Bitcoin Gold Sees Two Deep Blockchain Reorgs With 29 Blocks Replaced
In May 2018, the Bitcoin Gold (BTG) blockchain was 51% attacked for the first time suffering a loss of more than $18 million. BTG is a fork of the Bitcoin protocol but it doesn’t use the SHA256 consensus algorithm like BTC, BCH, or BSV. The blockchain BTG utilizes a variant of the Equihash algorithm (Equihash 144, 5 or “Zhash”) which can be mined with a GPU. Bitcoin Gold’s creators believed that creating a Bitcoin fork that could be mined with GPUs as opposed to ASIC devices would be more decentralized. However, things went south in the spring of 2018 when a miner gained control of more than 51% of the overall BTG hashrate. After losing $18 million, BTG was also asked to pay the exchange Bittrex back or face being delisted. Since then BTG has been meandering along while other small coins like ethereum classic and vertcoin were 51% attacked too.

The Github gist that explains the recent Bitcoin Gold 51% attack on Thursday and Friday.

Last week on Thursday and Friday, BTG again dealt with a malicious mining entity as more than 51% of the chain’s hashrate was captured and still is. The blockchain suffered from two deep reorgs on both days that saw $19,000 double spent on Thursday and $53,000 double spent on Friday. For instance, at approximately 1:01 p.m. on Thursday, BTG’s chain saw 14 blocks removed and 13 new blocks added. At 7:24 p.m. on Friday, the blockchain saw 15 blocks removed and 16 blocks added during a small period of time. Most of the blame has been directed at the cloud mining operation Nicehash which has been blamed for most of the 51% attacks in the last two years. Some BTG members believe that there are secret ASICs mining the BTG network and community members are begging for a safer algorithm.

“I think it’s time we get a real leader that listens to the members of this community and take action,” one BTG proponent wrote on Reddit. “It is obvious that the first 51% attack was done by ASICs — Why can’t BTG be novel and create a truly new [algorithm]? This coin is a bad investment for anyone looking to buy — None of the devs are qualified.”

Sourced through Scoop.it from: news.bitcoin.com