Showing the world that blocks and miners are not needed — the alternative Obyte witness model is working

Blocks and miners are so 2009. Where we are going, we won’t need blocks.

One of the main differences between Obyte and most distributed ledger projects is the use of public witnesses to help maintain the integrity of the network. There are no other distributed ledgers that use public witnesses, so Obyte is going where nobody has gone before in this regard. Well, good news, fresh evidence the model is working.

We announced our first public witness candidate last October, and our second in April. Its up to the community to decide whether or not to change their wallet settings to include the node address of the candidate.

Independent Witness Statistics

As of today, nearly all transactions on the network are using both independent public witnesses. The first witness has a steady 100% support, whilst the second has support fluctuating between 80%-100%, 97% within the last 12 hours.

We are now getting more accurate data than before as the main hub was recently fixed not to look too far into the past to find compatible parents for light nodes. Also, all of the witnesses have chosen the second witness to be in their witness list. Obbies can easily keep track of the state of witnesses via the witness monitoring service.

The witness model is working

Confirmation that the witness model is working as intended is very reassuring. Of course it would be great if we could find higher profile candidates, but such candidates are unlikely to want to be “the first”. The fact we now have 2 independent public witnesses showing the witness model works increases the likelihood of this happening.

A big thanks to all Obbies for helping show the world the public witness model works.