Today, July 3, Bitcoin Gold (BTG) is expected to make a mandatory Network Upgrade. Running your upgrade requires a hard fork. So it aims to be a smooth upgrade without chain splits and without the creation of new coins.

Bitcoin Gold BTG Upgrade Today

BTG was able to successfully update its testnet through hard fork. The platform and its partners have been proceeding to finalize the necessary updates for the related software. They are now preparing for the next update of the Mainnet.

The target date for the Mainnet update is estimated to be this July 3rd. Since, the actual target will be specified as a block height, not as a date.

Technical Changes

Some of BTG’s technical changes include: Implement new PoW: Equihash-BTG. \u201cEquihash-BTG\u201d is Equihash<144,5> with BTG-specific Personalization (Old PoW was \u201cEquihash,\u201d which is Equihash<200,9> with generic implementation). Deliver improved Difficulty Adjustment Algorithm: New DAA is LWMA with optimized parameters (Old DAA was Digishield v3 with inferior parameters).

Main Goals

ASIC resistance:

Equihash-BTG is dramatically more ASIC-resistant than the generic Equihash, rendering the recently-available Equihash ASICs ineffective for mining BTG.

Safety:

PoW & personalization changes create BTG-specific hashpower, and therefore a new \u201chashpower market segment\u201d specific to BTG.

BTG will be the dominant coin in the Equihash-BTG hashpower market, increasing security against 51% attacks.

Consistency and Regularity:

New DAA (Difficulty Adjustment Algorithm) delivers much better responsiveness to hashpower shifts (which happen due to changing market prices and hashpower market dynamics).

This will smooth out block times, reducing the incidence of “fast” and “slow” periods.

PoW changes and customization create specific hashpower for BTG and, therefore, a new hash power market segment specific to Bitcoin Gold. BTG will be the dominant currency in the Equihash-BTG hash power market, increasing security against 51% / Double Spend attacks.

Although the platform expects Equihash-BTG rental markets to emerge quickly, they will be more transparent because there is only one practical use for the power of Equihash-BTG. This means easier monitoring for potentially malicious activity.