Obyte and World Community G...

Image from article of the World Community Grid AnnouncementWith Folding @ Home already crunching numbers to help researchers speed up the possible development of a treatment for COVID-19 and a vaccine for the novel Coronavirus, the World Community Grid now joins the effort and adds significant computing power.As things stand right now, there is no treatment, no cure and no vaccine. It’s the grim fact after the virus was successfully isolated more than 5 months ago. Over the course of the past two months, the world has felt the devastating force that a global pandemic has with thousands of lives lost, countries’ economies headed for unprecedented recession and scientists all over the world scrambling to come up with the miracle we all hope for.The IBM backed World Community Grid that utilizes users’ excess computing power to crunch numbers and test combinations on a massive scale, is now joining the global fight against the pandemic in a hope to speed up science and research. Hundreds of thousands of users are joining forces contributing more computing power per day than even the largest supercomputers would be able to in a year.Obyte rewards participantsSince April 2018, Obyte has actively supported the efforts of WCG by rewarding those who donate their excess computing power to the project.Team Obyte currently contributes more than 17 years of total computing time every single day12,591 years of total computing time has been contributed to the project of “mapping cancer markers” and more than 500 years for the project aiming to “smash childhood cancer”Having won the past 2 annual global challenges — the Thor Challenge — on providing most computing power as a team, Team Obyte is determined to become the largest contributor in this new effort that does not only benefit entire human kind, but also proves how processing power can be used for much more important things than mining cryptocurrency. And with Bitcoin’s halving of block rewards and a lot of mining equipment probably destined to be shut down, why not put it to good use?Join Team ObyteWhile we cannot offer participants to make a profit, the reward should be considered a respectful tip of the hat to all those deciding to join the effort in the fight against this pandemic. While the rates are outdated and have been updated since the start back in 2018, the instructions on how to join and be eligible for rewards can be found in this article.The entire Obyte community wants to thank everyone who has contributed so far, and wish that, together, we will be strong and come out on top of this pandemic that is already turning into a massive global humanitarian crisis.While it isn’t required to join Team Obyte to be rewarded, we highly encourage you to do so, to earn an additional bonus with every WCG-point you generate. And do keep in mind — we do all this for the good of humanity, not to buy you the next lambo!Obyte and World Community Grid join the fight against SARS-CoV-2 was originally published in Obyte on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

First Asia-based Order Prov...

Two weeks ago voting commenced in the poll to choose the 6th independent Default Order Provider (Witness) on the Obyte public network, and today the poll closed with the Chinese DLT development group CryptoShare Studio receiving the greatest number of votes. CryptoShare now joins Bind Creative, PolloPollo, Bosch Connectory Stuttgart, Fabien Marino and Rogier Eijkelhof in providing this critical function for the network.Adding CryptoShare is especially exciting for Obyte as it increases the cultural and geographic diversity of the independent Order Providers and adds the first OP located in Asia to the network. Based in Shanghai, CryptoShare becomes an important pillar of the Obyte Community in Asia in general, and in China in particular. We look forward to their ongoing support of and participation in the Community.The next step will be to add CryptoShare´s witness address to the default hub and push it out to all the active wallets. So within the next few weeks, you will see a notification to update your Witness list when you open up your Obyte wallet. Please accept it if you wish to add CryptoShare as one of your Order Providers. If you agree your wallet will be automatically updated with the new Order Provider list.If you run a full node or a hub, you are requested to update your witness lists as well by changing the address H5EZTQE7ABFH27AUDTQFMZIALANK6RBG to Witness address of CryptoShare JMFXY26FN76GWJJG7N36UI2LNONOGZJV. Please check the headless-wallet tools folder for the script that facilitates replacing witness addresses on full nodes.As always, we thank the other candidates — the Institute For the Future of the University of Nicosia and Raivo Malter, and all of our community that voted in this poll. Our next poll will represent a milestone as it will confirm the 7th independent Order Provider, meaning that a majority of the Order Providers will be managed by parties other than Founder and Head Developer Tony Churyumoff, which will mean that the Obyte Public Network will have reached the tipping point to decentralization!So if you are interested in joining this historic process and would like to propose yourself as a candidate, please contact us at o@obyte.org. The next poll will be announced soon once we have had some time to receive notices of interest from all parties who would like to participate.First Asia-based Order Provider Joins Obyte Public Network was originally published in Obyte on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

An Even Half Dozen: The 6th...

