Backtracking a coin that is either derived/ forked from a (defunct) coin

Hello,

Suppose you have Jcoin which is a fork of Xcoin which is a fork of Ycoin which is a fork of Zcoin which is a clone of Litecoin.
Also suppose you are able to find where in the Litecoin repository Zcoin had forked such that you know Zcoin was derived from Litecoin v0.i.j.k.

With those versions and the known parent repository, you can then do a diff using git rebase of Jcoin code against the greatest common ancestor of them. (which would have been Litecoin in this case)

When you do the diff, you will likely find some strings which should be Jcoin, are left in the code by mistake, are found as Xcoin, Ycoin or Zcoin.
Another tell are the logos and icons. Often when a repository is forked, you'll find the most recent ancestor's graphics still in the repository as png/jpg/gif, etc.

Once you know Jcoin was derived from Xcoin, you can do the same exercise on the Xcoin code to find out where it had been derived from and then so on and so for Ycoin and then Zcoin making your way back to the original fork point from Litecoin.

Its a little bit of work, but you can automate the git steps with some shell scripts so that all you're left with is having to inspect the git log to see the differences.

Best Regards,
-Chicago