Track record

DigiByte has been focused on cyber security from the start. Officially launched in 2014 on January 10th, the genesis block included a hash headline of: “USA Today: 10/Jan/2014, Target: Data stolen from up to 110M customers”.

From day one, Jared felt it is possible to fix 95% of the cyber security vulnerabilities the internet is facing today by using blockchain technology. How should one relate to that? He likes to bring in the analogy of DNA in nature. If you look at your own body you have millions of cells of DNA throughout your system. But what if all the DNA in your body was just kept in your fingertip? What if you would have an accident or chopped it of cutting out vegetables. That would be a problem. That is kind of like how the internet works today. We have all these very centralized services where if you have a data breach or you have some problem, it causes a lot of damage. There are just a lot of vulnerabilities because when the internet was first developed, it was not designed to be secure.

Blockchain technology is rebuilding the internet from the ground up, mimicking what we have seen in nature for millennia and transitioning that into the digital data world. Look at all nature around you whether it is trees, plants or whatever. All these have one thing in common which are their seeds. They are all carrying identical copies of themselves. That is how life survives.

A couple of months after the official launch of DigiByte, the first hard fork occurred at block 67,200 on February 28th, 2014. DigiByte developers acted in response to multi-pool attacks and developed an asymmetrical difficulty adjustment system named ‘DigiShield’.

According to Jared, if one would take all the Bitcoin hashing power in the world and point it to DigiByte, you would only get 20% of the blocks. This is because of DigiShield (now called MultiShield) that allows for real-time difficulty adjustment.

Why is this so important? Difficulty adjustment is what makes sure that for example on the Bitcoin blockchain blocks occur every ten minutes, in the case of DigiByte this happens every 15 seconds.

A lot of people do not realize that back in 2014 a lot of the ‘old-school’ altcoins like Dogecoin and Litecoin were attacked. When DigiByte first launched in 2014, they had a two-hour retarget and had the same difficulty adjustment as Bitcoin (every 10 minutes). At that time, people were able to attack the DigiByte chain. The attackers would mine blocks every few seconds until the difficulty finally caught up and then they would instantly go dump these DigiBytes on the exchanges. Then they would leave, resulting in a blockchain with insane difficulty and hardly any hashpower so all of a sudden, the blocks would freeze, creating a frozen blockchain sometimes for days.

Nobody wants to use a blockchain which can be frozen at any given point in time so DigiByte pioneered a solution for this; the real-time difficulty adjustment. This solution is now implemented into most other cryptocurrencies from Bitcoin Cash (BCH) to Zcash (ZEC). Even Ethereum (ETH) pulled in some of the stuff DigiByte pioneered.

Back in 2014, because of those attacks the Dogecoin blockchain was frozen for almost two days, and the same thing could happen with Bitcoin today since the Bitcoin hashing power is pretty centralized in southern China. If there is a natural disaster that knocks out the area where most massive Bitcoin mining farms are located, all ‘Bitcoiners’ would have a major problem since transactions would validate a lot slower. At the weekend of November 11th, Bitcoin’s hash rate fell by 50% over two days as miners switched their machines from Bitcoin (BTC) to Bitcoin Cash (BCC), because it was more profitable to do so.

The drop in the hash rate meant that the average time taken to complete a bitcoin transaction doubled from 10 minutes to 20 minutes or more, according to bitcoin analyst Jimmy Song. A steep and prolonged drop in Bitcoin’s hash rate could set off a much-feared “chain death spiral” that could render the Bitcoin network useless.

DigiShield re-targets a coin’s difficulty to protect against multi-pools and an over-inflation of easily mined new coins. DigiShield re-targets a coin’s difficulty between every block or in the case of DigiByte, every 60 seconds. Basically, DigiShield prevents one algorithm from mining more than 5 blocks in a row, even in the event they were able to stack their hashing power in such a way that they tried to beat the difficulty adjustment.

MultiAlgo

DigiByte’s state of the art security makes it more secure than other digital currencies. On the first of September 2014, DigiByte hard forked again to introduce ‘MultiAlgo’. Activated from the MyriadCoin source code, this hard fork allowed for multi-algorithm mining. Its purpose was to create a number of different Proof of Work (PoW) mining methods to accommodate the different types of mining capabilities that exist, such as dedicated ASIC mining, GPU and CPU mining. This allows for a larger number of people to mine DigiByte therefore it creates a more decentralized blockchain with the coins reaching groups of miners who were unable to mine the coin on its original single-algorithm (Scrypt) fork. From that moment on, DigiByte miners have the ability to choose to mine on five separate algorithms. These algorithms include; sha256, skein, qubit, groestl and scrypt. Each algorithm is better suited to different types of mining hardware. Sha256 & scrypt are now almost exclusively mined by advanced “ASIC” miners. Skein and groestl are good for GPU’s and qubit is a combination of multiple types of hardware.

Most coins are vulnerable to 51% attacks, since they have use just one hashing algorithm. In short, this means you are either going to have a blockchain that is dominated by ASIC miners, such as Bitcoin or Litecoin, or you will have one that is all GPU, such as the Equihash algorithm. This makes such a blockchain more vulnerable to 51% attacks by large multipools.

However, it is claimed that in order to perform an 51% on the DigiByte blockchain, an attacker would need 93% of one algorithm, and 51% of the remaining 4 algorithms thanks to DigiBytes MultiAlgo and MultiShield systems activated in September 2014. To perform a 51% attack on the network, it is not just a bunch of ASICs you need.

MultiShield

MultiShield is very similar to DigiShield, except it now works with all 5 hashing algorithms. This was activated in December 2014, and again brings the protection from multipool mining to all five algorithms in the same way DigiShield did in February of 2014.