Launching Tuesday April 28th at 12:00 CETWe are now rapidly approaching the seminal moment when the Obyte network becomes properly decentralized, and a majority of Order Provider (Witness) nodes are run by independent parties. After this next poll Founder and Lead Developer Tony Churyumoff will no longer be running a majority of the Order Provider nodes. So for this very important poll we are pleased to announce that there are 3 very worthy candidates — one you already know, and two are new candidates. Raivo Malter continues his support of the Obyte community and project, the Institute For the Future at the University of Nicosia is also putting forward their candidacy in this poll, as is our first candidate based in Asia Cryptoshare Studio.Raivo MalterIf you have been reading these announcements for the last few months you probably know that Raivo is a crypto veteran who has been a fan of Obyte since he discovered it in early 2018, and was greatly impressed by the power, functionality and simplicity of the platform. Please check this post, and his video interview below to learn more about Raivo and why he would like to become a Witness.https://medium.com/media/c26f916e3be58cab1c3d05722f4a5620/hrefThe Institute For the Future at University of NicosiaThe University of Nicosia (UNIC) is one of the world’s most respected institutions for teaching, research and development of Blockchain and Cryptocurrency initiatives. They are excited to be joining the Obyte community to learn more about how DAGs work and have announced their candidacy to become an Order Provider to study our technology via the IFF.The IFF is an interdisciplinary research Centre at UNIC, aimed at advancing emerging technologies and contributing to their effective application in industry, government and education, as well as, evaluating their impact on employment, wealth inequality and societies in general. The active engagement with Obyte’s Directed Acyclic Graph platform aims to educate the team at UNIC regarding the technology, its potential application and play a practical role in the maintenance of Obyte’s DAG. Please watch their video interview below to learn more.https://medium.com/media/18ac3cb7e1f828880828016609b1858d/hrefCryptoshare StudioBased in Shanghai, China Cryptoshare Studio is a group of DLT enthusiasts focusing on decentralization applications research. They are original members of the community, becoming aware of Obyte (then Byteball) during the Full Moon airdrop period in 2017. They have been actively contributing to Obyte since March of 2018, including building numerous chatbots and establishing the Chinese Byteball fan site https://bbfans.org. They have now launched their Cryptoshare platform (https://cryptoshare.cc) on Obyte, which they are working to make a reliable global information encryption sharing platform that will provide users with safe and reliable privacy protection for their data. You can find out all about CryptoShare and what they are doing in this post and their video interview below.https://medium.com/media/07535995e0a25f66afa784173f01ab45/hrefPLEASE CAST YOUR VOTE IN THE NEXT DEFAULT ORDER PROVIDER POLL!So in order to determine who will become the next default Order Provider/Witness, we need you to register your vote on this question:Who do you approve of becoming the 6th independent Order Provider (also known as Witness) on the Obyte network?CryptoShareInstitute For the Future at the University of NicosiaRaivo Malternone of themRegister your vote in the Polls section on Obyte.io or find the “Poll Bot” in the Bot Store in your wallet and cast your vote through that.What Happens Next?This new poll begins today Tuesday, April 28th at 12:00 noon CET and will last until 11:59 AM CET on Tuesday, May 12th. The results will be visible in real time during the poll, and the winner will be announced in a new post once the poll closes. If the leader changes during the last 24 hours of the poll, we reserve the right to extend the poll.Please remember that each Obyte wallet can cast a vote, and only the most recent vote per wallet counts. Votes are based on balances held by the wallet that casts the vote, like shareholding voting in a public company. The candidate that receives the most votes, i.e. the greatest balance in GBYTE, will win the poll.If you are interested in becoming a candidate for the all important 7th Order Provider poll, please contact any of the Core Team members via Discord, or email us at o@obyte.org.Please participate and help us on our way to becoming a truly decentralized DLT platform. Thank you, and stay safe and healthy!An Even Half Dozen: The 6th Obyte Order Provider Poll was originally published in Obyte on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Introducing Discount Stable...

