The mechanism of the formation of different junction structures of gold nanowires under stretching has been studied by comprehensive molecular dynamics (MD) simulations using the second-moment approximation of the tight-binding (TB-SMA) potential. The simulations (540 MD runs in total) reveal that there is an inherent rate-dependent energy release law that unifies the effects of the system size, the temperature, and elongation rate on the dynamic elongations of gold nanowires.