What is Gulden?
Gulden is a crypto coin. However, this is not all there is to it. Gulden has built an ecosystem that includes an app and a payment system. This is meant to ease the conversion between legacy currency and Gulden. Gulden derives the name from the Dutch/German word, gold coin.
Gulden is a cryptocurrency based on Scrypt that uses Proof of Work (PoW). It is based on the same algorithm as Litecoin and several other altcoins and is mined in a similar manner. Gulden allows users to send money directly to any IBAN account.
What is the problem that Gulden Solves?
The current blockchain implementations have several challenges that have made them fall short of expectations that people would expect from currency they need to use from time to time. Some of the challenges have become so obvious on platforms like Bitcoin.
Double Spend
One of the biggest challenges facing Bitcoin and other projects built around it is double spend. Double spends create an avenue for attackers to have a field day. An attacker would send two similar transactions to different people. One of these transactions will be accepted by the network, at which point, one of the recipients would have already been stolen from.
At least 50% Attacks
The largest possible attack on the blockchain network is a 50% attack. This is only possible if an attacker were to gain more than 50% of the hash rate on a network. If this happens, the attacker gets the following advantages:
- Censorship – This allows them to deny some transactions on the blockchain, by refusing to mine or acknowledge any blocks that contain those transactions.
- Denial of Service – An attacker would simply mine empty blocks, which eventually denies services to the network.
- Double Spend – The attacker is able to out mine the entire network, allowing them to perform double spends at their pleasure.
Selfish Mining
It is expected that miners release the blocks they mine to the network. This, however, assumes that all miners are honest. Since there is no restriction in this concern, the miners can delay broadcasting the blocks to the network as long as they please. At the same time, they can also start mining another block that is related to the one they are hoarding, without broadcasting it. This is used by some miners to gain an advantage on the network.
Theoretically, once a minor gets a hash rate of around 33%, they can have enough power to attempt executing a >50% attack.
Side Chains
Since a miner can create and hoard blocks secretly without broadcasting them to the network, they are able to secretly work on attacks without any risk of exposure. By the time an attacker has their side chains complete, there might not be much that can be done about the attack. This is the method that people who use double spends prefer.
Centralized Mining
Over time, it has come to light that block mining is becoming a preserve of a few people on the network, who have the equipment that can handle this. As a result, several parts of the ecosystem are weakened, which leave it vulnerable to attacks.
How does Gulden Solve the problem?
There are several attempts that have been made in the past by different projects to address some of these challenges.
Gulden has put in place some measures, including the following:
Alternative Hashing Algorithm
The concept behind using a different algorithm is that the platform becomes less susceptible to the widely publicized vulnerabilities that are associated with Bitcoin. It becomes difficult to execute a >50% attack because the attackers do not have sufficient hash rate.
Altered Block Targets
Bitcoin uses a very slow block target, and the longer a transaction stays unconfirmed, the higher the chances of compromise. Gulden, like most other projects, is using faster block targets. If the blocks are available more frequently, the blockchain can perform more transactions per second, reducing the risk of exposure to attacks. Blocks occurring more frequently also means that the users do not have to wait longer for transactions to be confirmed.
Proof of Stake
Proof of Stake simply replaces the hashing algorithm that is used, for example in Bitcoin, with a new one. Through Proof of Stake, a miner must own a given number of coins in the platform of choice before they can mine. There are other factors that are involved in determining the chances of successfully mining.
This is important because an attacker would have to amass at least 50% of the coins on the platform for them to execute an attack, instead of 50% of the computing power. This further disenfranchises attackers, because naturally, you cannot attack something where you already hold a majority stake.
What makes Gulden better than the competitors?
A lot of people who have come across Gulden will almost certainly have heard about Bitcoin too or used it at some point. Of course, Bitcoin is the default cryptocurrency that most people are aware of. But, why would you consider switching from Bitcoin to Gulden? The following are some of the reasons why Gulden offers a better alternative than Bitcoin.
Transaction Capacity
By design, Bitcoin was meant to become an alternative payment system. However, and as has been proven so many times in the past by a lot of projects that have come up to fix problems with Bitcoin, technically, Bitcoin is unable to handle as many transactions as people would love to use it for.
Bitcoin is built to handle around 7 transactions per second. For a platform that should be accepted worldwide as an alternative payment system, this is too low. Gulden, on the other hand, can handle more than 100 transactions per second, and that is in the Netherlands alone. At the moment, the low transaction threshold is one of the bottlenecks that is hindering the development of Bitcoin. This further brings forth the issue of delays, mainly because the Bitcoin platform can also not handle all the transactions at once.
In the current state, Gulden is able to handle up to 40 transactions per second. However, since it is scalable, this can be increased as per the user’s requirements. This is another front where Gulden beats Bitcoin hands down. It is virtually impossible to make changes to Bitcoin.
Cost of Transaction
Bitcoin has always been castigated for being too expensive. Each time a transaction is carried out, users must spend to compensate the miners and to help them add more transactions to the blockchain, and maintain the network. Other than that, there are lots of other factors in the Bitcoin ecosystem that shore up the cost of transactions.