Autonomous Agents (AAs) are now on mainnet and we are starting to roll out applications that AAs make possible. This post is about stablecoins. As the design that we developed is different from all other stablecoins known in crypto so far, we will use “discount stablecoin” as its name to note its difference. We’ll explain below why the term “discount” is applied in this implementation.Attention to stablecoins has been growing lately and the largest stablecoin, Tether, is currently occupying the 4th position on CoinMarketCap. Among their benefits are their convenience as a stable and familiar unit of account, which makes them often being used in trading pairs on exchanges, as well as the ease and freedom of transferring value from one user to another, including from exchange to exchange. Lately, they have become an important building block in the fast-growing sector of Decentralized Finance (DeFi) applications.In the market today, there are three general categories of stablecoins:Fiat-backed (or more generally, asset-backed) — a 1:1 backing is provided by a company that holds the real-world asset to which they are pegged in a centralized manner. Examples are USDT (Tether), USDC, TUSD, DigixGold.Crypto-collateralized — value is collateralized by cryptocurrencies that are locked to ensure the value of the stablecoin. A popular example would be DAI.Non-collateralized — no collateralization at all but instead they try to achieve stability by regulating issuance and burning of the coin, much like central banks do. An example is the Basis protocol, now defunct.The stablecoin system we designed is within the crypto-collateralized category. It is similar to DAI in some respects, while different in others.How it worksIssuanceTo issue stablecoins, one needs to send some collateral to the stablecoin AA. Collateral is usually Bytes, usually denominated in GBYTE, as it is the most liquid asset on the Obyte network, but any stablecoin AA can define its own collateral of choice. This collateral will be locked on the stablecoin AA to back the issuance (minting) of stablecoin tokens.The value of the stablecoin issued is lower than the collateral that is locked to ensure stability in terms of volatility of the collateralized asset, i.e. it is overcollateralized. Though anyone who sets up a stablecoin AA can set their own parameters for how much it will be overcollateralized, in our examples we’ll assume that the overcollateralization ratio is 150% (i.e. to issue $100 worth of stablecoins you need to lock up $150 worth of collateral) in order to keep things consistent so it’s easier to understand.It’s important to note that a user who requests an issue of $100 worth of the stablecoin tokens however is not buying them for $150. The $150 is a collateral, and the user still owns the claim to the $150 collateral and receives $100 of stablecoins on top of it. In other words, the issuance of a stablecoin is the issuance of a collateralized loan in the form of a stablecoin. And the one who requests an issuance of the stablecoin is a borrower who locks up their collateral to secure the loan. To get the collateral back, they will need to return the same amount of stablecoins they borrowed.The total supply of stablecoins increases as a new loan is issued, and decreases as a loan is repaid and the repaid stablecoins destroyed. So, the stablecoin is debt, much like modern fiat money is debt of a central bank or a commercial bank.Minimum collateralization and auctionsThe large 150% collateral is needed to protect against the inherent volatility of the token that was used as collateral (usually, Bytes). The value of collateral must always be greater than the value of stablecoins issued against it, otherwise the borrower can just walk away with the borrowed stablecoins and never repay the loan.To ensure that the collateral is always sufficient, the borrower has an obligation to always keep it above a minimum collateralization ratio, let’s say it is 120% (AA parameters can define a different minimum collateralization ratio). The borrower can do so by sending additional collateral to the loan, or repaying the loan before its collateralization gets too low.If the borrower fails to refill the collateral on time and the actual collateralization ratio drops below the minimum, the loan is put on auction and sold to the highest bidder. Participants of the auction compete to add more collateral to the undercollateralized loan, and the winner becomes the new owner of the loan, and therefore receives the right to repay the loan and receive all its collateral. Which is greater than the loan value and makes participation in the auction profitable. The original owner of the loan accordingly loses the right to repay the loan and receive the collateral back, which was worth 120% of the loan value when the auction started. So, letting the collateralization ratio drop below 120% is not a good idea — one can lose 20% of the loan value. Note, however, that the original owner can still participate in the auction like everybody else and has an opportunity to win back what they were about to lose. It’s also important to note that the AA that creates the stablecoin can set the auction duration, which has a default of 1 hour.Since all this happens on a DAG, not a blockchain, all participants have equal opportunities to win an auction when many users rush to seize an undercollateralized loan. There are no miners who could front-run other users by inserting miner’s transactions before others or reorganizing the chain in their favor.Collateralization levels are determined by using price data reported by an oracle set in