As the upcoming Bitcoin fork edges closer, the Bitcoin Gold project has received a lot of criticism from the crypto community.
The cryptocurrency community has been ardently discussing the upcoming fork, and Bitcoin Gold (BTG) in particular as the fork deadline is scheduled for 25 October. Several users and developers have conducted comprehensive investigations as to Bitcoin Gold’s code and found it lacking in more ways than one.
The flaws pointed out by the community as well as the lack of available information on BTG has led to a fair share of skepticism surrounding the fork. Several users on BTG’s Slack channel have also voiced concern over BTG both in the form of asking the developing team questions, to denouncing BTG as “shady.” Many users have also expressed their astonishment at the severe lack of infrastructure and exchange listing with the fork deadline looming.
One particular user used a reverse Whois background search on the BTG website to found the domain owner. The user’s research revealed that the BTG website owner also owns several other cryptocurrency domains. The same user also discovered that BTG’s algorithm is unfinished and has no added replay attack protection. As for the code itself, it did not show any concrete signs of developing, despite the fork deadline being just one week away. In addition, the code displayed an implemented pre-mine which means that the developers will have a lot of BTG if the project does end up successfully forking.
However, two weeks ago, the developing team responded to accusations and criticisms via an official statement.
According to the BTG accusers and critics simply did not understand the decentralized nature of the bitcoin network, and went on to address several other concerns.
In regard to the lack of replay protection, the BTG team stated that the replay protection code is relatively simple compared to the PoW change. However, the team did not confirm that replay protection will be added before the launch. They also cited the problem of lack of volunteers. So far, the BTG has only had one developer volunteer for the project.
The BTG team addressed the unfinished Equihash implementation by stating the true consensus change is still incomplete. They also noted the change in difficulty which led to the adjustment algorithm to not yet be merged with the code. As to the pre-mine, the team stated that the code came from a fundraising idea earlier this year.
While the BTG team stated that the idea did not fully reflect the vision and spirit of the entire team, they also did not rule out the idea of removing the code either. The team stated that they might keep the code as means of basic funding for the project which is made up of volunteers. However, the team stated that they will make a detailed financial plan available to the public for the sake of transparency.
In addition to the criticism, BTG has also experienced other issue in the form of illegitimate websites claiming to provide users early access to buy BTG. The website “claimBTCGPU” claims that users are able to enter their BTC into the system to pre-claim their BTG, but that users will not be able to spend the BTG yet.
The website also gives detailed instructions, including pictures which illustrate the process. The website claims to be a BTG wallet which gives BTG transactions a priority.
Several members of the crypto community have already denounced this website to be a scam via several social media channels.