What is DigiByte?
DigiByte claims to have a proven and tested solution that is faster and safer than blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum.
By Ki Chong Tran – Jan 6, 2020 – <original article here>
According to DigiByte, blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum are not secure or scalable enough. DigiByte claims to have a proven and tested solution that is faster and safer than the competition.
What is DigiByte?
DigiByte is a complete blockchain network based on three different layers. The top layer is for smart contracts, decentralized applications, and customizable tokens. The middle layer is the public ledger where the DigitByte native coin can move throughout the network and serve as its base asset. The bottom layer is the core infrastructure of the system and includes the decentralized nodes, the client software, and the communication between each.
Who Invented DigiByte?
Jared Tate is the founder and creator of DigiByte and has been working on the project since 2013.
Did you know?
Both DigiByte and Bitcoin use Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO), which is a technical method for keeping track of blockchain transactions between accounts. However, DigiByte has over 9 million blocks as of July 2019 compared to Bitcoin’s less than 600,000 blocks. DigiByte is also 40 times faster than Bitcoin, making it the fastest and longest UTXO blockchain in the world.
A brief history of DigiByte
January 2014 – DigiByte is officially launched
April 2017 – Segwit is activated on DigitByte becoming the first major altcoin to do so
May 2019 – DigiAssets is launched
What’s so special about it?
Secure and battle-tested in the wild for over 5 years, DigiByte has proven that its security as a blockchain is for real. It’s most unique feature is the fact that the blockchain network uses five mining algorithms when most only use one. These five different mining algorithms are meant to prevent mining centralization and make the network more secure and decentralized.
In addition to having five mining algorithms, DigiByte also claims to have the “most advanced difficulty stability” of any current blockchain. The advanced difficulty adjustments are meant to protect the DigiByte blockchain from malicious attacks and further improve security.
Did you know?
DigiByte has had over 275,000 full nodes downloaded since April 2017 and 15,000 nodes active globally.
What else is different?
The newest innovation from DigiByte is DigiAssets, which is the top layer of the DigiByte blockchain that allows for smart contracts, decentralized applications, and programmable tokens. Because of DigiByte’s heightened security and scalability, the team believes that it offers the ideal base protocol for a platform like DigiAssets.
The first two DigiAssets were created by DigiByte founder, Jared Tate, in April 2019. The DigiTorch and DigiFlame are both meant to be passed on from different DigiByte community members as they build new projects on DigiAssets.
How is DigiByte produced?
DigiByte has a fixed supply and distribution schedule. A total of 21 billion DigiByte will be created within 21 years. Since there was no ICO or Token Generation Event, new DigiByte have been and always will be created through mining. The first DigiByte was mined in 2014 and the last of the 21 billion coins will be mined in 2035.
How do you get hold of DigiByte?
DigiByte can be purchased and traded on major exchanges such as Huobi. To use DigiByte off an exchange, you will have to download a DigiByte wallet. You can also earn DigiBytes through mining.
What can you do with DigiByte?
Like Bitcoin, DigiByte can be used for payments or transferring value. However, DigiByte is also used as the fuel to run the DigiAsset smart contract network. In this context, DigiByte functions like gas in Ethereum to pay for transactions or as the carrier for other assets and code to be sent and received.
The Future
Besides continually developing technical upgrades and improvements to the core protocol, the DigiByte launched DigiStats in the fall of 2019 to provide interactive and historical blockchain statistics, increase mobile and payment processing options, and create more fiat and USDT stablecoin pairings on different exchanges.
In January 2020, as the network turns 6, the company is also planning on launching the DigiByte Foundation which is designed to help with fund-raising inside the community.
Please make sure to follow us to stay up to date, and get involved. Soon we will publish bylaws, and get registered. Next steps will be community involvement, board completion, patron sponsorships, funding, etc.
However, the biggest and most important upcoming plan for DigiByte will be growing DigiAssets. If all goes according to plan, an entire ecosystem of dapps and ICO will be an integral part of the network.
https://decrypt.co/resources/digibyte-guide-blockchain-explained
Digibyte founder Jared Tate explores Digi-ID, DigiAssets and the latest developments for the community-built cryptocurrency.
By Tim Copeland Mar 21, 2019
Digibyte is an OG cryptocurrency. It has been kicking around in the top 40 cryptos by market cap for five years now, surviving the ICO wave where money flooded to projects that were built around hype and false expectations. Without any money, any paid ads, any company behind it—Digibyte has managed to survive and grow.
Now it has entered a new stage of development. Rather than stay a straightforward blockchain designed only for making payments, it has become a blockchain platform, similar to Ethereum. This means tokens—known as “DigiAssets”—can be built on Digibyte. Another key development is “Digi-ID,” which uses cryptographic signatures to replace passwords. The idea is to create a sort of universal sign in via Digibyte.
Digibyte’s founder, Jared Tate, was an early Bitcoin miner who used the proceeds he made when the Bitcoin price blew up to become self-sufficient. That enabled him to focus on Digibyte full time, Decrypt recently caught up with Tate to chat about his platform and where it’s headed.