the AA parameters. To make it harder to manipulate the market and cause premature auctioning off of multiple loans, the price data should ideally not be based on the instantaneous price but rather a moving average (MA) over some sufficiently long period (but not too long, to avoid excessive delays). Otherwise, it is relatively easy to cause a flash crash which will be reflected in the instantaneous price feed. With this method, it is much harder to keep the price away from equilibrium for a long time in order to significantly affect the MA price.Value peggingHow do we ensure that a stablecoin is actually stable and its price is linked to the price of its benchmark? Here is where our stablecoin design diverges from DAI. We don’t try to regulate the supply and demand by incentivizing or disincentivizing additional issuance of stablecoins — a mechanism which central banks use. Sometimes it works but sometimes it is as effective as pushing on a string.Instead, the stablecoin price is “pulled” to the benchmark price. How? At some future date, the stablecoin becomes convertible to the collateral (usually, Bytes) at the price registered on that future date. That is, one can use the AA which previously issued the stablecoins, to convert stablecoins to Bytes and vice-versa. The reverse direction (Bytes to stablecoins) is necessary e.g. for when the borrower needs the relevant stablecoin to pay back the loan but have sold their initial issuance. The exchange rate is fixed and is equal to the benchmark’s (USD, EUR, BTC, gold, etc) exchange rate to the collateral (e.g GBYTE) on that future date, which we call “Expiry Date”. The exchange rate is registered by an oracle set in the AA parameters.Since all loans are overcollateralized, the AA is guaranteed to have enough GBYTE reserves to buy the entire outstanding amount of stablecoins from the market. Issuance of new stablecoins in exchange for GBYTE is completely reversible since the exchange rate is fixed.So, each stablecoin has two distinct periods: before the expiry and after the expiry (the “after-life”).After the expiry, no new loans are issued but old ones can still be repaid. The stablecoin’s exchange rate is fixed to GBYTE (or whatever was used as collateral), its price trajectory is identical to that of GBYTE, and therefore the stablecoin is no longer stable in its after-life.Before the expiry, everybody knows that a USD-linked stablecoin will be exchangeable for $1 worth of GBYTEs at some future date, and a BTC-linked stablecoin will be exchangeable for 1 BTC worth of GBYTEs at some future date. Essentially, the stablecoin’s present price is pulled to its future value. This is similar to how the current prices of futures contracts are pulled to (but not necessarily equal to) the traders’ expectations about the future price of the traded commodity on the contract’s expiry date.We expect that this pulling mechanism will keep the price of stablecoin aligned with the benchmark price, but not equal to it. This does not become equal because by buying 1 USD-linked stablecoin today you are buying $1 at some future date, not now. And $1 today is not the same as $1 next year due to the time value of money. So, it will be fair to pay less than $1 for a coin that is only redeemable for $1 in 1 year just like you would pay less for something you only get in the distant future. How much less, depends on active interest rates in the benchmark currency, which are normally positive for fiat currencies (but not now, when major currencies have 0 or even negative interest rates).This is why such a stablecoin should trade with a discount to its benchmark, and explains the name “Discount Stablecoin”. The discount should be larger when further away from the Expiry Date, and should gradually decrease as the stablecoin approaches its Expiry Date. So, the price trajectory of a discount stablecoin should look like this:This is exactly the same as the price trajectory of a zero-coupon bond.Everything that is known about zero-coupon bonds as an investment instrument applies to Discount Stablecoins too. In particular, the prices of long-term Discount Stablecoins are very sensitive to changes in the interest rate and therefore can be used to immunize the interest rate risk of long-term liabilities.Pros and consThe ability to make money is the main benefit of a Discount Stablecoin. One cannot make money by holding any of the stablecoins that we’ve seen before — their value is constant (excluding some mild volatility). By holding Discount Stablecoins on the other hand, one has the potential to make money. This is achieved with little volatility, without wild price swings common for crypto, and with steady and slow appreciation, as expected from the above description of the value pegging mechanism.There are risks however. This is a new unproven technology, there could be bugs, there could be wild market moves that could make it behave in unexpected ways (see the Risks section below). Higher risk justifies a larger discount, which translates to higher income for those who take it.One downside of this stablecoin design is that it is not as stable as a classic stablecoin is supposed to be. Its market value relative to the benchmark is not 1:1 but changes, for example, from 0.95:1 to 1:1 over its lifetime, which is not convenient for a unit of account. However, the volatility of such a stablecoin is still significantly lower than that of regular cryptocurrencies, and when used as a medium of exchange, a small appreciation accrued during a short period of holding should not be a big issue. This allows us to still keep this design under the “stablecoin” category.Another downside is that it expires, which makes it inconvenient as a store of value, unless the expiry period is really long, despite it still being good as a medium of exchange.After expiry, the stablecoin loses stability and starts behaving like the collateral asset it was made from (usually, Bytes). Most holders of such stablecoins will not want to be exposed to volatility and will seek to sell the stablecoin before expiry. The best way to avoid this volatility is to trade it for another stablecoin that expires later.The target audienceSimilar to other crypto-backed stablecoins, the main driver of adoption is speculation.Those who mint (borrow) stablecoins, do it to exchange the newly minted stablecoin for something else without selling their collateral.For example, one might mint a USD-linked stablecoin while not having to sell their Bytes, thus essentially getting USD without sacrificing their Bytes. They could then exchange it for a gold-linked stablecoin if they speculate that the price of gold will go up. If the price of gold increases as they predicted, they could sell the gold stablecoin back for the USD stablecoin and subsequently repay the loan.Or, mint a USD-coin and exchange it for a S&P-coin to take a long position in S&P. Or, vice versa, mint a S&P-coin and sell it for USD-coin in order to short S&P.One could also mint $100 of a USD stablecoin by locking in $150 worth of collateral in GBYTEs and then use the $100 of USD stablecoin to buy GBYTEs, thus getting an exposure to $150 worth of GBYTEs for a net investment of $50 in GBYTE. That is, a 3x leveraged long position in GBYTEs (actually the leverage is slightly less than 3 because the borrowed stablecoin is discounted and 100 stablecoins can be sold for slightly less than $100 worth of GBYTEs).These examples above are of positional traders. Note that none of them are trading their own capital. Instead, they are trading borrowed capital that they borrowed against GBYTE as collateral.On the other hand, there are low-risk-tolerance investors who acquire Discount Stablecoins for the purpose of gaining profit with lower risk, though with lower potential ROI as well, byacquiring them long before their Expiry Date with a large discount,holding them for some time,then selling with a smaller discount, i.e. at a higher price, thus earning some interest.These two categories of investors have different yet complementary risk preferences. While the first group makes high-risk bets on the movement of prices, the second group earns interest in their favorable currency or asset, such as USD or BTC. For some assets, such as BTC, there are currently no options to earn interest without centralized custody. With Discount Stablecoins linked to these assets, we now get such options.Note that the interest earned by those in the second category is implicitly paid for by the traders in the first category — when they mint a USD-linked stablecoin, they borrow a discounted coin that is worth, say, $0.95. By the time they close the position (repay the loan) the stablecoin will have already slightly appreciated and then they buy it from the market for, say, $0.96. The difference is small however, compared with the trader’s potential gain if their trade is profitable, but it is the price they have to pay for trading using borrowed money.Although Discount Stablecoins are targeted at traders and investors, their activity eventually creates a few stable and liquid means of payment — for the rest of us.The risksDespite the built-in protections, there are still some things that can go wrong at a systemic level.For example, though the large 150% initial collateral helps to protect against depreciation of the collateral asset the stablecoin AA holds, it is not a full guarantee.When a loan’s collateralization ratio drops below a minimum set in the AA parameters (e.g. 120%) the loan is put on auction and, under most circumstances, will be recapitalized to a normal collateralization ratio. The possibility to lose a loan (with a 20% loss) if its collateralization ratio drops below the minimum and it’s put on auction, should make borrowers track their loans and refill the collateral before it gets too low.However, if the price of the collateral asset drops too much and too fast, which is not often but can still happen, the borrowers might not have enough time to react and refill the collateral or the value of collateral can fall even below the corresponding value of stablecoins issued before the corresponding auction ends.In such cases, the AA as a whole could become undercapitalized to back all the issued stablecoins, and the stablecoin would lose the peg. If the market price of the stablecoin drops too much below its benchmark, it might become profitable to buy the distressed stablecoins from the market to repay one’s loans and release the collateral which might be worth more. Such repayments would remove some of the stablecoins from circulation. Eventually, the market will find the price equilibrium, which will be below the benchmark, therefore the holders will lose part of their money under such circumstances. This risk factor they have to account for is part of the pricing mechanism for the stablecoin on the market.No-governanceThere are many parameters in the stablecoin AA that affect its behavior, and most importantly, security. However, we don’t know which parameter values are the best at the moment. That said, we do know that some of the most important parameters to take into consideration are: initial collateralization ratio, minimum collateralization ratio, auction period, and the oracle that reports the