Bitcoin Gold Shows Progress: Implements Replay Protection and Unique Address Format

10/29/2017 - 22:54 UTC
Bitcoin Gold GitHub Code Shows Progress: Implements Replay Protection and Unique Address Format

Despite various articles suggesting otherwise and the recent DDoS attack, the new Bitcoin Gold (BTG) cryptocurrency project seems to be making visible progress. The code is already live in GitHub and development is ongoing. To communicate its progress, the team has begun publishing a semi-daily "dev update" series of blog posts in Bitcoin Gold's website. 

A recap so far: Last week, on October 24, JustCryptoNews.com reported that the new Bitcoin hard fork had essentially taken place at block height 491,407 when BTG devs took a snapshot of the legacy bitcoin chain, and it is only a matter of time before the new blockchain goes live. Furthermore, the team has released a roadmap which describes the various changes and project's the way forward. In that roadmap, among other changes, the devs also describe the difficulty algorithm, DigiShield, which Bitcoin Gold will adopt.

After some days of silence, due to hard work apparently, the BTG team chose to start a "development archives" series of posts in the official Bitcoin Gold website. They decided to do this as "a  way for everyone to stay up to date with all the important development progress that is taking place." The team says these updates "may not happen every day," but they will aim for at least three to four updates per week. At the moment, there are two posts published.

Replay protection in Bitcoin Gold

The team announced that they have now two competing implementations for replay protection. The first pull request came from their developers. According to them,  "it is sufficient to keep all transactions safe from replay attacks." Thus, that pull request is likely to be merged in the upcoming days.

In addition to that pull request, the team received another pull request from an anonymous contributor for a different implementation of replay protection. Although there is already a pull request for replay protection, the team decided to award the anonymous contributor a bounty "because the code meets the requirements originally described in the bounty.""

Bitcoin Gold devs: We are working hard to provide stable and secure solution for everyone, to support all the mining pools, the wallet providers, and the exchanges

Unique Address Format

The team has also announced that Bitcoin Gold addresses will start with the letters G and A "to clearly distinguish from Bitcoin addresses, which start with 1 and 3".

This change, the devs hope,  "will prevent people from mistakenly sending coins on the wrong side of the fork."

Moreover, the unique address format will serve as a safety feature for wallets supporting BTG, so that people cannot mistakenly send money to incorrect addresses.

The pull request was going to be merged on October 27.

BTG team: We are working hard

Furthermore, the Bitcoin Gold team reassures everyone they are working hard for the success of Bitcoin Gold. They defend themselves against some "hate articles" about their project published recently and promise to do their best "to provide the stable and secure solution for everyone, to support all the mining pools, the wallet providers, and the exchanges."

Disclaimer: This article should not be taken as, and is not intended to provide, investment advice on Bitcoin, Cryptocurrencies or finance in general.