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.'
iExec is an open-source, decentralized cloud computing platform, running on Ethereum blockchain. iExec allows decentralized applications (dApps) an on-demand access to computing resources and technologies on iExec cloud. iExec has built a blockchain network where dApps can take advantage of cost effective and high-performance resources such as servers, databases, SaaS applications, web hosting and computer farms. iExec’s native cryptocurrency — The RLC token is the primary asset used to access services in iExec infrastructure. RLC is short for “Run on Lots of Computers.” iExec is headquartered at Lyon, France. It was founded by Gilles Fedak and Haiwu He, both are serving as Chief Executive Officer and Head of Asian-Pacific Region of iExec, respectively. Oleg Lodygensky is the Chief Technical Officer. Gilles Fedak received his PhD from the University of Paris Sud in 2003, and has been working as INRIA (Inventeurs du Monde Numerique) research scientist at ENS in Lyon, France. Similarly, Haiwu completed his M.Sc. and PhD from the University of Sciences and Technologies of Lille, France. On April 19, 2017, iExec launched its token sale and raised more than $12 million in exchange for 86,999,784 RLC. In order to support dApps, smart contracts, and their platforms, iExec takes processing-intensive computations off-chain so as to keep a blockchain’s on-chain functions running smoothly. To do this, iExec makes use of XtremWeb-HEP, an open-sourced Desktop Grid Software. Desktop Grid computing (also known as Volunteer Computing) pools unused computing resources to be used by applications and platforms, and according to iExec’s whitepaper, XtremWeb-HEP “implements all the needed features” to make this possible on a global scale, including “fault-tolerance, multi-applications, multi-users, hybrid public/private infrastructure, deployment of virtual images, data management, security and accountability, and many more.” Essentially, with this software, dApps can utilize any computing resource in the iExec framework to run their programs. In their whitepaper, the iExec team lays out the project’s competitive landscape and explains these competitors in relation to iExec. They’re quick to note that decentralized cloud storage providers like Filecoin, Storj, and Siacoin are not direct competitors, and it’s easy to see why. While iExec could theoretically take a step in this direction as it matures, it’s not a storage platform; it’s a computing platform. This does put it in competition with other decentralized computing protocols like Golem and SONM. Both of these, however, are taking aim at a different animal. Essentially, they’re both building a decentralized supercomputer on blockchain technology, while iExec is targeting dApp development and sustainability. Both look towards a future of a blockchain-powered, decentralized internet, but their functions, while sometimes similar, are more complementary than conflicting.