Topic: Bitcoin Gold to Counter Further 51% Attacks (Read 154 times)

Bitcoin Gold (BTG) has recently become a troubled cryptocurrency as it was marred by numerous attacks over the span of the last couple of months. However, the developers behind the coin are fighting back and have prepared measures to overcome the two main issues: overflow of application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) miners and lacking resistance against hacker attacks.

The fix is a so-called “hard fork”, which has been often used in the crypto sphere already and spawned currencies, such as ethereum classic, bitcoin cash and bitcoin gold itself among others. The network upgrade will come in a form of BTG’s Equihash algorithm update, with the new version dubbed Equihash-BTG. According to the developers, most of the components for the upgrade are ready but still need some additional testing.

Back in October 2017, BTG was created as a result of a hard-fork on the original bitcoin blockchain. The BTG network changed its hash algorithm in a way that ASICs were useless as they were not able to mine it anymore. However, the mining hardware manufacturer Bitmain has since introduced the Antminer Z9 machine, designed specifically to mine virtual currencies built on Equihash proof-of-work algorithm.

The new Equihash-BTG version will require significantly more memory for the ASIC to run, rendering mining in this way “impossibly unprofitable”. A minimum 700MB of RAM and 2.5 GB in storage will be needed to run the updated algorithm.

The BTG team also touched upon the recent security issues claiming that “We’re also working hard on many fronts to improve security, both now and in the future. We’ve developed monitoring systems for our blockchain and our mining network, and have established channels to rapidly communicate risks to Exchanges.“

The hard fork will result in the BTG blockchain being far more resistant from 51% attacks. The developers claim that as soon as the upgrade is implemented and BTG is transferred on its own unique algorithm, the hackers will not be able to target the network.

Bitcoin Gold was targetted by the 51% attack very recently, in late May. It resulted in $18 million worth of BTG tokens stolen and more importantly a tarnished reputation of Bitcoin Gold. Zencash was subject of an analogous attack this week, suffering the loss of over $550,000 worth of ZEN tokens.

The Bitcoin Gold team finished their statement on a positive note, saying that 51% attacks are an inevitable part of the budding industry and developer teams across the crypto world are teaming up to tackle them.

According to the statement, “We can report that the crypto community is coming together and will be supporting each other as we work to get through these difficult times as quickly as possible.”