Bitcoin was the first digital asset to produce an entire ecosystem of cryptocurrencies. For a while, it grew a clandestine, backed by investors who seemed very interested in its future as a potential replacement to the traditional monetary system. Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, did not insist it was a finished product. Meaning Bitcoin was designed to improve on. And is the main reason it developers released it as an open-source code to encourage new ideas (forks) as the cryptocurrency grows in popularity.
The essence of Bitcoin fork is to create a new blockchain that addresses the various limitations the original network may not adequately cover. BTC Ultimatum or Bitcoin 2.0 is the latest project to fork away from Bitcoin to ensure the implementation of vital features to overcome the cryptocurrency’s limitations.
The new fork is scheduled for 21th January 2021 and, combines all innovative solutions that bring the development of blockchain technology to a new era, and expand the practical adoption of the technology in real sectors of economies, social and business processes. It solves Bitcoin’s excessive energy consumption associated with mining, scalability and transaction anonymity while maintaining all of its useful characteristics. This involves the creation of a new mining algorithm — UPoS (Ultimatum PoS)-, provision of smart contract, implementation of atomic swaps and integration of Ethereum virtual machine (EVM).
The new mining algorithm — UPoS (Ultimatum PoS) — is based on LPoS combined with PoA, where LPoS will be used for mining, and PoA to validate transactions. Using PoA-algorithm to confirm transactions will aid in achieving blockchain throughput at 200 transactions per second, with the ability to scale up to 10,000 tps.
The main benefits of using LPoS algorithm is to enable a democratic form of control, enhanced scalability and low energy network maintenance costs. Since LPoS validators use their processing power directly to process transactions, it speeds up consensus on new blocks than PoW and PoS, as LPoS consensus implies the most manageable mechanisms for creating blocks, using inexpensive hardware with a high level of integrity. In analyzing LPoS system, a relatively small number of network nodes must agree with block validation to consider all transactions to be included in the main chain.
The integration of Ethereum virtual machine (EVM) in the BTCU blockchain will facilitate the implementation of smart contracts on the famous Solidity, which provides enormous opportunities for project tokenization or DeFi implementation. This will allow developers to implement their projects efficiently on the BTCU network and also transfer already ones.
To create a smart contract, users must define the conditions for its operation and methods of interaction with the network. Parties are required to complete the transaction by paying a commission in order to add a smart contract to the network. To conduct transactions within a smart contract (e.g. transfer of tokens), users need to specify a recipient’s public address and sign the transactions with their private key.
Going forwards, the team plans to integrate atomic swaps to enable the implementation of smart contracts not only on the BTCU network but also with other popular blockchains.
The BTCU transaction anonymity is based on Zerocash protocol, which makes it a privacy-protecting cryptocurrency built on strong science. To conduct anonymous transactions, the BTCU developers have implemented the zBtcu mechanism to convert btcu to zBtcu (anonymous coin). Users can subsequently send zBtcu to other users, split or merge with coins they own in any way that maintains the total value. BTC Ultimatum (BTCU) network supports efficient and secure transactions with low fees while ensuring complete privacy.