Look at it this way, in Bitcoin, those who pay higher fees get their services rendered faster. The more the number of transactions, the higher the cost. In retrospect, Bitcoin becomes irrelevant for people who want to conduct small transactions, because it will be too expensive. Even for those who conduct larger transactions, it is still expensive.
Irrespective of the level of traffic on the network, there is a standard fee that users pay to push transactions on Gulden. You do not have to worry about the cost being scaled up depending on the number of transactions you conduct.
Time to Confirmation
Completing a transaction on Bitcoin can be a nightmare. In most cases, you are left uncertain whether the transaction has been completed or not. You need around 6 confirmations on the network before the transaction is rendered complete and irreversible. This can take you at least an hour.
However, depending on the network capacity, you can wait several hours or even days before you get confirmation for your transactions, especially for those who pay low fees. If you are making regular payments, this can be a bother and quite the inconvenience.
Gulden is bringing the convenience that users are used to when confirming normal debit card transactions. Upon release, transactions on Gulden would take no more than 15 minutes. Prime I update was rolled out, and this was slashed to 150 seconds. After Prime II update, transactions are confirmed almost instantly, with confirmations expected in 0 seconds.
Community
There is a lot of secrecy that hovers around Bitcoin, and with time, conspiracy theories will come up, which might eventually affect the long-term perspective of Bitcoin. Let’s start with the founder, for example. Bitcoin is the brainchild of one Satoshi Nakamoto. However, no one has come forth to say they know who he or she is.
This level of uncertainty means that people are simply using a platform that was created by someone or an entity that is not known to anyone. In short, no one knows who is pulling the strings behind Bitcoin, and why.
Rijk Plasman is the face behind Gulden. He is also a member of the core development team. Other than being actively involved in the development and management of Gulden, he has also brought on board several people and entities that share the common goal of developing and pushing Gulden to the next phase in the crypto revolution.
Gulden is also backed by a very large community of users, developers, and enthusiasts. Therefore, there is always someone you can ask questions, get in touch with, seek clarification and so forth.
The development team at Gulden also interacts with the community and share in their criticisms and opinions, which go a long way in improving Gulden.
One thing that will never happen with Gulden, therefore, is paralysis, or conflict of interest among investors, miners, and users. Bitcoin, on the other hand, might have a lot of users, but there is no established community around it.
Ease of Use
There is a nerdy feel to the use of Bitcoin that has in the past locked out a lot of people from enjoying the benefits. In terms of user experience, the standard Bitcoin wallet is nowhere close to what an average user would appreciate.
Gulden has been designed for the utmost usability from the beginning. The idea here is to make sure that anyone who comes across it is able to use it to further their agenda.
Crime and Fraud
Bitcoin has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. A lot of people and companies have found themselves on the wrong end of the crypto experience after hackers and blackmailers opt to receive their ransom in Bitcoin. This gives not just Bitcoin, but the entire crypto space a bad name.
Gulden has in place KYC and AML protocols. This is to make sure that users are safe, and certain that they are not dealing with frauds or criminals. There is a limit of 5,000 Euros per month, that you can transact. In case you need a higher limit, you must provide official identification details.
How can Gulden be categorized?
Gulden is a digital currency used as a payment system. Through Gulden, users can wire money to one another, send it to Gulden merchants in exchange for services, or wire the money to their IBAN accounts.
What’s Gulden’s vision on Security?
Gulden uses a Double Key Witness System to protect the accounts of the users. This gives a surety of 100% to users because the money is locked away from spyware and hackers while it is in use on the blockchain platform.
Gulden also works round the clock, implementing upgrades to make the ecosystem safer and convenient for all users. One of the biggest challenges on the blockchain is time before transactions are completed. The longer this takes, the higher the risk of compromise. By reducing the time before a transaction is completed, Gulden makes the platform safer for users.
Examples of Gulden use cases/applications
Epoch
Epoch is one of the long-term scalability projects for Gulden. The idea behind Gulden is to reduce the disk space usage, the bandwidth required the first time you are running Gulden, and to reduce the time required for syncing. Epoch is meant to prevent problems that users have with runway disk size needs, which become evident for blockchain users over time.
Unity
Unity allows users to migrate all their desktop and mobile wallets to one unified back end, which is better than using different codes for each of the wallets. This also means that users can apply bug fixes across the board, instead of doing it separately, thereby improving the performance and reducing battery usage on mobile devices.
Alias
Alias allows users to receive payments by unique identifiers that they can remember, such as an email address or a username instead of the complex blockchain addresses that Gulden uses. This is a means of bringing Gulden closer to the average user who finds Gulden addresses uncomfortable.
Nomad
Through Nomad, users are able to connect to software on the Gulden ecosystem and conduct transactions in a decentralized manner through https, without worrying about firewalls and complicated port configurations.
Resources
https://coincheckup.com/coins/Gulden
https://dev.gulden.com/archive/
https://gulden.com/frequently-asked-questions
https://github.com/Gulden/gulden-official/raw/master/technical_documentation/Gulden_PoW2.pdf