DigiSpeed

DigiSpeed halved the Block time from 30 seconds (150 seconds per algo) down to 15 seconds (75 seconds per-algo). This means the next block in the blockchain is found more frequently (15 seconds for DigiByte vs 10 minutes for Bitcoin, a factor of 40x!) which allows more transactions-per-second.

Transactions each take up a small amount of space (data) in each block, and so Bitcoin gets to fill up 1MB every 10 minutes, whereas DigiSpeed allowed the block size to increase up to 10MB with built-in future increases (doubles every 2 years), to be scalable enough for the future.

SegWit

DigiByte was the first blockchain to integrate the Segregated Witness system for dealing with lengthier blockchains. SegWit is the process by which the block size limit on a blockchain is increased by removing signature data from transactions. When certain parts of a transaction are removed, this frees up space or capacity allowing for more transactions to be added to the chain. SegWit has only recently seen use in the Bitcoin blockchain, and not without a fair share of controversy. The hard fork of Bitcoin Cash came about from a disagreement mostly related to SegWit integration.

DiguSign

Cyber-security is a big deal. Nations and companies are spending billions of dollars each year to protect themselves against cybercrimes. When it comes to ‘security’, it is all about ‘cyber security’. DiguSign (https://digusign.com/) is an application built on top of the DigiByte blockchain. It can be used to secure and notarize any contract in the blockchain, to validate an existing contract in the blockchain and it enables complete transparency in a decentralized blockchain.

A Document/contract is secured in the DigiByte blockchain by taking the secure cryptographic SHA256 hash of a document and embedding it in a transaction that is then broadcasted to thousands of servers across the planet in a decentralised manner. In this way, contracts are safer and more efficient. People and business love to save money, now they can by using DiguSign.

Digi-ID is where you have your own wallet and your private keys, but instead of using your private keys just to send and receive transactions you have this decentralized system that you can trust but do not have to trust (it is a trustless system) to authenticate yourself when you log in a website. So instead of having to remember 100 different passwords for different systems, you can literally use your wallet and use your keys to cryptographically sign in and out of a website. You do not have that centralized system which can be breached. Find out more at www.digi-id.io.

GPU friendliness

There was a hard fork scheduled by the DigiByte foundation in the Summer of 2018. The hard fork would bring changes to the mining algorithms on the network to ensure GPU friendliness but the hard fork was canceled. When we asked why, this was the response: “Focus is now on more important things. Fighting ASICS’s with forks is not necessary or helpful; ASICS evolve too quickly. This is not a bad thing. They help secure the network, so long as they are not moving things towards a centralized nature DigiByte is not going to fight them”.

DigiByte’s milestones

Below you will find all the milestones and achievements that DigiByte accomplished in the past 4 years.

2014

2014, Jan: DigiByte launched

2014, Jan: DigiByte releases Android Wallet

2014, Feb: DigiShield hardfork at block 67,200.

2014, Apr: professional presentation at the first ever cryptocurrency convention in New York.

2014, Sep: MultiAlgo hardfork at block 145,000.

2014, Dec: MultiShield hardfork at block 400,000.

2015

2015, Jan: DigiByte releases DigiHash Easy Miner for beginners.

2015, Jan: DigiByte releases 1st Web Based Multi-Signature Wallet.

2015, Jan: The first DigiByte wallet has been approved & listed on the Apple iTunes store.

2015, March: DigiHash Easy Miner 2.0 released.

2015, Jun: DigiByte has been added to the Coinomi Wallet.

2015, Jun: DigiByte Gaming Wallet released for Android and Chrome extension.

2015, Sept: DigiByte Gaming Chrome App Updated.

2015, Sept: DigiSpeed hardfork at block 1,430,000.

2015, Nov: Update DigiByte Android Wallet.

2015, Dec: DigiByte releases DigiByte wallet v4.0.0.

2016

2016, March: Jared Tate as speaker at “Blockchain and Bitcoin Africa conference 2016”.

2016, March: Jared Tate as speaker at FinDEVr New York 2016.

2016, Apr: Byte Academy Finance and Technology Community meet up.

2016, Apr: DigiByte attended at LA Games Conference 2016.

2016, Apr: DigiByte have partnered with Slingshot eSport.

2016, Apr: DigiByte attended at CollisionHQ.

2016, May: Jared Tate as speaker at Finovate 2016 in San Jose.

2016, May: DigiByte attended at RISE conference 2016.

2016, Jun: Jared Tate as speaker Global Blockchain Summit 2016.

2016, Jun: Officially partnering with Microsoft Biz Spark.

2016, Jun: DigiBot Version 3.0 Update – Telegram Tipping.

2016, Nov: Jared Tate speaks about DigiByte and the future of Blockchain at CreditSuisse

2017

2017, Apr: DigiByte SegWit signaling.

2017, Apr: First major blockchain to implement SegWit support, ahead of BTC/LTC etc.

2017, Apr: 1st SegWit test block on version 6.13.1 has been mined.

2017, May: Developer Playground released.

2917, May: DiguSign store, notarize and validate documents in the DigiByte blockchain.

2017, Jun: Digibyte Emma Releases the first part of the future AI aspect of DigiByte.

2017, Jun: DiguSign has been selected as a finalist for the Citi bank Tech 4 integrity challenge.

2017, Jun: Jared Tate speaks and participate on a panel Citi bank Tech 4 integrity challenge.

2017, Jun: Wirex Digibyte Debit Card.

2017, Jul: 1st DigiByte Transaction at Blocknet Decentralize Exchange.

2017, Aug: DigiByte add by Coinpayments payment gateway.

2017, Aug: DigiByte rebranding.

