Bitcoin Diamond (BCD) is a hard-fork of Bitcoin. The forking occurs at the predetermined height of the block, wherein the blocks are data structures in the blockchain database. Blocks record the transaction data in a blockchain and are identified by long numbers. So, the forking at the height of 495866 in Bitcoin generates Bitcoin Diamond (BCD). The original blockchain continues, but a new branch of the blockchain splits off. The new blockchain that is Bitcoin Diamond shares history with Bitcoin until the diversion.
Bitcoin Diamond seeks to help financially underserved individuals. The initiative focuses on unbanked people living in areas where other financial institutions are inaccessible. The “unbanked” is a connotation for individuals who do not use banking institutions in any capacity. The BCD aims to bypass the financial barriers and resolve the problem of high transaction fees, slow transaction confirmations, and a high threshold for new miners. Bitcoin Diamond aims to address issues by implementing new technical improvements.
The whitepaper states that BCD can perform 4.8 million transactions a day or 100 per second. BCD prevents the centralization of mining power as it incorporates a proof-of-work algorithm. Furthermore, the BCD wallet aims to have the following features:
HD wallet generation - With hierarchical deterministic wallets or HD wallets, the users can generate multiple accounts from a single root key. The users need to save only a master private key. The master key can further generate multiple sub-private keys. Users can easily manage all accounts under this one master key. This helps in reducing the possibility of master key exposure.
Electrum integration - Electrum is a lightweight wallet of Bitcoin. This has been developed and supported since 2011. Electrum seeks to offer a wide range of functionality like cold storage (offline wallet), multi-sig security, etc. The multi-sig security function makes security breaches hard for malicious actors to execute any unapproved transaction. Hence, to capitalize on Electrum’s feature set, Bitcoin Diamond has also released its version of the Electrum wallet.
BCD pay mobile - Bitcoin Diamond envisions supporting an official mobile wallet to ensure that all users can easily perform payments. With BCD pay, millions of unbanked individuals can access digital currency.
