The Course Ahead

At inception, Bitcoin Gold was focused on providing a cryptocurrency in the Bitcoin model, but which was more decentralized for miners. Today, our focus is on making BTG a more trustless and useful cryptocurrency for everyone, and that change in focus is evident in our current development roadmap.

While we’ve always been broadly pro-crypto and believed in collaboration, the push to improve usability and usefulness entails a push towards interoperability. This means adapting so that BTG can be used with the best smart contract protocols; it means pooling security from bigger chains and offering it to smaller chains; it means making BTG, and BTG’s value, accessible throughout the smart-contract ecosystem, leveraging their security models as well as their technical capabilities: it means creating more value for everyone.

The development items on our current roadmap fall into four general areas:

Interoperability: things which grant or enhance the ability for BTG to interact bidirectionally with other blockchains and blockchain ecosystems, like Polkadot and Ethereum. Work on the bridge to Phala Network is already underway.

Applications: things which can be done after that interoperability is established. These hint at what’s possible, but need to wait until Interoperability comes to life. One notable item here: we plan to gradually shift from our traditional Board-based governance structure to a modern DAO-based model, which we expect to bring new people into the governance process and to help decentralize management of the chain and the project.

Infrastructure: these are core items in the BTG tech stack which need updates and refreshers. These are already underway, and some are very near completion, like new version(s) of our explorers, and a very-updated version of ElectrumG.

Lightning Network: establishing a robust and effective LN as a layer-2 solution is still very much on our development agenda, although current transaction volumes and fees don’t necessitate a solution at the moment. We want to build up the infrastructure and, most importantly, the user tool set, for an effective and easy-to-use LN before it becomes a critical need to alleviate transaction fee concerns and allow people to continue to make micropayments.

Here are all the things we’re currently doing or planning to do:

Interoperability

BTG-Polkadot Bridge: we’re building a lightweight BTG-Polkadot Bridge based on a Phala Bridge solution, built in partnership with Phala Network. This will enable cross-chain transactions between BTG and Phala, and leads to BTG gaining access to advanced blockchain functions like smart contracts, DeFi protocols, on-chain governance, and eventually connect to external blockchains like Ethereum.

Bridged ERC20/Wrapped Token: we’re creating a trustless wrapped token (like WBTC) through the cross-chain bridge, and making it accessible in the Polkadot and Ethereum DeFi ecosystems. This depends on the BTG-Polkadot Bridge.

Smart Contract Integration: we’ll connect BTG to smart-contract-enabled blockchains on Polkadot and / or Ethereum, allowing wide use cases to be developed for BTG. This depends on the Bridged ERC20/Wrapped Token.

Confidential Smart Contracts: integrating with Phala Network’s Confidential Smart Contracts to provide on-chain confidentiality. This depends on the BTG-Polkadot Bridge.

Applications

BTG for DEX: we’ll work to establish BTG trading pairs on a well-known DEX (e.g. Uniswap) and bootstrap liquidity, making BTG more accessible and attracting more liquidity around the world. This depends on the Bridged ERC20/Wrapped Token.

BTG for Lending: we’ll list BTG as a lending asset on well-known lending platforms (e.g. Aave) and bootstrap liquidity. This will empower investors and miners to better plan and utilize their BTG income. This depends on the Bridged ERC20/Wrapped Token.

DAO On-chain Governance: we’ll build a DAO structure as a smart contract to replace the current governance model. This will take time, but the intent is to fully move the Endowment and any future project income to the DAO for budget management. We also hope for this to open governance to the community to participate in development, decision making, and spending actions. This depends on Smart Contract Integration.

Infrastructure

CCBN: we’re committed to fully Implementing CCBN – first as an add-on script, and later as part of core consensus code, deployed first to testnet and then to mainnet. CCBN is a decentralized approach to thwart secret mining attacks by notarizing blocks to independent blockchains, providing a way to resolve chain splits in favor of honest mining, which will greatly enhance on-chain security. 

ElectrumG 4.0: it’s time to upgrade to the upstream Electrum 4.0 client and the latest ElectrumX Server with improved security, performance, and more features, including: PSBT support, payment server, native Android support. 

Bitcoin Gold Core v21: continuing to follow upstream updates brings in value bugfixes and security improvements, and also introduces new features including schnorr signatures and taproot.

Refreshed Explorer: we’re deploying a new blockchain explorer (Blockbook and / or Bitcore v8) for improved stability, appearance, and usability.

Lightning Network 

LN Client: we’ll deploy a stable BTG version of a mature lightning client to testnet and then mainnet (lnd, c-lightning, and/or eclair.) Even if fees don’t demand an LN infrastructure, a Lightning Network can still deliver greater efficiency on transactions.

