Bitcoin Gold

Last updated
Bitcoin Gold
Logo-Bitcoin-Gold-RGB-300x100.png
Denominations
CodeBTG
Precision10−8
Subunits
11000millibitcoin
1100000000satoshi [1]
Development
Initial release0.15.0.1 / 12 November 2017(6 years ago) (2017-11-12)
Latest release 0.17.3 / 3 August 2020(4 years ago) (2020-08-03)
Code repository github.com/BTCGPU/BTCGPU
Development statusActive
Project fork of Bitcoin
Written in C++, Qt
Operating system Windows, OS X, Linux
Source model Open source
License MIT License
Ledger
Ledger start3 January 2009(15 years ago) (2009-01-03)
Split from Bitcoin
Timestamping scheme Proof-of-work
Hash function Equihash
Block reward3.125 BTG, halved April 24, 2024, at block no. 840 000. Will halve again at block no. 1 050 000 (~spring of 2028). [2]
Block time10 minutes
Block explorer BitcoinGold Explorer
Supply limit21,000,000 BTG
Website
Website btgofficial.org

Bitcoin Gold (BTG) is a cryptocurrency which was created as a hard fork of bitcoin.

Contents

The stated purpose of the hard fork is to enabling mining on commonly available graphics cards which would democratize and decentralize the mining and distribution of the cryptocurrency. The cryptocurrency has been hit by two 51% hashing attacks, once in 2018 and once in 2020.

History

The project began as a community-driven effort with six co-founders, including lead developer Hang Yin. [3] [ non-primary source needed ] The stated purpose of the hard fork is to change the proof of work algorithm so that ASICs (Application-Specific Integrated Circuits) which are used to mine bitcoin cannot be used to mine the Bitcoin Gold blockchain in the hopes that enabling mining on commonly available graphics cards will democratize and decentralize the mining and distribution of the cryptocurrency.[ citation needed ]

Bitcoin Gold hard forked from the bitcoin blockchain on October 24, 2017. [4]

In July 2018, Bitcoin Gold implemented a new mining algorithm which based on one which had previously been developed by Zcash. This new algorithm is called Equihash-BTG. The new algorithm requires more memory than the one that was originally developed by Zcash. [5] [ non-primary source needed ]

Network attacks

Soon after the launch, the website came under a distributed denial of service attack, and received criticism from Coinbase and Bittrex for being hastily put together, as well as including a developer pre-mine. [6] [7]

In May 2018, Bitcoin Gold was hit by a 51% hashing attack by an unknown actor. This type of attack makes it possible to manipulate the blockchain ledger on which transactions are recorded, and to spend the same digital coins more than once. [8] During the attack, 388,000 BTG (worth approximately US$18 million) was stolen from several cryptocurrency exchanges. Bitcoin Gold was later delisted from Bittrex, after the team refused to help pay some damages. [9]

Bitcoin Gold suffered from 51% attacks again in January 2020. [10] In July 2020, the version 0.17.2 was released as an “emergency update” in order to elude a long attack chain originated a few days before. [11]

Related Research Articles

Proof of work (PoW) is a form of cryptographic proof in which one party proves to others that a certain amount of a specific computational effort has been expended. Verifiers can subsequently confirm this expenditure with minimal effort on their part. The concept was first implemented in Hashcash by Moni Naor and Cynthia Dwork in 1993 as a way to deter denial-of-service attacks and other service abuses such as spam on a network by requiring some work from a service requester, usually meaning processing time by a computer. The term "proof of work" was first coined and formalized in a 1999 paper by Markus Jakobsson and Ari Juels. The concept was adapted to digital tokens by Hal Finney in 2004 through the idea of "reusable proof of work" using the 160-bit secure hash algorithm 1 (SHA-1).

Double-spending is the unauthorized production and spending of money, either digital or conventional. It represents a monetary design problem: a good money is verifiably scarce, and where a unit of value can be spent more than once, the monetary property of scarcity is challenged. As with counterfeit money, such double-spending leads to inflation by creating a new amount of copied currency that did not previously exist. Like all increasingly abundant resources, this devalues the currency relative to other monetary units or goods and diminishes user trust as well as the circulation and retention of the currency.

Namecoin is a cryptocurrency originally forked from bitcoin software. It uses proof-of-work algorithm. Like bitcoin, it is limited to 21 million coins.

Litecoin is a decentralized peer-to-peer cryptocurrency and open-source software project released under the MIT/X11 license. Inspired by Bitcoin, Litecoin was among the earliest altcoins, starting in October 2011. In technical details, the Litecoin main chain shares a slightly modified Bitcoin codebase. The practical effects of those codebase differences are lower transaction fees, faster transaction confirmations, and faster mining difficulty retargeting. Due to its underlying similarities to Bitcoin, Litecoin has historically been referred to as the "silver to Bitcoin's gold." In 2022, Litecoin added optional privacy features via soft fork through the MWEB upgrade.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bitcoin protocol</span> Rules that govern the functioning of Bitcoin

The bitcoin protocol is the set of rules that govern the functioning of bitcoin. Its key components and principles are: a peer-to-peer decentralized network with no central oversight; the blockchain technology, a public ledger that records all bitcoin transactions; mining and proof of work, the process to create new bitcoins and verify transactions; and cryptographic security.

Zerocoin is a privacy protocol proposed in 2013 by Johns Hopkins University professor Matthew D. Green and his graduate students, Ian Miers and Christina Garman. It was designed as an extension to the Bitcoin protocol that would improve Bitcoin transactions' anonymity by having coin-mixing capabilities natively built into the protocol. Zerocoin is not currently compatible with Bitcoin.

