Mere hours after Bitcoin Gold went live, the development team announced via Twitter that a severe distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack caused their website to be down for a few hours.
The fork happened well before schedule, as the desired Bitcoin block height of 491,407 was reached by October 23rd. The milestone triggered the fork. However, only a few hours after successfully forking, the Bitcoin Gold development team, picked up on some strange activity. The website was receiving 10 million hits per minute, which blocked their web traffic. The majority of hits were attributed to the Bitcoin Gold Slack channel, where most of the IP addresses were traced to China.
The development team soon realized that they had fallen victim to a DDoS campaign, which caused the website to be down for a total of four hours. Unfortunately, this attack has created more criticism against the already controversial project. Several users took to social media channels, blog posts, and the team’s Slack channel to question the team’s capabilities as well as the project’s implemented security.
DDoS attacks have become a regularly used method of attack, especially by attackers whose aim is to shut down a firm's website or online activity. The attack technique is relatively accessible, as a hacker can access a botnet to launch the attack for just under $200 USD. The networks of smaller firms are especially vulnerable to attack.
The Bitcoin Gold fork is vastly different from the Bitcoin Cash fork, which happened earlier this year. The Bitcoin Cash fork happened without any incidents. In the event of a Bitcoin fork, the situation is treated similarly to a stock dividend. Each user who has Bitcoin will receive the new tokens on a one-to-one ration. Upon receiving their tokens they can choose whether they want to keep, sell, or buy more tokens.
While the Bitcoin Gold fork did successfully take place, however, the code has not yet been made public. The public code is set to be available from November 1st, at which time users may begin to mine Bitcoin Gold.
Since the DDoS attack, the Bitcoin Gold team was able to restore their website. According to the newly recovered website, Bitcoin Gold will differ vastly from Bitcoin Cash. The most prominent difference is that Bitcoin Gold will implement the equihash algorithm, which will adjust the difficulty involved in mining the cryptocurrency, making it more accessible and decentralized.
Despite the fork already taking place, there are still no actual Bitcoin Gold tokens available, except for a limited number of 100,000 coins that were premined. In addition, the cryptocurrency has yet to have a blockchain. Despite this, Bitcoin Gold is currently being traded as a future asset on Bitfinex. Currently, Bitcoin Gold is trading at $104.
The fork happened well before schedule, as the desired Bitcoin block height of 491,407 was reached by October 23rd. The milestone triggered the fork. However, only a few hours after successfully forking, the Bitcoin Gold development team, picked up on some strange activity. The website was receiving 10 million hits per minute, which blocked their web traffic. The majority of hits were attributed to the Bitcoin Gold Slack channel, where most of the IP addresses were traced to China.
The development team soon realized that they had fallen victim to a DDoS campaign, which caused the website to be down for a total of four hours. Unfortunately, this attack has created more criticism against the already controversial project. Several users took to social media channels, blog posts, and the team’s Slack channel to question the team’s capabilities as well as the project’s implemented security.
DDoS attacks have become a regularly used method of attack, especially by attackers whose aim is to shut down a firm's website or online activity. The attack technique is relatively accessible, as a hacker can access a botnet to launch the attack for just under $200 USD. The networks of smaller firms are especially vulnerable to attack.
The Bitcoin Gold fork is vastly different from the Bitcoin Cash fork, which happened earlier this year. The Bitcoin Cash fork happened without any incidents. In the event of a Bitcoin fork, the situation is treated similarly to a stock dividend. Each user who has Bitcoin will receive the new tokens on a one-to-one ration. Upon receiving their tokens they can choose whether they want to keep, sell, or buy more tokens.
While the Bitcoin Gold fork did successfully take place, however, the code has not yet been made public. The public code is set to be available from November 1st, at which time users may begin to mine Bitcoin Gold.
Since the DDoS attack, the Bitcoin Gold team was able to restore their website. According to the newly recovered website, Bitcoin Gold will differ vastly from Bitcoin Cash. The most prominent difference is that Bitcoin Gold will implement the equihash algorithm, which will adjust the difficulty involved in mining the cryptocurrency, making it more accessible and decentralized.
Despite the fork already taking place, there are still no actual Bitcoin Gold tokens available, except for a limited number of 100,000 coins that were premined. In addition, the cryptocurrency has yet to have a blockchain. Despite this, Bitcoin Gold is currently being traded as a future asset on Bitfinex. Currently, Bitcoin Gold is trading at $104.