2017, Sept: DigiByte add By Buyucoin, HitBTC.

2017, Oct: Digibyte new website released.

2017, Oct: Clifford Chance announces Tech for Integrity legal award recipients to DigiByte.

2017, Oct: DigiByte add by Upbit, Kucoin, Barterdex, Coinspot, Coingate, HitBTC, Bit-Z.

2017, Oct: DigiByte available at Ledger Nano and Blue wallet.

2017, Nov: Trezor update device firmware for Digibyte Support.

2017, Nov: DigiByte Accepted at Top Airport Parking in 25 Airports & Cruises.

2017, Nov: DigiByte Foundation website releases.

2017, Oct: Jared Tate as speaker at Texas Bitcoin Conference 2017.

2017, Dec: DigiByte add by Crypto Change, Cryptobridge, AlcurEX Exchanges.

2017, Dec: DigiByte add by OKEX, Bitotal, Changelly, EVERCOIN, IAZO Exchanges.

2017, Dec: DigiByte add by Kamoney payment gateway.

Q1 2018

1/ DigiByte is available for atomic swap trading on the Komodo platform DEX.

2/ DigiByte iOS wallet has been submitted to Apple store for testing approval.

3/ DigiByte add by Bittylicious exchange

4/ DigiByte add by Coindirect, Coinome, Indacoin, Bitfeks, Shiftexexchanges

5/ Update Core 6.15.3 wallet.

6/ Testing Core 6.16.1. First crypto wallet with SegWit transaction from GUI interface.

7/ Announcing the DigiByte Bounty Fund for Experienced C/C++ developer.

8/ The DigiByte Foundation update.

9/ Jared Tate as speaker at MIT Bitcoin Expo.

10/ DigiByte add by ABRAGlobal, Sistemcoin.

11/ DigiByte.io email DMARC record active.

12/ DigiByte OneClickMiner released.

13/ DigiByte wallet v6.15.2 released.

14/ Apple approves iOS wallet for TestFlight Beta testing.

15/ DigiByte integration with Trezor.

16/ DigiByte Core Wallet 6.16.1 announced.

17/ Core Wallet Speed improvements, now fully syncs over 6 million blocks in ~2hrs.

18/ First major blockchain to support SegWit in 6.16.1.

19/ Initial DigiByte Developer Bounty Fund.

20/ DigiByte Core Wallet 6.16.2 released, additional minor fixes over 6.16.1.

21/ Initial philanthropic venture in Venezuela, fed 160 orphan children for over a month.

22/ Mobile (Android & iOS) redesign contest begins.

Q2 2018

1/ Jared Tate speaks at the business, Regulation, and Technology of Blockchain Conference.

2/ The Voting DigiByte new mobile UI.

3/ DigiByte add by OkcoinKR, bitexlive Exchanges.

4/ Jared speaks at MIT Blockchain Club 2018.

5/ Announcing 4th Bounty DigiID integration with Android & iOS wallet.

6/ DigiByte Available at Exodus wallet.

7/ Proposal for the use of DigiByte in David Hay Crypto Cucuta project.

8/ DigiByte Android Beta Support DigiID.

9/ DigiID website releases.

10/ DigiByte add by Bitit, Instaswap, Coinbrood, Maplechange, Vertpig Exchanges.

11/ Digibyte available at Guarda-, JAXXliberty and Atomic Wallet.

12/ Abra lists DigiByte for trading.

13/ DigiByte integration with Exodus Wallet.

14/ Final MVP release of DigiByte App for Android accepted to Google Play Store.

15/ Digi-ID.io website launched along with promo video and supporting documentation.

16/ Example Digi-ID libraries now available for 3rd-party integrators.

17/ DigiByte Developer Bounty Fund completed successfully.

18/ Second philanthropic venture in Venezuela successful, helped a school with technology, cryptocurrency and classroom supplies.

19/ Mobile redesign contest completed successfully, design implemented.

20/ Linda mobile / web wallet support for DigiByte added.

21/ Guarda Mobile wallet for DigiByte.

22/ Atomic Wallet for DigiByte.

23/ DigiByte support added on Coinomi for iOS.

24/ DigiByte One-click miner released for easy GPU-mining.

25/ Foundation of The DigiByte Awareness Team.

26/ DX Exchange will list DigiByte at launch.

DigiByte Foundation

The DigiByte Foundation is an unincorporated, worldwide, decentralized community of developers dedicated to supporting DigiByte blockchain technical development initiatives. The foundation was an effort that was put together by a bunch of volunteers, which included Jared and a hand full of other people. It was started in the fall of 2017 and it is kind of a way to oversee and ensure development and branding of the DigiByte blockchain. There are no salary employees, it is all voluntary base. The mission is to help encourage awareness and to help encourage development of the blockchain.

The foundation has a Dev Fund which supports the core DigiByte protocol development. Next to the development this fund also pays the reoccurring monthly expenses such as supporting services like DigiExplorer, Emma AI and more. Currently, these expenses are running around $3,000 USD per month.

The DigiByte Foundation is dedicated to supporting the DigiByte global blockchain through three primary pillars of education, outreach, and development.

Education

The Foundation will provide official learning material for developers, investors and anyone interested in the DigiByte Ecosystem.

Outreach

The Foundation will continue to reach out to potential partners, organizations and governments to further increase global adoption of the DigiByte Blockchain.

Development

The Foundation will oversee development and support to future-proof DigiByte applications and the core DigiByte protocol.

Below are some projects initiated by the DigiByte foundation:

DigiHash – The mining pool of the DigiByte Foundation. Mine here to contribute.

The mining pool of the DigiByte Foundation. Mine here to contribute. DigiBot – A Telegram bot for users to interact with DigiByte and much more.