What is Digibyte?
Digibyte is a community-built blockchain which aims to complement Bitcoin by being a fast and cheap alternative. Tate created it in 2014 and—like Bitcoin—is open source. Its core dev team has been expanding throughout the bear market, expanding from five members to around 12. A few of the devs are anonymous (even to Tate.)
“Here we are, five years later, we’re still talking and working. I’ve never met any of them in person. Two of them, I don’t even know their real name,” he said.
One of the main selling points of Digibyte is that it uses five mining algorithms to protect the network. This means when a miner tries to earn the right to create the next block in its blockchain, they have to use different calculations to do so. This makes it much harder for mining farms—large warehouses full of powerful computers—to take control of the network, and thwarts single-algorithm-optimized ASICs from mining it. Other cryptocurrencies have taken note.
Said Tate: “That code we wrote back then has found its way into everything. Even Ethereum uses it with their adjustment system. Zcash pulled it up. It’s in dozens of other top blockchains.”
Digibyte has also pioneered a more efficient way to run a blockchain light client—a mobile app that contains a streamlined version of the blockchain that can run on a phone. While the Bitcoin blockchain contains much more data, Digibyte has a much higher number of blocks in its chain—which makes it harder to run a light client. Tate believes the technology behind the Digibyte light client will eventually be adopted by Bitcoin, once its blockchain gets big enough to need it.
What are DigiAssets?
Though for years, it’s been technically possible to create a token on the DIgibyte platform, developers lacked easy to use tools. That’s about to change.
“It’s possible [to create DigiAssets] right now, but what we’re wanting to do is build the easy to use tools and interfaces that will allow it to quickly scale out,” Tate said, adding, “the biggest key thing here is we’ve had the time to sit back, analyze, research and figure out how we could do things better, cleaner, more scalable, and more efficient.”
Pretty much any asset can be tokenized and put on a blockchain platform. Tate gives examples of physical assets like real estate; legal contracts such as wills and unique pieces of digital art. He said, “I’ve talked to people that are talking about doing everything from representing airplanes to race cars.”
“That’s the beauty of using the cryptography behind the blockchain as you can limit digital items for the first time in the history of the Internet.”
One company already getting involved is San Diego-based Block 30 Labs. It’s building a suite of products on top of the Digibyte blockchain, including a marketplace for the exchange of digital assets.
Tate explained the Digibyte core team is working on adding support for Solidity, the programming language for decentralized applications (dapps) built on top of Ethereum. If this is implemented, then a dapp could be written in solidity but then ran on the Digibyte blockchain—a way of avoiding the congestions issues on Ethereum that happened in late 2017. This may appeal to developers who were considering building a dapp on Ethereum.
What is Digi-ID?
Digi-ID is an alternative to using passwords to sign into online applications. It works by using a blockchain-based signature. You generate the signature in the Digibyte app using the same private keys that keep your funds safe. This can then be used across any apps and platforms that support it, not just Digibyte dapps.
“Using almost the same system that allows you to sign a transaction on the Digibyte network, you can use those private keys to authenticate yourself to log into a website,” Tate explained.
This has a few benefits. It means you can use just one app to sign into a variety of applications—without giving any of them the same piece of data. The signatures are time sensitive and unique every time they’re created. That means if the website suffers a data breach—which does happen—it is less of a problem because the hacker can’t reuse the signatures to sign into anything, unlike passwords.
“The beautiful thing here is, it’s open source. So there’s no company behind it. We really feel like—because it’s using blockchain technology in such a unique way—we’re going to see a fair amount of traction with it,” said Tate.
Digi-ID is actually based on an old-school of Bitcoin protocol, was created in 2014. The technology was trialled by payment processor BitPOS in 2016, but little progress has been made since then. Companies such as Antum, which allows users to create private and secure online identities, have started implementing the Digi-ID system and hope that it will spark a comeback of the idea.
Working with the community
One of the key things about Digibyte is that it has maintained a strong community following—which could be as large as a few hundred thousand people—which help to keep it running and growing as a network. Since there’s no big pool of money for the cryptocurrency—there was no ICO or company behind it—individuals have had to donate their time and effort to support the day-to-day things that have to be done to maintain it.
This has led to a sprawling, decentralized web of people that vaguely resembles a company. Some Digibyters have taken on responsibility for getting the token listed on exchanges—despite there being no money to pay for listing fees—while others have helped to manage communications, and provide support for people learning how to use the cryptocurrency.
This has led to hotspots in community activity across the world, with particular focus in North America and Europe, as well as in Japan, India and Latin America. Together the community has formed a Digibyte awareness team which helped to create the DigiByte Global Summit, occurring in Amsterdam next month.
“We’re not here to hype Digibyte up, pump it up, and then, you know, just disappear,” Tate said, adding, “it’s really taken on a life of its own and there’s a very driven, dedicated community behind it.” Despite being an OG in the crypto game, Digibyte looks like it’s just getting started.
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