First Cash, now Gold? Another Hard Fork from Bitcoin is on the way

There could be as many as four cryptocurrencies by the name of Bitcoin if a small group of miners and developers carries out a planned fork of Blockchain this month.

Designed as a kind of rebellion, Bitcoin Gold seeks to follow a launch plan similar to Bitcoin Cash, the blockchain that separated from Bitcoin this summer by means of a "Hard Fork".

The idea of ​​the project is to launch an improved protocol, one that will challenge Bitcoin Cash in particular. Now we are starting to know more details about this project.

Led by Jack Liao, CEO of Hong Kong's LightningASIC Mining Firm, Bitcoin Gold is set to launch on October 25. Your cryptocurrency will be available at the exchanges on November 1st.

However, although there are only a few clues about the event, the debate about the importance of the project has already begun. Since Bitcoin Cash finally produced a smaller Bitcoin network, not to mention a cryptocurrency that was worth about 12 percent what bitcoin at the close of this publication, most seem to see the plan as another distraction in an already divided community.

On the one hand, it seems that Bitcoin Gold could be even smaller than Bitcoin Cash, at least if we consider that not many miners seem to support it.

In statements, BTC.Top founder Jiang Zhuoer and ViaBTC vice president Haipo Yang, two of Bitcoin Cash's early promoters, even dared to downplay Bitcoin Gold as insignificant.

Decentralized again

But while specialists may be skeptical of Bitcoin Gold, this cryptocurrency has an objective that many in the community may find attractive: the creation of a truly decentralized Bitcoin.

Most notable is that the developers behind the network expect to open up mining to more participants, replacing Bitcoin's mining algorithm with one that allows mining with video cards. The idea is to take away the leading miners, who are sometimes controversial figures in the network.

"Bitcoin gold will implement a Bitcoin SHA256" work test "change to Equihash, a memory-oriented algorithm that is ASIC-resistant and optimized for GPU mining," said Bitcoin Gold developer whose pseudonym is "The Sorrow."

The fact that the plan was born in China, which has long been the hub of Bitcoin mining, adds only more interest to history. Liao, whose mining hardware focuses heavily on the Litecoin network, is seen as one of the few internal voices that can challenge the established order.

However, Liao hastened to name a particular mining company, Bitmain, as the reason why more Bitcoin users should support the idea. This is a mining company that has been at the center of the Bitcoin drama for the past year and critics have argued that it has too much influence on the network.

However, the creation of a network that becomes so popular as to eliminate miners is easier to announce than to perform, and some are skeptical that this will produce the result that the defenders of Bitcoin Gold want.

"GPU mining can not avoid centralization. [The markets] GPUs are controlled by Nvidia and AMD, "said Zhao Dong, a cryptocurencies operator and investor, in response to the plan.

Liao, however, argued that the accessibility of the products of these companies meant that the distribution of the hashing capacity could evolve differently.

Unknown aspects of Bitcoin Gold

However, even the project leaders admit that many of the details around this Hard Fork are unclear.

Bitcoin Gold developer with the nickname "h4x" said the project "is still evolving" and details such as the exact height of the hard fork block are still under discussion.

According to the original text of the website, Bitcoin Gold was even planning an initial coin offer (ICO) whereby 1 percent of Bitcoin Gold's coins would go to the developer team, but these details have been removed.

There is one aspect of funding that is clear: due to the nature of the split, each Bitcoin user at the moment will have an equal amount of Bitcoin Gold associated with their private key.

"It's a minimalist fork of the Bitcoin Core code base that follows Litecoin's spirit, with only a few conservative modifications," said h4x.

H4x then described Bitcoin Gold in more abstract biological terms, arguing that this proves how hard forks work and whether they benefit the ecosystem.

He said…

"Organisms derive benefits from the creation of their offspring. With Bitcoin Gold we are conducting an experiment to see if that principle is valid in the world of blockchains. "

This idea largely coincides with the forecasts of the developers, who have predicted that there will be more Bitcoin forks similar to Bitcoin Cash in the future.

After Bitcoin Cash made its fork earlier this summer, for example, Lightning Network developer Tadge Dryja argued that more forks would emerge, but for another reason: money.

With work going on for Bitcoin Gold and another Hard Fork planned for November, it seems that the prediction is slowly becoming reality.

Source: CoinDesk