A Telegram bot for users to interact with DigiByte and much more. Digi-ID Use the DigiByte Blockchain for authentication. Replacement for passwords and 2FA.

Use the DigiByte Blockchain for authentication. Replacement for passwords and 2FA. DigiByte Playground – Interactive JavaScript sandbox to learn to build on top of DigiByte.

Interactive JavaScript sandbox to learn to build on top of DigiByte. DigiByte Emma A.I. – DigiBytes very own AI assistant. Ask her anything about DigiByte.

DigiBytes very own AI assistant. Ask her anything about DigiByte. DigiByte DigiMan – Browser to utilize many aspects of the security of DigiByte.

Browser to utilize many aspects of the security of DigiByte. DigiByte DigiSeeder – Seeding service to ensure all wallets rapidly find other peers.

Seeding service to ensure all wallets rapidly find other peers. DigiByte DigiMessenger – A secure messaging app built on DigiByte that is being prototyped.

A secure messaging app built on DigiByte that is being prototyped. DigiByte Easy Miner – An easy miner for beginners to begin mining DigiByte.

DigiByte Holdings LTD

DigiByte Holdings Limited is dedicated to leveraging the DigiByte blockchain for real world business uses and applications. Ranging from consumer acquisition to data security to supply chain management, their team is set on leading the next generation of fintech-driven industry evolution and providing results-driven insights to the greater financial and digital global community.

Please note DigiByte Holdings is its own for-profit commercial entity built on top of the DigiByte blockchain. DigiByte Holdings has nothing to do with the foundation or community. A large part of the reason why the founder and creator Jared Tate left Hong Kong was because he and his partners did not agree on how DiguSign should be further developed, expanded and marketed. DiguSign is a privately held service owned by DGB Holdings company of Hong Kong.

However, DigiByte holdings is still worth mentioning.

Their Vision

To utilize DigiByte blockchain technology to leverage its key security and speed-based properties to transform industries with scalable, cost effective solutions that would otherwise be unattainable.

Their Mission

To establish a global payments and security platform operating on decentralized DigiByte blockchain technology.

The website of DigiByte Holdings looks outdated and some parts are not working.

Use cases

DigiByte has been created to fix some of Bitcoins flaws like scalability and transactions per second, but security will remain the #1 area of focus of DigiByte.

DigiByte’s Purpose: to make DigiByte the fastest, most secure & scalable blockchain in the world well in to the 2030’s driven by real world utility and successful use cases.

DigiByte’s Vision: DigiByte will continue growing into a multibillion-dollar worldwide financial, cyber security and data protection public blockchain with security incentivized by the “DigiByte” digital asset.

Why should I use or HODL DigiByte?

DigiByte is one of the most secure cryptos available due to their MultiAlgo and real time difficulty adjustment. Thanks to MultiAlgo, DigiByte has very fast block times (15 seconds) which allow very fast transactions. You can send your DigiByte to the end of the world within minutes for practically no fee in a very secure way.

Next to using DigiByte as a currency there are other use cases as well. For example, using the DigiByte mobile wallet as a 2-factor authentication app, secure & embed PDF documents in the DigiByte blockchain or even secure and notarize any contract In the DigiByte blockchain by using DiguSign.

DigiByte Blockchain technology can be leveraged and applied to applications, fixing 90% of the most common vulnerabilities affecting the internet today. In the future Digibyte Blockchain Technology can be applied to IOT devices requiring robust communications fixing the security flaws IOT devices combat today. By combining advancements in DigiByte’s Blockchain technology with artificial intelligence, Digibyte is also exploring new innovations in automation and data analysis.

One of a kind

DigiByte is not really one of a kind, there are a lot of cryptocurrencies which are mainly focused on transactions. However, DigiByte did pioneer a lot of innovations like DigiShield and was the first cryptocurrency to implement SegWit in April 2017. DigiByte is also focusing on building great DApps whit a focus on cyber security on top of the DigiByte digital asset. Some are already working and being used, but there is a lot more room to grow. The adoption of DigiByte really depends on the future DApps being built on top of it.

Target market

The target market for DigiByte is huge. It is basically everybody who is willing and able to use a decentralized currency. Next to these people, DigiByte also targets organizations by for example offering DiguSign to sign their contracts on to the blockchain. As one can imagine, the target market could be massive if more DApps with great use cases would be built on top of the DigiByte blockchain.

Kind of Blockchain

DigiByte has a Proof of Work consensus algorithm implemented since its genesis block was mined on January 10, 2014. Every block of the DigiByte blockchain currently takes 15 seconds to create. DigiBytes can be mined. However, DigiByte does not have a traditional Proof of Work consensus mechanism implemented like Bitcoin for example. Mining DigiByte can be done through 5 different algorithms.

How does the coin work? How to incentivize miners?

DigiByte is a POW cryptocurrency, meaning that miners get incentivized for validating transactions in the blocks. Proof of work determines if the blocks that have been mined by the miner are the same blocks that are present with the majority of nodes across the network. The current block reward is 753 DigiBytes and this block reward will be decreased by 1% every month (Digibyte, 2018).

Centralized or Decentralized?

When we look at decentralization, DigiByte is one of the most decentralized if not the most decentralized blockchain. There are over 200.000 full node installations, and thanks to DigiByte’s MultiAlgo system hashing power centralization like with for example Bitcoin and Litecoin probably will not likely happen. Also, if this happens with one of their five algorithms, DigiByte can easily swap that algorithm for a new one to combat miner centralization.

Roadmap

DigiByte has a clear detailed roadmap. When you look at the accomplished milestones (which we described earlier in this review), it becomes evident that DigiByte has been working diligently the last four years.