price.Rather than trying to devise complex governance mechanisms that would allow the community to adjust these parameters in-flight, we chose, at least at this time, to have these parameters set once when an AA is created and stay immutable for its entire lifetime. Thus, to discover the optimal parameters, everyone will be able to launch a new stablecoin AA with any set of parameters, even with modified rules, and these various stablecoins will compete against each other in the open market. Since these stablecoins have a limited lifespan, the cost of mistakes can be minimized and the community will be able to learn from previous experience and improve the future generations of stablecoin AAs. This is evolution by forking, which has so far proved effective in crypto and in open source.There are pros and cons to no-governance approach. Among the pros:it is simple — there are no governance mechanisms that add complexity, increase the attack surface, and might fail;it is fast to evolve, easy to experiment with, because there are no big stakes necessary;it guarantees certainty about the rules of the game as no governance decisions can ever change them;it doesn’t require any rent-seeking token (such as MKR) which often comes at a cost to the entire system;it allows greater freedom of choice and doesn’t impose a one size that fits all.The cons:it is inflexible — there is no within-lifetime adaptability as adaptability is only in choice among the competing offerings and migration from one to another;it causes fragmentation as there is no single stablecoin that everyone knows, instead there are many that can exist for any given asset or currency, of which some are illiquid.As we get more experience, we might see some areas (e.g. some subset of parameters) that would benefit from some form of governance, but right now we are only at the start of the journey and don’t have any experience that would guide our decisions.Another reason why Discount Stablecoins don’t need governance as much as DAI needs is exactly because they are discount-based. DAI loans are interest-bearing: one has to pay interest for using the borrowed money. There is no single interest rate that is right at all times because market conditions change, and thus the rate needs to be adjusted in response. This is why governance interventions are often necessary.With Discount Stablecoins on the other hand, there is no explicit interest paid for borrowing stablecoins. Instead, the interest is paid implicitly, through discount, and the amount of this discount is wholly determined by the market. As market conditions change, the discount is automatically adjusted by the market (for example, should the Fed increase interest rates, the discount on USD-linked stablecoins will increase too), and it doesn’t need to be mediated by any governance body.Curtain-upOstable.org is a website for creating new stablecoins and for various operations with them: minting, repaying the loans, participating in auctions, and exchanging to/from collateral after expiry.Anyone can be a creator of a new stablecoin as there is only a simple form to fill out. A new stablecoin can be linked to any fiat currency, cryptocurrency, commodity, or index that is supported by an oracle. Currently, there are oracles that post the prices of fiat currencies, cryptocurrencies, and precious metals, and anyone can set up an oracle that posts any other prices or indexes. There is an example of oracle source code on github to start with.Since this field is highly experimental and many things are likely to improve as we get experience, we recommend starting with shorter expiry periods, up to 1 year.Each stablecoin is operated by its own AA, so their funds are segregated, and all AAs are parameterized AAs, i.e. they are all created from the same template (source code) and vary only by parameters.Once issued, stablecoins can be traded on the ODEX decentralized exchange, and on the Oswap automated market maker when it launches.For developers who want to try their hand in dapps, and receive some bounties, there are two small helper apps you are invited to build:a bot that tracks all open loans and participates in auctions if any loan becomes undercollateralized;a chatbot where users can register their addresses, and the bot will track the collateralization ratio of all loans opened under these addresses and notify users through chat messages (which are already delivered as push notifications to mobile wallets) whenever a loan’s collateralization ratio drops below some threshold. A link to the chatbot will be added on ostable.org.If you are interested, contact us on Discord. The offers are open for two weeks. After that period, we may decide to develop the apps ourselves.Introducing Discount Stablecoins was originally published in Obyte on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Obyte 2020 Product Plan

