Bitcoin Gold (BTG) Community Library¶
Welcome to the curated documentation for the Bitcoin Gold (BTG) community.
This site is not a fork of the BTCGPU wiki. It is a curated, opinionated set of guides drawn from the production configurations at bitcoingold.services and the canonical sources in BTCGPU/BTCGPU and BTCGPU/BTCGPU.wiki.
This library is community-maintained. Please report any inaccuracies or suggestions to admin@bitcoingold.services.
How to use this library¶
Pick the track that matches your role:
- Transparency — BTG Endowment details, premine wallets, on-chain verification.
- Operators — running infrastructure (full node, DNS seeder, Electrum server, Blockbook indexer, mining pool).
- Developers — building wallets, atomic swaps, RPC integration, building from source.
- Users — setting up a wallet, securing funds, recovering from the 2018 incident.
- Security — hardening a host that runs any of the above.
Each guide assumes you already know how to use a Linux shell. None of them is a beginner's intro to Bitcoin.
Curriculum¶
| Track | Course | What you'll build/learn |
|---|---|---|
| Transparency | BTG Endowment transparency | Verify 100,000 BTG premine on-chain. |
| Operators | Full node | A bgoldd full node serving P2P on 8338. |
| Operators | DNS seeder | A sipa-seeder instance crawling the network. |
| Operators | Electrum server | An ElectrumX-Bitcoin Gold (BTG) instance on 50001/50002. |
| Operators | Blockbook indexer | A Blockbook instance serving the address-index API. |
| Operators | Mining pool basics | An Equihash-Bitcoin Gold (BTG) pool with Miningcore. |
| Developers | Developer guide | Wallets, atomic swaps, RPC, building from source. |
| Users | Wallet setup | Bitcoin Gold Core, ElectrumG, hardware wallets. |
| Security | Hardening | ufw, fail2ban, SSH keys, systemd sandboxing. |
Reference¶
- Network specification — magic bytes, ports, Equihash-Bitcoin Gold (BTG) parameters.
- Ports reference — every port you might need to open.
- RPC cheatsheet — the most useful
bgold-clicalls. - Release history — every Bitcoin Gold (BTG) release and the upgrade headlines.
- Notable security incidents — the 2018 Windows installer attack, the 2020 reorg attempt, the 2024 domain hijack.
- Glossary — terms used throughout the library.
Conventions¶
- Versions: examples target
bgolddv0.17.3 unless stated otherwise. v0.17.3 is the widely-deployed stable (released 2020-08-01). v0.21.3-beta is the current codebase but marked prerelease on GitHub and less deployed. - Ports: mainnet P2P is 8338 (not 8333). Testnet v3 P2P is 18338. RPC is 8332 on mainnet, 18332 on testnet, localhost only.
- Path: the canonical config path for
bgolddis/var/lib/bitcoingold/.bitcoingold/bitcoingold.conf. - Shell: every command-line example uses
bashand assumessudois available. - Address examples:
GYf8nyo1c8oWsHzbvL1fD3Ckgg68UzBi5J(do not send to this — it's a placeholder).
Language¶
- English at
/
Source and license¶
- Source: the production site at library.bitcoingold.services. The source for each course cites the BTCGPU repo, the BTCGPU wiki, and the live configs on this server.
- Contact: see the bitcoingold.services main site for the official channels. Note: as of 2024-07-15, the official domain is
btgofficial.org— do not trustbitcoingold.org.
Disclaimer¶
Running public Bitcoin Gold (BTG) infrastructure exposes you to the public internet. Nothing in this library is a substitute for understanding what you are running, hardening it properly, and monitoring it. Read the Hardening course before exposing a service.