For a community driven cryptocurrency without ICO treasury it is really amazing to see how much is already achieved. When looking at the upcoming developments which we will describe later on in this review it becomes clear that most of the Q3 developments have already been completed.

It seems that DigiByte is setting clear goals and is able to complete these goals within the selected timeframe. Looking at the scheduled developments (Q4 2018 and Q1 2019) there will be a lot to look forward to especially the scheduled DigiAssets for launching ICO’s and DApps on top of the Digibyte Blockchain peaked our interest.

Working product or testnet?

DigiByte has a working blockchain since early 2014. Due to its fast block time it is currently the longest UTXO in existence. Transactions are validated within seconds and thanks to Proof of Work and their MultiAlgo system it might be one of the most secure UTXO blockchains in the world.

A UTXO is an unspent transaction output. In an accepted transaction in a valid blockchain payment system (such as Bitcoin, Litecoin and DigiByte), only unspent outputs can be used as inputs to a transaction. When a transaction takes place, inputs are deleted and outputs are created as new UTXOs that may then be consumed in future transactions. In the DigiByte network, which uses this model, a UTXO is the amount that is transferred to a DigiByte address (along with information required to unlock the output amount) during a transaction.

Received amounts (UTXOs) are used individually during a transaction and new outputs are created – one for the receiver and, if applicable, one for the amount that is left over (change output). The amount sent to the recipient becomes a new UTXO in the recipient’s address while the change output becomes a new UTXO in the sender’s address that may be used in a future transaction.

Treasury

DigiByte did not hold an ICO so there are no funds available. Everything so far has come from community donations and the hard work of dedicated members and Jared. At the start of 2018 DigiByte started accepting community donations towards the Digibyte marketing Fund. These donations were used to hire Tom Cridland Public Relations. Currently the funds are safe in a MultiSig wallet which requires the signature of Jared Tate, Josiah and ‘Ycagel’ before funds can be sent anywhere.

GitHub (developments)

The last month there have been over 175 commits on GitHub. Most of the commits this month where added to DigiByte core 6.16.3 development. In total 41 different authors have made changes last month. Looking at this we see quite a few people contributing to the DigiByte code.

When looking at GitHub commits, it is very important to have a look at the actual changes that were made during a commit. This is important because a few changes to a readme file also count as a commit.

When looking at some of the commits that were done to branch 6.16.3 we see that most of these commits are actually changes in the code (not just text in a readme file) which is a good thing.

Coin structure

All DigiBytes currently in existence and mined in the future have and will be created through PoW mining. None of the coins have been pre-mined, airdropped or obtained through any other way then mining.

Current market capitalization and (max)supply

Currently there are 10,727,586,885 DigiBytes in circulation according to CoinmarketCap on August 30th, 2018. The market capitalization of DigiByte is 305,773,814 USD with the price being $0.028504. The maximum amount of DigiBytes to ever be in existence will be 21.000.000.000. The last DigiBytes will be mined somewhere in 2035.

Rich list percentage

Since there are no DigiBytes pre-mined the coins are more evenly distributed than most other blockchains. In the tables below the Top N addresses can be seen, their holdings and the percentage of the total coins of the circulating supply. There are two tables shown, this is because a large percentage of the holdings are currently on exchanges, and with these included there is not a factual representation of the distribution of coins, since these exchanges store the coins of many people on the same address.

Table 1.1 includes the wallets of exchanges whereas table 1.2 excludes them. However, the wallets of exchanges like Upbit, OKEx and KuCoin are not excluded, since their addresses are unknown. The info provided for both tables has been extracted from chainz.cryptoid.info/dgb/#!rich on 19-7-2018 and is updated till DigiByte block 69836798.

In the tables above, big differences are shown. The top 10 addresses hold 7.78% of the total supply and the top 50 15.54%. However, this is still not a factual representation since other exchanges are not excluded from table 1.2, since these wallets are unknown there is no way to paint a better picture, sadly.

Founder rewards/ lockup

While Jared Tate obviously holds a significant amount of DigiBytes, these are all mined by himself and bought on exchanges, as zero DigiBytes are pre-mined. This also means that there is no lockup period for team members, but as long as they believe in their own project they will obviously not dump their mined or bought DigiBytes on exchanges.

Competitors

DigiByte is one of the many cryptocurrencies which was built to improve certain flaws in Bitcoin. It is community driven as said before. No ICO was held and most improvements have been a community effort. The top competitors who also focus on transactions/decentralized money and are community driven are Bitcoin and Litecoin.

DigiByte vs Bitcoin

DigiByte was founded by Jared Tate over four and a half years ago, as stated earlier in the analysis. The mindset at the time was to create a better version of Bitcoin, with a focus on cybersecurity. This automatically makes Bitcoin one of their competitors.

When looking at the infographic below it becomes quite clear how DigiByte aims to realize their goal. DigiByte is more scalable. Bitcoin has 4-7 transactions per second vs DigiByte’s 560 transactions per second, their block time is a lot faster (10 minutes vs 15 seconds) and DigiByte is way more secure.

According to the founder Jared Tate, all the Bitcoin hash power in the world would allow only 20% of all DigiByte blocks to be minted due to the five algorithms and the real-time difficulty adjustment. These five different mining algorithms also provide a lot less miner centralization since ASIC miners in countries with cheap electricity cannot dominate all these algorithms.

When looking at the number of full nodes, DigiByte claims there are over 230,000 full nodes downloaded. In the infographic below this is compared to the number of online nodes running on the Bitcoin network, which is not a clear comparison. Bitcoin has 9,636 nodes online at the time of writing. Unfortunately, we have not been able to find the number of online nodes for DigiByte.