ElectrumG Lightning Network Integration: after deploying new Lightning Network clients, we can enable Lighting Network within ElectrumG and connect it the Bitcoin Gold Lightning Network for near-instant transactions. This depends on both ElectrumG 4.0 and the LN Client.

BTCPay Integration of BTG Lightning Network: BTCPay, the best decentralized payment gateway, already supports BTG, so extending BTCPay to support BTG LN is next. This depends on the LN Client.

continue the discussion on the Bitcoin Gold Forum here

Development

• Bitcoin Gold Core v0.17.1: Code is ready; now under testing (progress: 90%)
• Compact Block Relay for BTG is implemented in BTG Core v0.17.1 and btgsuite (progress: 100%)
• btgsuite: replay attack protection and Compact Block Relay being tested
• Progress on Secret Mining defense research in partnership with Exchanges; preparing white paper and request for comments

Community

• Venezuela Event “Se Habla Cripto! Caracas” scheduled for March 1st with Criptonoticias
• BTG staff met Yuan Dao, chairman of China Zhongguancun Blockchain Industry Alliance and discussed the future of Bitcoin and blockchain economy

Ecosystem

• Bidali Giftcard for Bitcoin Gold has launched, selling giftcards for more than 100 stores via BTG
• BTG coverage initiated at TokenView.com
• new BTG pool launched: equihash.pro

Join the discussion and comment on this post at forum.btgofficial.org

To make it easier for the Community to monitor the Bitcoin Gold Endowment, we’ve created a transparency site. Click the button to see the current balance.

BTG Endowment Transparency
Source Code: https://github.com/h4x3rotab/btg-transparent

What’s the Endowment?

The BTG Endowment supports the ongoing BTG project and is currently the only source of funding for expenses and salaries. All Endowment expenditures since it was launched have been made based on the decisions of the Board of the Bitcoin Gold organization. The Endowment is controlled by “four of six” multi-signature wallets, which ensures that no single individual can spend from the Endowment. (The initial Board was comprised of the six co-founders of the project, and the current Board membership is always publicly visible on the BTG Team page.)

no single individual can spend from the Endowment

Where is the Endowment?

These wallet addresses and balances have been public on the blockchain since they day they were mined (Nov 12, 2017). The addresses have also been published in a previous Endowment Wallet blog post.

This new website tracks the live unspent balance of the entire BTG Endowment, making it easy for anyone to check for themselves. Live balances for each wallet are pulled using the Insight API at the official BTG Explorer, but the balances can be checked at any explorer. The Live Unspent Total may take a moment to load because all individual wallet balances must be pulled, first.

making it easy for anyone to check for themselves

All the addresses

The list of wallet addresses includes our Flexible Spending wallet. To simplify administration, some funds are periodically moved from an Endowment wallet into the Flex wallet, which requires only 2 of 6 signatures to be further spent. Expense reimbursements, salaries, bounties, or other expenditures are then paid from the Flex wallet. Any funds in the Flex wallet are unspent and belong to the Endowment, and are shown at the top of the list.

The other 152 wallets in the list are the original BTG Endowment (“premine”) wallets which were mined in 2017. All of these wallets are “four of six” multi-sig wallets, with the six keys originally held by the six co-founders of the BTG project. In addition, 60% of the funds were mined into time-locked wallet addresses which gradually become available each month over the course of three years. (You’ll notice there are four wallets for unlocked funds, and then four wallets for each month’s time-locked funds – the wallets were broken into four groups with four different sets of six keys; this was insurance against the (extremely unlikely) event that some set of keys becomes exposed. See the Endowment Wallet blog post for exhaustive details on the mining process.)

Safety first!

This arrangement of wallets may seem overly complex at first glance, but the co-founders of the BTG project took the safety, security, and longevity of the mined funds very seriously. The multiple multi-sig wallets, time locks, and Board oversight ensure that the Endowment funds are not at risk.

multiple multi-sig wallets, time locks, and Board oversight ensure that the Endowment funds are not at risk

Making full transparency easier,
The Bitcoin Gold Organization

Join the discussion at forum.btgofficial.org to comment!

Bitcoin Gold (codename BTCGPU) began as a fork of Bitcoin after block height 491406 on Tue, 24 Oct 2017 01:17:35 GMT and began being mined as a separate chain at block height 491407 on Sun, 12 Nov 2017 13:34:01 GMT. As described in the original Bitcoin Gold Roadmap / Whitepaper, the mining rewards from the rapid first 8000 new blocks (100,000 BTG, or 0.476% of the 21 Million BTG cap), were collected into a set of wallet addresses to form a fund to support the ongoing costs of the Bitcoin Gold project. These 100,000 coins, sometimes called a “premine,” made up the BTG Endowment. All mining rewards after these first 8000 blocks accrue solely to the miners; no portion is diverted to the founders or the BTG project.