Bitcoin has often been blamed for such debilities as slow rapidity of making transactions and high fees imposed for them. It seems that bitcoin’s ratio for price/quality has not been satisfactory, even though the coin’s value grew. Recently, we have seen several forks executing from the ‘Big Daddy’ with the last and most successful one occurring in August 2017, bringing to the world Bitcoin Cash.
Now, on Wednesday, January 24, another hard fork, named Bitcoin Atom (BCA), took place at block 505 888, according to the Medium.
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New Fork, Same Promises
Asserting that the most significant part of bitcoin operations occur only via centralized or ‘centrally-managed’ exchange platforms, the anonymous crew of BCA came out grappling with the issue. The team claims that with the new fork they have brought an indeed decentralized way for cyber asset interchanges. Furthermore, the developers also claim to adhere to the eccentric principle of bitcoin‘s creator Satoshi Nakamoto, which is the decentralization. But it seems that we have heard all that before when other forks were coming out.
When explaining how the crew is going to recuperate the P2P peculiarity of bitcoin, the team stated:
“Bitcoin Atom (BCA) restores the peer-to-peer (P2P) aspect of bitcoin with Atomic Swaps and Lightning Network capability embedded directly into the coin.”
To acquire Bitcoin Atom, one merely needs to turn to BCA team’s exchanges or their wallet colleagues. However, as news.Bitcoin.com points out, Bitcoin Atom only has three platforms ready to list the token. Among them, there are only Yobit, Okex, and Exrates. When it comes to wallets, there also are only three ones: Coinomi, ESR, and the currently unavailable Atom wallet. So users should think twice before investing in another clone of 'Big Daddy'.
But What Is Bitcoin Atom?
According to the statement of the team, BCA is a segregated witness entitled BTC fork with on-chain atomic interchanges on board and crossbred consensus. It permits really independent virtual coins interchanging thanks to the usage of HTLCs, which are the power-locked contracts, as well as HTLC API.
Currently, the crew of developers is processing a particular switched-on set of instruments for both on and off-chain interchanges. This way, swapping different virtual coins will be possible seamlessly across various blockchains. Moreover, already for 2018 the Lightning Network off-chain swaps are planned and arranged.
