What is Bitcoin Diamond?
Bitcoin Diamond (BCD) is a blockchain that was created form a fork of the Bitcoin blockchain. The creators of Bitcoin Diamond are trying to create improvements to the BCE protocol in an effort to address Bitcoin’s high transaction fee, slow confirmation time, mining centralization, and scalability problems.
How Bitcoin Diamond works
Bitcoin Diamond was created when the team behind BCD decided that the original Bitcoin did not exactly serve Satoshi’s goal of keeping Bitcoin decentralized. So the BCD team — a joint effort between team EVEY and team 007 — forked the Bitcoin blockchain and made a few changes to its protocol to enhance its usability as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system.
Bitcoin Diamond has better transaction speed, network security, and scalability than Bitcoin. The BCD team also made an effort to make mining a more accessible and decentralized process.
The Bitcoin Diamond blockchain is capable of processing 100 transactions per second, and each block on the network can hold 8MB of transaction data. Segwit is also activated on the network. The average block time is 10 minutes, and the difficulty of the network adjusts every 12 hours.
Bitcoin Diamond uses an X13 proof of work algorithm — an algorithm that acts as a deterrent for ASIC miners and encourages the use of mining with GPU’s.
Bitcoin Diamond was created when it forked off of the Bitcoin network on November 24, 2017; at block height 495,866, a snapshot was taken of the Bitcoin blockchain and its wallet balances, and for every Bitcoin that an individual owned, they received 10 BCD on the Bitcoin Diamond chain.
The total supply of BCD (210 million) is ten times greater than the total supply of Bitcoin (21 million). There were 170 million BCD — 10 BCD distributed for every 1 BTC — given to Bitcoin holders when the fork took place, and the other 40 million BCD were automatically transferred to the community rewards pool as tributes and for mining rewards.
BCD Pay and BCD Bazaar
BCD Pay is Bitcoin Diamond’s online e-commerce portal where merchants can apply to accept Bitcoin Diamond as payment for the goods and services they offer.
The BCD Bazaar is the other component to Bitcoin Diamond’s online commerce system. BCD Bazaar is the international marketplace where users can purchase products from merchants as well as other companies using BCD and BTC. The products available to users through the BCD Bazaar range from Apple iPhones to office supplies and everything in between.
Bitcoin Diamond summarized
Bitcoin Diamond was created to be a more efficient, more secure blockchain than Bitcoin with better scalability. The team behind BCD says Bitcoin Diamond “better serves Satoshi’s vision of keeping Bitcoin decentralized.” On the Bitcoin network, individuals with ASIC mining chips and mining farms have a significant advantage over the CPU’s and GPU’s mining bitcoin. So Bitcoin Diamond uses an X13 Proof-of-Stake network to mitigate the chance ASIC miners have of taking over the network and to prevent the hash power on the network from becoming centralized among the minority with the best mining equipment.
The team at Bitcoin Diamond also felt like Bitcoin had inefficiencies in terms of its high transaction costs, long transaction times, and scalability, so the Bitcoin Diamond network has blocks that are 8mb large and capable of processing 100 transactions per second.
The team behind Bitcoin Diamond’s goal was to create a cryptocurrency–BCD– that could be used as a convenient and secure currency used by the underbanked peoples of the world. So to catalyze the adoption of BCD the Bitcoin Diamond webpage includes the Bitcoin Diamond Bazaar, the international marketplace where Bitcoin Diamond holders can use the token to purchase goods and services from a number of companies.
