcoin Gold will protect replays.
- Bitcoin Gold will have a variable difficulty of mining coin per block (This is good for GPU miners).
- Bitcoin Gold has a pre-mine process of about 1% (equivalent to 160,000 BTG) before publicizing the blockchain and the coins will be distributed to the development team. After this distribution is over, the development team will release these BTGs so users can start trading.
Bitcoin Gold technology
Bitcoin Gold uses the repeat protection mechanism SIGHASH_FORK_ID. It implements a new algorithm that calculates the hash function of a transaction and provides two-way repetitive protection. It also invalidates Bitcoin transactions on the Bitcoin Gold blockchain and vice versa.
The Equihash algorithm – a hard-to-remember algorithm that allows the GPU to mine and prevent centralization of monetary value with smaller groups of wealthy investors. This makes currency prices more stable. Bitcoin’s ASIC can no longer be used for Bitcoin Gold.
Bitcoin Gold uses DigiShield V3, a difficulty adjustment algorithm to keep track of the elapsed time between the nearest block and the median of some previous blocks. It maintains a 10-minute interval between blocks to adjust the difficulty.
Features of BTG
Decentralization: PoW algorithm decentralizes mining on the Bitcoin Gold blockchain and restricts the use of some specialized chips to mine. Users can mine BTG with a GPU and make it literally decentralized.
Repeated protection: This protects users from malicious attacks. It prevents duplicate transactions and loses money by making transactions on one chain invalid on other chains.
Protection against major changes: Deviations in the total hash power are prevented by a difficult adjustment algorithm & guard against large changes in hash power.
Unique address format: Bitcoin Gold has changed its address format to avoid confusion with Bitcoin addresses. This prevents the unintended transfer of Bitcoin to a Bitcoin Gold address and consequently loses money.
Team
Jack Liao is the founder of the project. He is the CEO of LightningAsic, the well-known mining equipment company in Hong Kong. Jack had the idea for the project since July 2017 and immediately received much support from the market, as well as many experienced developers involved. However, at the present time, he has left the team and ceded this position to H4x3rotab developer.
Conclusion
Bitcoin has a lot of hard forks and Bitcoin Gold is just one of them. Before BTG launched, many people predicted this currency would affect Bitcoin value. The most distinctive feature of Bitcoin Gold is the expectation of changing the models surrounding mining on the Bitcoin blockchain.
In fact, Bitcoin Gold is a project with good goals, good ideas, and real life. However, the weakness is that the development team is quite vague.
You can check BTG price here.
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