In the table below, we compared the daily transaction volume (USD) and the amount of daily transactions on the 15th of August 2018. Please note this is a snapshot, but in general the differences are about the same. It becomes quite clear that DigiByte still has a long way to go. Both the volume and number of transactions on the DigiByte network does not even get near big brother Bitcoin.

DigiByte vs Litecoin

Litecoin was founded by Charlie Lee. Charlie, as an ex-Google employee, had a vision to create a Lighter version of Bitcoin. The goal was to gain a cryptocurrency that was cheaper and suitable for everyday use. Cheaper in this context, also means that the transaction fees needed to be significantly lower. Litecoin and DigiByte both try to be a cryptocurrency which is more suitable for everyday use. A crypto which can actually be used as a payment system.

Basically, DigiByte improved upon the initial goal of Litecoin. The TPS, real time difficulty adjustment and even lower transaction fees is what sets DigiByte apart from Litecoin.

After a heated discussion between Jared and Charlie Lee on Twitter about the possibility of a 51% attack on DigiByte. It is not really clear in what way the remaining four algorithms and the real time difficulty adjustment that MultiShield offers will protect the DigiByte blockchain.

When comparing the daily transaction volume (USD) and the amount of daily transactions on the 15th of August 2018 Litecoin is still ways ahead of DigiByte.

In 2012, the average transaction value of a Visa transaction was $91. Nowadays the average transaction on the Litecoin blockchain has a value of S3.273,76. On the DigiByte blockchain the average transaction has a value of S379,83. So even though DigiByte still has a lot of transaction volume to catch up to the number of transactions, this data shows that DigiByte is also being used for smaller payments.

Marketing – it’s all about awareness

The marketing of DigiByte is picking up steam. There is a lot of communication between the community and outsiders. New partnerships or exchange listings are continuously on the horizon.

What people like the most about DigiByte is that DigiByte was not born out of an ICO. There was never a massive pre-mine, there was never a central entity behind it.

DigiByte has always been completely driven by volunteers, people who are donating their time, money and experiences to foster the wide-spread adoption of DigiByte. This comes closest to the original vision Satoshi Nakamoto had when he created Bitcoin back in 2009. However, the disadvantage of this is the lack of a big marketing budget.

Until 2017, most DigiByte members have always focused on development and making great DAPPs, which we believe is a good thing. The idea was that awareness will come naturally when the tech is perfect including DAPPs with real world use cases. Back in 2017, when the ICO hype was at its best, a frequently heard complaint from DigiByte fans is their lack of marketing. Since then, a lot has changed.

Back in January 2018, members of the DigiByte Foundation decided to tackle things in a more professional way and launched the ‘DigiByte Marketing Fund’. With the funds raised by the community, DGB could hire a PR firm in order to bring their marketing efforts to a higher level.

By launching the fund, DGB had both short-term and long-term goals, with 300,000 DigiByte being their immediate goal so that they could give the go-ahead for the PR firm for a February 1st start, and a 1.6 million DigiByte ‘stretch goal’ to allow even more marketing, advertising, brand refinement and more. At first glance it was a great success, with 300,000 DGB being raised within no time.

However, hiring process could have been better. The firm was elected without input from the community. At that time, DGB gave the following comment: “Unfortunately we have already gone through a number of firms, and have spent countless hours over the last several weeks vetting and performing as much due diligence as we can.

We believe we have found the best firm to assist us and are not taking any applications at this time.” In the meantime, apologies have been offered and DigiByte and the PR firm are still working together. At this time, it is too early to say if the DigiByte Marketing Fund was a success.

By any means, we appreciate DigiByte’s effort to professionalize their marketing. After hiring the PR-firm, some community members founded DGBAT. DGBAT is an organized group of community members who are responsible for DigiByte’s marketing. The DGBAT core team currently consists of 15 members who are taking care of professional outreach to exchanges and companies. In total, the DGBAT team consists of 32 members, mostly active on social media.

To show some of DigiByte’s current marketing efforts we would like to refer to the following video. DigiByte is helping those in need in Venezuela to provide economic refugees with the means to rebuild their economy using blockchain technology. At the same time, they are creating more awareness of the DigiByte blockchain.

If you want to know more about the DigiByte Venezuelan project, click here.

Community

DigiByte probably has one of the larger communities within the altcoin landscape. There is a lot of engagement between team members and the community on most social media platforms and there really is a positive atmosphere. For example, almost all posts on reddit are about the technology or future expectations. Of course, there is also the occasional moon/ Lambo post but it would not be the crypto sphere if those posts were missing.

Communication

Up until the end of 2017, DigiByte did not really have a marketing team by being a community driven digital asset. They did not want to create any FUD or FOMO but preferred organic growth. They absence of a marketing team did not wield the results DigiByte had in mind, since this resulted in a lot of FUD or FOMO from certain groups within the community.

For example, with the ‘MinethatDigi project’ (an initiative from someone in the community) people were implying that there was a partnership with the multibillion dollar company Minecraft, while there was not.

During the Citi Bank ‘Tech for Integrity Challenge’ there was a lot of miscommunication about the date of the finals, which caused the community to panic.

We are pleased to say that this is a thing of the past as there is currently a great marketing team in place consisting of community members and hired PR from Tom Cridland. Nowadays, DigiByte communicates on a daily basis with its community, and even Blockfolio recognized their punctuality in the following tweet.