Since its launch on December 25, 2016, the Obyte platform, then known as Byteball, has implemented everything stated on the original white paper and much more. This year will be no different in that regard with new features making Obyte even better, addressing scalability issues such as network fees and network bloat, as well as improving decentralization. The only difference this time will be an updated white paper to reflect all of the improvements that have been made over the years.Making Obyte Easier to UseEven if using Obyte is already easier than many other DLT projects out there, the team is constantly working to make things easier and easier in order to make the software more accessible as well as appealing to a wider user base.Tutorial ScreensThough the wallet has user experience in mind, there is a major difference between non-technical but crypto experienced users, as well as brand new users. The introduction of tutorials into the wallet will help first-time users navigate through the wallet and get a better understanding of Obyte overall.Continuous BackupRecovery seeds only need to be saved once but backups, which allow the recovery of blackbytes and other data other than GBYTE held, must be done manually. With the development of Continuous Backup, users will now no longer need to regularly backup their wallet and replace their old file.dApp BrowserAs the number of dApps on Obyte grows, the need for better navigation also grows. With the development of a dApp Browser, users will get a better experience with sorting through the dApps on Obyte and developers will know that what they create will be much easier to find.Automatic Hub Re-RoutingHubs in Obyte are nodes that relay data, such as chat data among users or with bots. However, in the current wallet, though users can choose the hubs they use, reliability can become an issue. With this development, users will still easily be able to select the hubs they want to use for chats and approving multisig transactions, but will have the option to enable automatic switching to another if the hub they were connected to becomes unreachable for whatever reason.Addressing Scalability ConcernsScalability is a common concern regarding DLT platforms by users, developers, and organizations. We are continuing to work towards having a system where no matter how many people and organizations use Obyte and no matter how much they use it, it still continues running without noticeable issues, if any at all.Obyte SidechainsThe introduction of sidechains to the Obyte network will allow for the incorporation of transactions to occur outside of the network but still be connected to Obyte. This development tackles the network bloat issue where the size of the database grows larger and larger as more transactions occur, potentially making it harder for those running a full node. This also serves as a potential solution for projects that require a large amount of frequent or constant transactions and with low or even no fees. Since fees in GBYTE are only influenced by the amount of data entered into the network, if the price of GBYTE goes up significantly, it can prevent projects that need a low fee to operate due to high volume to economically exist on Obyte. The introduction of a sidechain solution solves this issue and the Obyte team aims to make it easier to set up in order to further grow the ecosystem around the main network.These sidechains, though responsible for their own network upkeep, will still benefit from the features that Obyte has, such as Autonomous Agents (AA), so that they can easily build what they need, while at the same time being able to make modifications that work best for their needs.The plan for implementation of this capability includes the development of the following:Sidechain UIThis user interface will allow for users to easily interact with sidechains just as they do with the main Obyte network right in the Obyte wallet.Sidechain Deployment TemplateIn order to speed up the deployment of sidechains to the Obyte network, a deployment template will be created together with the existing features on Obyte set as defaults to encourage more sidechains to be set up while connected to Obyte.Introducing Decentralized TradingSince the launch of the network, we have been working towards increased availability for trading GBYTE on various centralized exchanges. However, we acknowledge that there’s been demand for decentralized trading as well whether for increased control over one’s money by holding one’s own keys, or for privacy reasons due to the growing KYC requirements on those centralized exchanges.Decentralized Exchange (DEX)Though there have been exchanges created specifically for Obyte in the past, such as those for the Blackbytes and tokens on top of the Obyte network, a full decentralized exchange was built on the platform itself by the core team to enable peer-to-peer trading while aiming to maintain the ease of use and familiar interface known from centralized exchanges as much as possible. The team will continue to develop improvements for the DEX to improve overall user experience. For more detailed information about it, please refer to this Medium article about the Obyte DEX.Instant DEXWith Instant DEX, users who are not advanced traders will not have to go through the steps of depositing, trading on the order book, and withdrawing. Instead, they will have a simple two-click interface for exchanging one token for another.E-CommerceWhile many new projects around the cryptocurrency space today focus on the utility of their technologies, Obyte did not forget one of the main uses of decentralized technologies which is peer-to-peer payments. That’s not to say that people haven’t been using GBYTE as payment for goods and services however, rather that Obyte is committed to continuously work on making it even easier moving forward.Smart Contracts with ArbitrationSmart contracts can execute automatically based on data introduced on the network itself, such as when a token on Obyte is transferred from one wallet to another in a sale when GBYTE has been transferred as well as payment. However, the same level of benefits cannot be completely attributed to these conditional transactions that rely on data from outside the Obyte network, such as the delivery of a product or a completion of a service. With the introduction of Arbiters, users will be able