Aragon is a decentralized app (dApp) on the Ethereum blockchain that allows anyone to create and manage a decentralized organization. The Aragon project is open source and led by the Aragon Foundation. It also includes a token, ANT, that grants voting rights to make decisions about the direction of future development. Eventually, Aragon hopes to be a fully decentralized autonomous organization and dApp that’s a neutral jurisdiction for anyone to create an organization on the blockchain. In the early days of development, the project is relying on the nonprofit Aragon Foundation to provide direction and support as the project gets off the ground. The idea, however, is to eventually dissolve, scale back, or change the nature of the Foundation as community support grows. In the future, Aragon will be entirely decentralized and community led. Holders of the ANT token will have voting rights on all issues concerning Aragon. Aragon is an open source, non-profit project. It has many contributors. It also doesn’t technically have a CEO or CTO. Instead, it has a project lead. But don’t get it twisted, the lead is essentially the CEO. uis Cuende is leading the project. In 2011, he received a “Best Underage European Programmer” award, and he’s a recipient of Forbes’ 30 under 30 recognition. He’s a young guy, but with leadership and technical chops. He has advised the Vice President of the European Commission and is an MIT Innovators Under 35 awardee. He has founded several startups and created the first Linux distribution with face login. Aragon offers several core features. It has a module for identity management and closely related modules for ownership and access control. Other modules include shareholder voting, fundraising through token generation, HR onboarding and payroll, and accounts payable/receivable. Taken together, the core functionality of Aragon covers the critical aspects of accounting, governance, and identity that make modern companies work. As you can see, these modules make up most of the administrative functions that a modern company or organization requires. It’s important to emphasize that these modules can individually be turned on and off, providing instant customization for the company’s needs. In addition, all of the code behind Aragon is open source. A company’s development team could edit them as needed to fulfill the company’s requirements. The modular design of Aragon doesn’t stop with the core modules that come standard. Just as companies can edit existing modules, they’re free to develop completely new models as well. They can also develop atop the data and structures of existing models for extended functionality. The modular nature of Aragon, combined with its open source ethos, means we could see a whole ecosystem of free to use modules that extend capacity for organizations on Aragon. Aragon explicitly has the goal of creating a digital jurisdiction. Just like countries have jurisdiction over their citizens when it comes to courts of law, Aragon wants to create the first digital court of law. This court wouldn’t operate based on country boundaries. Instead, it would help enforce digital contracts between organizations on the Aragon platform. The ANT token is the native token of Aragon and plays a critical role in the governance model and incentive structure of the platform. It represents the wealth of the decentralized economy and was initially sold during Aragon’s highly successful ICO in May 2017 that raised $24 million. Subsequently, the ANT token has come to represent a powerful share of the governance on the platform. ANT holders can vote on proposals, participate in arbitration and the decentralized court system, and help contribute to the non-profit Aragon Foundation or to research and development through the Aragon Nest program.
Bitcoin Gold hopes to change the paradigm around mining on the Bitcoin blockchain. According to the founders, the Bitcoin blockchain has become too centralized. Large companies with huge banks of mining computers now mine the vast majority of Bitcoin. For the founders of Bitcoin Gold, having large companies control the Bitcoin network defeats the purpose of a decentralized ledger and peer-to-peer currencies. In response, they’ve initialized the Bitcoin Gold project. It’s an alternate fork of the Bitcoin blockchain that implements changes that make mining more equitable. The goal of Bitcoin Gold is to create a network where anyone can become a miner with only basic hardware. As a result, Bitcoin Gold mining would be spread among many miners, instead of a few large companies.There have several features such as decentralization. Bitcoin Gold decentralizes mining by adopting a PoW algorithm, Equihash-BTG, which cannot be run on the specialty equipment used for Bitcoin mining (ASIC miners.) This gives ordinary users a fair opportunity to mine with common GPUs. Besides, there have fair distribution. Hard forking Bitcoin’s blockchain fairly and efficiently distributes 16.5 million BTG immediately to people all over the world who have interest in cryptos. Other methods, such as creating coins with a new genesis block, concentrate ownership within a small group. There also have a replay protection. To ensure the safety of the Bitcoin ecosystem, Bitcoin Gold has implemented full replay protection and unique wallet addresses, essential features that protect users and their coins from several kinds of accidents and malicious threats. Most new mineable cryptocurrencies involve ASIC-resistant hashing algorithms, and it’s becoming something of an industry standard to promote decentralization. In that respect, Bitcoin Gold holds a lot to be excited about. At its core, it’s about transitioning the Bitcoin network to more decentralized mining. However, as we saw above, there’s not much evidence that the current Bitcoin mining system is broken. There have been some small complaints, and it’s not ideal that the network is so centralized. Nevertheless, miners on Bitcoin have a lot to lose if they wield their power too aggressively. There are also new entrants to the Bitcoin mining community that are decentralizing control from a few key ASIC farms. The general consensus from Bitcoin experts is there’s not enough new in Bitcoin Gold to warrant an independent investment. While it certainly doesn’t hurt to hold onto your free BTG that you receive as a result of the fork (if you owned Bitcoin before Oct 24), wait until the dust settles before deciding whether to buy more.'