Bitcoin pioneers Jeff Garzik and Matthew Roszak have announced UnitedBitcoin, a Bitcoin (EXANTE: Bitcoin) fork launched globally on December 12, 2017, LeapRate reported.
The purpose of UnitedBitcoin (UB) is to establish a credit currency system pegged against fiat currencies and support smart contracts that can serve society.
The offshoot comes a month after an earlier effort failed to gain enough support.
Bitcoin core developer Jeff Garzik, a proponent of the failed network upgrade known as SegWit2x, is leading the effort to increase capacity by raising block size to eight megabytes, as well as adding new smart contract features and support for the Lightning Network, which is a way to run more transactions.
“UB is not looking to replace Bitcoin, but rather is looking to support the progression of the ecosystem by introducing new technologies faster,” said Jeff Garzik.
“We look forward to this exciting next phase in Bitcoin’s evolution,” he added.
UB will retrain many of the mechanics of Bitcoin, such as the total volume, block-speed, halving time, SegWit integration and PoW algorithm, with initial lowered difficulty.