What is Byteball?
Byteball is a decentralized system that allows users the ability to store different types of data. In Byteball, you can store anything from currency to debt or even property titles. Like any other blockchain platform, Byteball makes this possible with the promise of tamper-proof storage.
Each of the Byteball storage units is interlinked. This means that every storage unit has one or more hashes of the previous storage units. These hashes are supposed to either confirm the earlier units or to establish their order, or both.
Byteball operates under a directed acyclic graph model (DAG). DAG technology is specifically aimed at addressing some of the current challenges or deficiencies that are obvious in blockchain currencies.
Byteball has been considered the ultimate competitor for Bitcoin, especially with an emphasis on how some of the features are executed, including smart contracts, and bots.
As a cryptocurrency platform, Byteball creates an element of trust where none existed before. Two strangers or entities on Byteball can engage and get into a contract, confident that the contract will be executed as they agreed upon.
There are multiple independent witnesses who verify all the contracts to ensure that the conditions and terms stipulated are adhered to
What is the problem that Byteball Solves?
While traditional blockchain platforms have been commended for sparking a revolution, there are several flaws that still need to be addressed, and Byteball attempts to provide solutions to some of these.
One of the challenges that most users experience is a high cost of transactions. Platforms like Bitcoin are highly secure, and this can be attributed to the prohibitive and expensive cost of operation.
Once a transaction is carried out, redoing all the proof of work involved in the blocks is very expensive. The Bitcoin community spends a lot of money on energy as payment for the electricity needed to build a legitimate proof of work that is strong enough to keep attackers at bay.
Finality of transactions as is evident in Bitcoin raises a lot of problems. There are no set guidelines that determine when a transaction has been finalized, and cannot be reversed.
The only thing that you can be certain about is that the finality of each transaction is uncertain. The risk of a transaction being reversed declines as more blocks are added. This is a concept that most simple folk would not understand, especially when it comes to matters involving money exchanging hands.
Bitcoin has a very volatile and unpredictable exchange rate. The problem here is not even the volatility, but the fact that the price is not bound to anything.
This means that there are no definite factors that can be attributed to trends in the exchange rate. Therefore, it becomes difficult to justify a Bitcoin price of, for example, $300, $3 or $30,000. If the price were to move from what it currently is, this movement would not generate any economic force that might push it back, but instead, creates chaos.
Privacy is another issue that has dogged Bitcoin. All the balances and transactions carried out by all addresses are visible for all to see on the blockchain. It is possible to obscure balances and transactions, but this is not what people would expect from a currency.
How does Byteball Solve the problem?
Byteball has several features that address the challenges above. The main goal of Byteball is to introduce the benefits of blockchain technology into database management and to meet the needs of people and entities in different markets.
In terms of privacy, the transactions carried out on Byteball are just as visible as they are on Bitcoin. However, other than the base currency Bytes, Byteball has a second currency called Blackbytes. These are not as traceable as Bytes are.
To address the issue of exchange rates, the value of bytes depends on negative feedback, which is an ideal expectation in any market where demand and supply are driven by need and not speculation as is the case with Bitcoin.
Conditional payments – This is a feature that is missing in the conventional currencies. The concept here is to create a set of rules or conditions determining when the payee is to receive the money sent. In case the condition is not met by the payee, the sender gets their money back.
What makes Byteball better than the competitors?
Instead of the classical Bitcoin-like platform that most of the cryptocurrencies are currently using, Byteball uses DAG. DAG is a relatively new technology and has significant benefits over the conventional blockchain technology that giants like Bitcoin and Ethereum are using. When using Byteball you get a confirmation on the main chain without any proof of work evaluation needed.
In the normal blockchain implementations, you have to wait for a confirmation. However, with Byteball the confirmations are almost immediate.
Byteball also takes away the hurdle of confirmations with large transactions. Normally you would need around 10 confirmations to push through large sums. This is to give you some assurance that there will be no change in the blockchain, and a longer blockchain path will not be found.
However, with Byteball, once the transaction is confirmed, that’s it. You do not need to worry about uncertainties anymore.
Another area where Byteball is beating the competition is on transaction execution. Because it offers unlimited scalability, Byteball can process thousands of transactions every second. This makes it ideal for people or entities that need to exchange large volumes of arbitrary data.
If there is one area where most of the crypto platforms are lagging behind, it has to be reaching out to the masses. Most people consider this to be a technical field, and this locks out would-be investors who are afraid of their lack of information.
Byteball allows users to send crypto through different messaging services and platforms, including email addresses, Telegram, Viber, WeChat, and WhatsApp, instead of using cryptic addresses. This is definitely something that most people appreciate and has also helped in the uptake.
When using Byteball, you are not just confined to the tokens that are available on the platform. In fact, Byteball allows users to create their own tokens. This is ideal for corporations, organizations, non-profit organizations and other entities that would love to trade in tokens that enshrine their brand identity.
How can Byteball be categorized?