Social Media Activity

Telegram

DigiByte has multiple Telegram channels. The ‘Official’ channel is the most active group with over 16.000 members. If you have a question, do not hesitate to ask others and you will get a full response within no time. Jared Tate, the founder and creator of DigiByte also stops by from time to time. Another channel to keep an eye on is the DigiByte alerts channel, where all important DGB news is being shared. Over 10.000 people are following this chat. Other Telegram channels are ‘DigiByte Support Official’, ‘DigiByte Marketing Channel’, ‘DigiByte Mining’, ‘DigiByte Developer Official’, ‘DigiByte North America’, ‘DigiByte Europe’ and ‘Speculations of DigiByte’. All these channels are perfect to get a quick answer to a specific question if needed.

Twitter

Since the crypto community is really active on Twitter, where a lot of interactions between other businesses and crypto projects take place, Twitter is an important medium. The official DigiByte Twitter channel is @DigiByteCoin and has gained over 149.000 followers over the past years. Every tweet has hundreds of interactions and DigiByte tweets multiple times a day to keep the community up-to-date and active. While DGB is decentralized and thus independent of a single person or entity, Jared plays an important role in the DigiByte community. You can follow the founder and creator of DigiByte by looking for @JaredCtate on Twitter.

Reddit

The DigiByte subreddit contains over 19.000 subscribers. Everyday multiple discussions are started where the community debates over multiple topics. To visit DigiByte on Reddit click here.

Medium

The DigiByte community is active on Medium. This platform is often used to make extensive announcements or to explain subjects in more detail. It also functions as a marketing platform. Josiah Spackman writes most frequently about the current developments of DigiByte.

YouTube

The main YouTube channel is called ‘DigiByte Global Blockchain’ and consists over 2.300 subscribers. It seems inactive, since the last video was uploaded over a year ago. There is also the ‘DigiByte Awareness Team’ channel on YouTube which consist over 700 subscribers and is used to create more awareness of the DigiByte blockchain. This channel is pretty active.

Then there is ‘DigiByte TV’, which is used to broadcast videos for informational and marketing purposes. Last but not least there is ‘Josiah Spackman – DigiByte Ambassador’ with over 800 subscribers. As you can tell, this is the account of DGB ambassador Josiah. However, it consists of many interesting videos and interviews about DigiByte.

Unique selling points

Tried and tested technology.

Transaction speed.

MultiAlgo, Multishield.

Community driven.

Longest UTXO blockchain alive.

Manageable units.

Great community.

Digi-ID.

Very Secure Blockchain.

Atomic Swaps.

Technically ahead of its competitors since start.

Upcoming developments

On the 4th of August DigiByte announced the next version of their core wallet, v6.16.3. On the 9th of August DigiByte moved this version to their master branch on GitHub for beta testing. This update will bring a new DigiByte wallet with a new look, bug fixes and more.

On par with Bitcoin core 0.16.2 plus all DGB innovations. Next to the v6.16.3 core update DigiByte already has the next core

protocol update planned. The DigiByte Core v7.17.1 (Community Support) – Spring 2019 update

will include a further expansion of the DigiByte core protocol to further support community development & incentivize participation.

Below we will list all recent and upcoming developments that DigiByte planned on its roadmap. As you can see there is a lot going on within the DigiByte ecosystem, so there will be many great moments to look forward to.

Q3 2018

1/ Digital Currency Con 2018.

2/ UTRUST integration.

3/ Android wallet releases.

4/ DigiByte add by Bitbox Line, Houbi Exchanges.

5/ iOS wallet releases.

6/ Guarda Desktop (Windows, OSX & Linux) released.

7/ Guarda DigiByte Web Wallet released.

8/ Satowallet for Android & iOS integrates DigiByte.

9/ DigiByte for iOS accepted in to the Apple App Store.

10/ DigiByte Core Wallet 6.16.3 development commences.

11/ Native Bech32 generation in Core Wallet GUI.

12/ DigiByte Developer Bounty Round #2 announced.

13/ DigiByte for Android / iOS application improvements, QR scanning, syncing.

14/ Obtaining a legal opinion with a non-security classification for DigiByte.

15/ DigiByte Integration in Blockfolio App including Blockfolio Signal.

16/ First native mobile wallet with Bech32 / SegWit address generation (coming).

17/ Core Wallet UI redesign commencement.

Q4 2018 (Scheduled)

1/ DigiStats interactive / historical blockchain statistics website.

2/ Address book for Android & iOS applications.

3/ Scheduled & repeating mobile payments.

4/ Memo broadcast, support logging to blockchain using OP_RETURN.

5/ Further integration of DigiByte in payment processing solutions.

6/ More fiat- and USDT pairings on several exchanges, like Bittrex / Cryptopia.

Q1 2019 (Scheduled)

1/ DigiAssets for launching ICO’s and other DApps on top of the DigiByte Blockchain

2/ Native Trezor support

3/ DigiByte Core Wallet 6.16.4

4/ DApps for the DigiByte Blockchain, with the focus on Cybersecurity, AI and IOT

Integrations

Microsoft Azure

In 2016, Microsoft added DigiByte to Azure, which is Microsoft’s public cloud computing platform that provides a range of cloud services. Microsoft also nominated DigiByte for BizSpark, which is their accelerator program to help startups get the software, support, and services they need to be successful.

Clifford Chance

After making it to the finals of the ‘Citi Tech 4 Integrity Challenge’ from Citi Bank in October last year with the DiguSign project, multinational law firm Clifford chance rewarded DigiByte Holdings with the legal advice award. By winning this award, DigiByte is receiving tailored legal support from Clifford Chance lawyers to help accelerate DiguSign. This is going to be an ongoing relationship between Clifford Chance and DigiByte.

UTRUST

UTRUST eliminates the risk of fraudulent merchants by providing comprehensive buyer protection and acting as a third-party mediator if necessary. All purchases can immediately be converted to fiat, which means you get the payment directly in (e.g.) U.S. Dollars, Euros or in the original cryptocurrency.

