1 Level
8 Review
7 Karma
Review on Bitcoin Gold by Akash Sarker
Cryptocurrency forks are nothing new, in fact it seems we get a new one almost…
Cryptocurrency forks are nothing new, in fact it seems we get a new one almost weekly these
days.
Even Bitcoin is expecting to see several forks in 2018, and these come after the several
forks already completed last year. One of the more controversial of these forks was the
October Bitcoin Gold fork.
The Bitcoin Gold fork from the original Bitcoin blockchain took place on October 24, 2017
at block height 491407. There are any number of reasons for cryptocurrencies to experience
a hard fork, including improvements to the code, differences among developers, or changing
goals. In the case of Bitcoin Gold, the stated purpose for the fork was to “Make Bitcoin
decentralized again.”
This seems a bit redundant on the surface. Isn’t Bitcoin already decentralized? It doesn’t
have links to any government, central bank, or any specific country. It is a global
currency, and is controlled by the community.
While all that is true, the developers of Bitcoin Gold weren’t concerned with the question
of central issuance of Bitcoin. Rather they worried about the mining process and the rise
of large ASIC mining operations, who were increasingly controlling the hash power of the
Bitcoin network.
Bitcoin Gold’s developers proposed the fork in order to move to the Equihash consensus
algorithm, and make Bitcoin Gold ASIC resistant, thereby putting the mining hash power back
in the hands of individuals to a large extent.
Pros
- More decentralized die to the use of the Equihash algorithm which is memory intensive meaning that it cannot be ASIC mined and requires a GPU
Cons
- The need and support of this hard fork is still very debatable and it remains to be seen if the developers will manage to fulfill their promises and vision, and if BTG will gather community support.