Byteball is a distributed ledger that runs on DAG. Contrary to the conventional blockchain features, DAG does not have blocks. Therefore, there are no gatekeepers, miners or scalability limits. Anyone who is interested is able to add transactions to the DAG.
There are several reasons why eliminating blocks is a good idea. Blocks and transactions are two unique entities by design. Technically, having only one of them would be simpler. Therefore, by doing away with blocks, only transactions remain, and simplicity is one of the tenets of Byteball, which make it endearing even to common folk.
Gatekeepers in blockchain networks operate like small gods. They create the blocks. Other than that, what gets into the block is also their prerogative.
There are so many variables that determine the design of blockchain platforms. Determining the right block size or the time between two blocks are some of the common concerns, and agreeing on the right values is not an easy feat either.
By doing away with blocks in DAG, Byteball offers a flexible way of handling transactions. There is virtually no theoretical limit on the transactions. Users no longer have to serialize transactions in blocks whose sizes are predetermined by gatekeepers.
Byteball is about value creation. Since there are no blocks, there is no need for Proof of work. Proof of work is a very expensive concept, and in the long run, the cost has to be accounted for. The cost of proof of work is often in terms of electricity, the environmental impact of which has to be priced in.
Since there are no blocks or proof of work, new transactions are visible to peers as soon as they are added on the DAG. Peers can then build their transactions on the new one, giving it recognition as the child transactions to the new transaction also create subsequent child transactions.
What’s Byteball’s vision on Security?
Amid growing concern from governments about the identity of cryptocurrency users and the risk of financial crimes including money laundering, Byteball has partnered with Jumio to optimize the KYC process.
The decentralized, innovative and distributed platform has attracted a lot of companies in the past, especially those seeking to pitch their projects for investor funding, and as such, there is need to offer a reassurance that entities are doing business with genuine people.
The financial arena has in the recent years been transformed since the adoption of cryptocurrency, and more companies are coming on board to seek funding for projects or to launch their businesses.
However, cryptocurrencies are unregulated and anonymous. Therefore, regulatory bodies worldwide have increasingly expressed concern about the risk of this anonymity in financial crimes.
In this manner, Byteball and Jumio work together to prevent fraud and money laundering, and at the same time offer support for conscientious listing of companies, in line with the requirements of regulatory authorities across the globe.
Other than the KYC, Byteball also allows users to generate or enter into smart contracts for so many other types of financial transactions, ranging from sports betting to making insurance payments. Such contracts are guided by terms that are set prior to acceptance.
By allowing users to set conditions that have to be met before payment is made, smart contracts offer a secure way of conducting business on Byteball and protects the interests of the entity procuring services from fraud.
Examples of Byteball use cases/applications
There are several instances where Byteball is currently in use, with more entities adopting this cryptocurrency as time goes by.
P2P payments
Sending P2P payments has been made easier with Byteball. Trading in cryptocurrency can be very confusing especially for beginners because of the use of cryptic addresses.
Other than that, the recipient must already be in the system where the money is being sent. Once the money is sent, the sender cannot easily tell whether they sent the money to the correct address.
With Byteball, however, things are slightly different. The Byteball wallet allows users to send bytes to user addresses in different ways, even if the recipient is not already on Byteball.
The sender can simply write an email to the recipient, with a link to the money they are sharing. In case the recipient already has a Byteball account, the money is added to their account. In case they do not have a Byteball account, they will receive a link to install Byteball then receive the money.
Identity verification
Byteball is also coming in handy with identity verification. This is an important part of KYC which is aimed at creating an element of trust in the system. Since the success of many ICOs, a lot of companies are currently mulling this option over other conventional ways of raising funds for expansion, starting up their operations or many other projects. Byteball users are able to link their addresses to their government-issued identities. Users can decide the type of information they are comfortable disclosing, and to which entities.
Shopping
You can easily engage merchants on the Byteball platform before you purchase their goods and/or services. Payments in Byteball are very simple, and in two clicks, you will be done. Through the merchant chatbots, you can even order and pay for meals online.
To make work easier, Byteball has a bot store built into the platform. This gets updated from time to time, so you can check it and discover some of the chatbots available.
Betting and hedging
Byteball uses conditional payment smart contracts. These contracts have trusted data feeds. As a result, users can easily bet on major world events or hedge against them. There are lots of events upon which you can hedge, including the following:
Price – The price Oracle allows users to short on any cryptocurrency without necessarily owning it. To do this, you create a smart contract condition that depends on the price of the selected cryptocurrency attaining a preset threshold.
Politics – In countries or issues where politics is so divisive, you can bet on the outcome, hedging your business risk against the prospect of negative outcomes.
Travel – Through Byteball you can purchase flight insurance. If you do, you get compensation in case your flight is canceled or delayed.
Weather – Extreme weather conditions can affect your business or interfere with your holiday. You can use Byteball to hedge against such.
Sports betting – With Byteball, you do not need a bookie to bet on the outcome of any sports event.
References
https://byteball.org/Byteball.pdf
https://medium.com/@Byteball
https://byteball.org/
https://coincheckup.com/coins/byteball