UTRUST chose DigiByte to be used as a secure payment solution for their platform. DigiByte was selected due to their security, low transaction fees, and a dedicated team of developers.

DigiByte’s Marketing Manager Rudy Bouwman voiced his excitement at the integration of DigiByte as a secure payment solution, stating;

“We are excited by the prospect of working with UTRUST and getting DigiByte to be your payment processing solution; this would allow us to grow organically and attract more interest as an open source solution.”

Blocknet

Being one of the earliest to adopt SegWit has meant that DigiByte has been at the forefront of testing for Blocknet’s decentralized cryptocurrency exchange. Blocknet is built to be the ‘internet of blockchains’. The Blocknet protocol has a peer protocol that enables cross chain interactions between nodes of different blockchain protocols. This means that data between different blockchains can be exchanged with ease.

This will allow an exchange between DigiByte and, say Bitcoin, without the use of any 3rd party exchange website. So if you want to exchange 10,000 DGB for 0.1 BTC, this can now be accomplished by announcing it to the Blocknet, finding somebody else who is willing to trade 0.1 BTC for 10,000 DGB, and then completing the trade without involving any other party who may ‘take a cut’ of the proceeds along the way, or without having to trust your coin to a 3rd-party to hold onto so you can do the trade.

Blocknet and Atomic Swaps will revolutionize the exchange of digital currencies, no longer requiring any form of trust with anybody. One of the core pillars of the original Blockchain notion was it operated in a completely trust-less manner, and Blocknet now fulfils this need.

Airportparking

DigiByte is accepted at parking spots at some major airports to give people the top airport parking options at a fraction of the cost.

BitBill

BitBill.eu is a unique concept with only one purpose. To make it possible for you to pay all your bills with cryptocurrency. DigiByte is accepted here.

Coin2001

Accept payment with bitcoin and altcoins in simple, safe and efficient way.

Coingate

Merchants payment gateway for cryptocurrencies.

Coinify

Add alternative payment options and give customers the possibility to pay in 15 different blockchain currencies from most countries in the world. Receive payouts in local currency.

Coinpayments

The first and largest payment processor of cryptocurrencies. Offering plugins for all the popular webcharts use by Magento, WooCommerce, WHMCS, Openchart, Oscommerce, aMember Pro, Arastta, Blesta, Box Billing, Business Directory Plugin (wordpress), Drupal, Easy Digital Downloads, Ecwid, Hikashop, Prestashop, Tomato cart, Ubercart, XCART, Zen cart, Shopify.

Kamoney

Pay bills of mobile, water, electric, internet, TV and many other, mobile recharge, receive direct transfers into bank account in Brazil.

MyCryptoCheckout

Payment gateway for WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads.

DigiByte Debit Cards

DigiByte can be loaded into the following debit cards:

Bitwala

Payza

Spectrocoin

Uquid

Wirexapp

ATM Machine General Bytes

All the General Bytes ATM’s have implemented DigiByte. These ATM’s are distributed over 41 countries.

Technical analysis

Technical analysis is important to find a good entry price for the blockchain project you want to invest in. DigiByte is listed on many exchanges, so you can choose one as you wish. Except for Binance, because they ask for exorbitant listing fees. They have all the information needed to add DigiByte whenever they want.

24H Volume

Volume is an important indicator in technical analysis as it is used to measure the relative worth of a market move. If the markets make a strong price movement, then the strength of that movement depends on the volume for that period.

When looking at the 24hr volume it becomes clear that after the recent highs in July, the volume steadily decreased over the next month. Since the 22th of August, the volume is picking up steam with a recent high of 19M dollar on august 24th. This is an almost 500% increase in volume compared to August the 22th. After peaking on 19M, the volume has been steady around 10M for the last week.

RSI

The relative strength index (RSI) is a momentum indicator that compares the magnitude of recent gains and losses over a specified time period to measure speed and change op price movements and can be used to in order to attempt to identify overbought or oversold conditions.

The RSI on the daily graph signals an uptrend. The weekly RSI also signals an uptrend with higher lows. The hourly time frames signal a retrace.

MACD

The MACD, is an abbreviation of ‘Moving Average Convergence Divergence’. This indicator is a trend-following momentum indicator that shows the relationship between two moving averages of prices and is calculated by subtracting the 26-day exponential moving average from the 12-day EMA. The nine-day EMA of the MACD is called the ‘signal line’, which is plotted on top of the MACD and functions as a trigger for buy and sell signals.

Around the 20th of July, the MACD on the daily candles gave a sell signal around 650 Sats. After that, DGB retraced to 350 Sats. On the 23th of August, the MACD crossed again suggesting a buy signal. After this buy signal, DGB already increased to 440 Sats. Currently the signaling lines are still below zero, so it is too early to call an uptrend, but when the signaling lines cross the zero line, the uptrend is confirmed.

Resistance and support

Resistance and support lines are great indicators in order to identify the next ‘support’ or ‘resistance’. Support levels are where demand is perceived to be strong enough to prevent the price from falling further, while resistance levels are prices when selling is thought to be strong enough to prevent prices from rising higher. In general, the more often a support- or resistance is exercised, the stronger it becomes.

The first resistance seems to be at the current price of 440 Satoshi. The first support is found at a price of 410 Satoshi, also marked by the 200 days moving average. The next support is found at 360 Sats.

Moving Average

A moving average (MA) is a widely used indicator in technical analysis that helps smooth out price action by filtering out the “noise” from random price fluctuations. It is a trend-following, or lagging, indicator because it is based on past prices.

The current price is underneath the 50- and 100-day moving average. DGB crossed above the 200-day moving average on the 28th of August. The 50MA is still above the 100 and 200MA which is a good sign.