Vertcoin is an open-source cryptocurrency created in early 2014, that focuses on decentralization. Vertcoin uses a proof-of-work mechanism to issue new coins and incentivize miners to secure the network and validate transactions. Vertcoin is designed to be mined via graphics cards instead of through ASICs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dash (cryptocurrency)</span> Cryptocurrency

Dash is an open source cryptocurrency. It is an altcoin that was forked from the Bitcoin protocol. It is also a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) run by a subset of its users. It was previously known as Xcoin and Darkcoin.

A blockchain is a distributed ledger with growing lists of records (blocks) that are securely linked together via cryptographic hashes. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a timestamp, and transaction data. Since each block contains information about the previous block, they effectively form a chain, with each additional block linking to the ones before it. Consequently, blockchain transactions are irreversible in that, once they are recorded, the data in any given block cannot be altered retroactively without altering all subsequent blocks.

Monero is a cryptocurrency which uses a blockchain with privacy-enhancing technologies to obfuscate transactions to achieve anonymity and fungibility. Observers cannot decipher addresses trading Monero, transaction amounts, address balances, or transaction histories.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ethereum Classic</span> Blockchain computing platform

Ethereum Classic is a blockchain-based distributed computing platform that offers smart contract (scripting) functionality. It is open source and supports a modified version of Nakamoto consensus via transaction-based state transitions executed on a public Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zcash</span> Cryptocurrency aimed at privacy

Zcash is a privacy-focused cryptocurrency which is based on Bitcoin's codebase. It shares many similarities, such as a fixed total supply of 21 million units.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Firo (cryptocurrency)</span> Cryptocurrency

Firo, formerly known as Zcoin, is a cryptocurrency aimed at using cryptography to provide better privacy for its users compared to other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bitcoin Cash</span> Cryptocurrency that is a fork of bitcoin

Bitcoin Cash is a cryptocurrency that is a fork of bitcoin. Launched in 2017, Bitcoin Cash is considered an altcoin or spin-off of bitcoin. In November 2018, Bitcoin Cash further split into two separate cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Verge (cryptocurrency)</span> Cryptocurrency

Verge Currency is a decentralized open-source cryptocurrency which offers various levels of private transactions. It does this by obfuscating the IP addresses of users with Tor and by leveraging stealth transactions making it difficult to determine the geolocation of its users.

Cryptocurrency and crime describe notable examples of cybercrime related to theft of cryptocurrencies and some methods or security vulnerabilities commonly exploited. Cryptojacking is a form of cybercrime specific to cryptocurrencies that have been used on websites to hijack a victim's resources and use them for hashing and mining cryptocurrency.

Equihash is a memory-hard Proof-of-work algorithm introduced by the University of Luxembourg's Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT) at the 2016 Network and Distributed System Security Symposium. The algorithm is based on a generalization of the Birthday problem which finds colliding hash values. It has severe time-space trade-offs but concedes vulnerability to unforeseen parallel optimizations. It was designed such that parallel implementations are bottle-necked by memory bandwidth in an attempt to worsen the cost-performance trade-offs of designing custom ASIC implementations. ASIC resistance in Equihash is based on the assumption that commercially-sold hardware already has quite high memory bandwidth, so improvements made by custom hardware may not be worth the development cost.

Cryptojacking is the act of exploiting a computer to mine cryptocurrencies, often through websites, against the user's will or while the user is unaware. One notable piece of software used for cryptojacking was Coinhive, which was used in over two-thirds of cryptojacks before its March 2019 shutdown. The cryptocurrencies mined the most often are privacy coins—coins with hidden transaction histories—such as Monero and Zcash.

Nervos Network is a proof-of-work blockchain platform which consists of multiple blockchain layers that are designed for different functions. The native cryptocurrency of this layer is called CKB. Smart contracts and decentralized applications can be deployed on the Nervos blockchain. The Nervos Network was founded in 2018.

References

  1. Mick, Jason (12 June 2011). "Cracking the Bitcoin: Digging Into a $131M USD Virtual Currency". Daily Tech. Archived from the original on 20 January 2013. Retrieved 30 September 2012.
  2. "BTG Halving Countdown | Bitcoin Gold". Bitcoin Gold. Archived from the original on 26 April 2020. Retrieved 2 May 2020.
  3. "Our Team". BitcoinGold. Archived from the original on 5 March 2021. Retrieved 18 February 2021.
  4. Osborne, Charlie. "New, imminent Bitcoin Gold fork met with skepticism". ZDNet. Archived from the original on 2017-10-24. Retrieved 2019-01-16.
  5. Iskra, Edward. "Equihash-BTG: Our New PoW Algorithm". Bitcoin Gold. Archived from the original on 20 June 2019. Retrieved 21 June 2019.
  6. Schroeder, Stan (24 October 2017). "Bitcoin splits into two again, but owners don't get free money just yet". Mashable. Archived from the original on 2017-10-24. Retrieved 2019-01-16.
  7. "Meet Bitcoin Gold, Yet Another New Kind of Bitcoin". Fortune. Archived from the original on 2017-10-25. Retrieved 2019-01-16.
  8. "Bitcoin Spinoff Hacked in Rare '51% Attack'". Fortune. Archived from the original on 2019-01-16. Retrieved 2019-01-16.
  9. Cimpanu, Catalin. "Bitcoin Gold delisted from major cryptocurrency exchange after refusing to pay hack damages". ZDNet. Archived from the original on 2022-05-24. Retrieved 2019-01-16.
  10. Canellis, David (January 27, 2020). "Bitcoin Gold hit by 51% attacks, $72K in cryptocurrency double-spent". The Next Web. Archived from the original on January 27, 2020. Retrieved February 27, 2020.
  11. "Emergency update 0.17.2". Bitcoin Gold. Archived from the original on 13 July 2020. Retrieved 4 Sep 2020.