Network Upgrade: Testnet Today, Mainnet Next

Originally published at: Network Upgrade: Testnet Today, Mainnet Next | Bitcoin Gold

Mandatory Network Upgrade

Bitcoin Gold is in the process of a mandatory Network Upgrade. Executing this upgrade requires a hard fork, but we anticipate a smooth upgrade with no chain splits (and no new coins created.)

We have successfully Upgraded the Testnet via hard fork. Our Partners and we are proceeding to finalize the necessary upgrades to related software and preparing for the upcoming Mainnet upgrade.

Our target date for the Mainnet Upgrade is sometime in the first week of July, depending on feedback from critical Partners in the Ecosystem. The actual target will be specified as a block height, not a date.

Technical Changes:

  • Implement new PoW: Equihash-BTG
  • Deliver improved Difficulty Adjustment Algorithm
    • New DAA is LWMA with optimized parameters
    • (Old DAA was Digishield v3 with inferior parameters)

Goals:

  • ASIC resistance
    • Equihash-BTG is dramatically more ASIC-resistant than the generic Equihash, rendering the recently-available Equihash ASICs ineffective for mining BTG
    • Equihash-BTG will probably make future ASIC designs non-competitive for a significant period of time
  • Safety
    • PoW & personalization changes create BTG-specific hashpower, and therefore a new “hashpower market segment” specific to BTG
    • BTG will be the dominant coin in the Equihash-BTG hashpower market, increasing security against 51% attacks
    • Although we expect Equihash-BTG rental markets to emerge quickly, they will be more transparent because there is only one practical use for Equihash-BTG hashpower. This means easier monitoring for potentially malicious activity.
  • 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
    • Will also increase average profitability for “steady miners” of BTG

Network Upgrade Dates and Estimates

Date Item
ongoing :heavy_check_mark: Partners who are not already in direct contact with our team should reach out ASAP to be included on relevant technical updates
June 8 :heavy_check_mark: Published Mining Dev Tools: Bitcoin Gold Mining Tools ¡ GitHub
June 16 :heavy_check_mark: Testnet Fork Spec Published: PoW hardfork network upgrade spec and guide ¡ Issue #331 ¡ BTCGPU/BTCGPU ¡ GitHub
June 18 :heavy_check_mark: Testnet Upgrade: Successful Hard fork at Testnet block height 14300
June 19 :heavy_check_mark: Public Testnet Pool for miners & miner developers: https://test-pool.bitcoingold.org
various ☐ Repository Updates: Ongoing
June 21 ☐ Mainnet Fork Spec Publication
early July ☐ Live Mainnet Upgrade: Date subject to change based on feedback from Exchanges & other Partners

dates in italics are subject to change

Mining Software and Pools

The first few Equihash-BTG capable miners for NVidia cards are already available, and we expect AMD-based miners to be available soon. We will begin maintaining a list of known compatible mining software and expected mining pool availability on the Forum as details become publicly available from the 3rd parties who make and maintain them.

In Closing

We’re very happy with the cooperation we’re getting from many of our Partners in the Ecosystem, but also from the community of Equihash-based coin teams with which we’ve been collaborating these past weeks. We know some wish this Upgrade could be delivered sooner, but coordinating with all our Partners and ensuring the mining infrastructure is ready are crucial to minimize disruption – and, of course, critical for safety.

We look forward to sharing many additional details in the next few days!

Improving every day,
The Bitcoin Gold Organization
#1CPU1VOTE

2 Likes

any date when the miner SW will be released ? and any news if the other devs behind ewbf and DSTM will also participate ?

We can’t give dates, because it’s up to the miner devs - however, EWBF has already released EWBF Cuda Equihash Miner v0.2 which handles <144,5>. You can find the ANN thread here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4466962.0

For Equihash-BTG, you’ll need to use the following parameters:

--algo 144_5 --pers BgoldPoW

We’ll be firing up a separate thread here in our Forum listing compatible miners soon.

Our public testnet pool is up and running; we’ll be publishing the address shortly (we’re waiting until the first blocks on it have matured and pay out in case there are any new bugs that hit at that point.)

1 Like

huh iam on Win :smiley: … u mean adding these 2 commands into the .bat file should do the trick ?..i think i will for the big thread … thank anyway

Excellent news. I’m glad that everything will be sorted with exchanges in early July.

1 Like

Main post has been updated:

image

The pool https://test-pool.bitcoingold.org is up and running.

@Zhivko has posted some basic instructions on getting started testing here.

Adding those two parameters will only work if you’re running the new EWBF. The old EWBF doesn’t support Equihash<144,5>, and other miners may use different command line switches.

1 Like

yes i know but thanks to keep me up to date

image

Edit:
I put on the testnet just for fun the DSTM (zm) miner and it somehow connected but the hasrate shoving is like on normal …not shore if DSTM added support but here a shoot

Update: FYI. Thx to Zhivko who checked that the shares from DSTM getting rejected on the test net

1 Like