to designate a 3rd party arbiter to resolve disputes, such as for example, whether the product was as described or not if the recipient is unhappy with what they received.ArbStoreTo make it easier to find and offer services as arbiters, a list of arbiters with their verified real names will be provided. When an arbiter is proposed by one party, the other party will be able to see the proposed arbiter as well and be able to decide whether to accept or reject.More iGaming and EntertainmentUsing Obyte can be a fun experience as well and we’re working towards making sure this area is a viable one by adding even more options in addition to existing ones like LuckyBytes.Sports BettingTo expand the use of the DEX, the dev team will work on enabling sports betting capabilities to allow users to set and accept bets on sporting events by buying tokens on the DEX that represent various outcomes of these sporting events with varying details if applicable.Sports Betting UIIn addition to the functionality, a UI will be developed in order for users to be easily able to browse upcoming sporting events, create markets for them, and trade them on the DEX.Decentralized Board GamesDecentralized board games will be created so that interactions among players will require no trusted third party though the specific games haven’t been decided yet. This will be especially useful for games where players want to use tokens with real value in the internal game economy, which are then tradable on the DEX, instead of just pure play money, as well as whether they would want to make bets regarding the outcome of the game.Decentralized FinanceWith the rise of popularity around Decentralized Finance (DeFi), the Obyte team is dedicating more resources towards this area to increase both the amount of users as well as the number of projects that use Obyte to build and run DeFi projects.Token Symbol Registry UIIn the past, the creation of tokens on the Obyte network was demonstrated with many tokens created on the network since the feature was developed. To further the viability of Obyte tokens, the development team will work on the Token Symbol Registry service so that people can easily set the tickers for tokens using a unique method. For more information, you can refer to this Medium post about the Token Registry we published earlier.StablecoinsAn interface will be created that will provide assistance with the creation of the tokens using Autonomous Agents that are algorithmically secured to be stable, such as with locked funds, similar to other stablecoins in the market not backed by reserve of the asset the token or coin is referencing, though with some unique differences soon to be revealed. These stablecoins can also have features to make them operate like other financial instruments, such as zero coupon bonds. For the final step of the creation of the stablecoin however, developers will need to launch the wallet to securely deploy it.IoTThe use of distributed ledger technology like Obyte in the Internet of Things (IoT) space has been gaining in popularity partially due to its security benefits. To address growing market demand, the Obyte team will develop resources and software improvements to extend the capabilities of Obyte in this field to make it more viable.Micro Wallet LibrariesThe introduction of micro wallet libraries will ease the running of Obyte on different devices as well as on browsers and various javascript platforms. This will thus make it easier for developers to build things using Obyte and distribute their completed product to people who have not installed Obyte previously on their devices.Custom Protocol Layer RepeaterWith this developed, the Obyte network will be able to support third-party data transfer protocols such as the Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol on Obyte hubs, making it easier for data to be brought into the network, such as for bots relaying information.Knowledge and InformationImproving access to information as well as keeping it up-to-date is something that is often neglected but is still important. This year, we plan to increase accessibility to information as well as maintain existing areas of information to keep things accurate for those interested in Obyte and taking a look for the first time.White Paper UpdateAn update to version 1.1 will be worked on this year by the development team as well as other contributors in order to reflect all the changes that have happened since the launch of Obyte, such as the introduction of Autonomous Agents, as well as discuss what is planned at a more technical level.Team Growth and Moving ForwardOverall, this seems to be quite a lot of work to do, but we are confident that we will be able to achieve this and more with the new additions to our development team. We look forward to working with you all to bring Obyte to the next level.The creation of this document was overseen and managed by Travin Keith, Consulting Advisor to Obyte. A business he co-founded, BitStory, also provided the featured image for this article.Obyte 2020 Product Plan was originally published in Obyte on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Bind Creative Chosen to Bec...

After two weeks of voting in the poll announced on March 19th between Bind Creative and Raivo Malter the results have been reviewed and the winner of the poll is Bind Creative. Bind now becomes the fifth independent Order Provider (witness), and will join PolloPollo, Bosch Connectory Stuttgart, Fabien Marino and Rogier Eijkelhof in providing this critical function for the network.As with the previous default Order Providers, Bind Creative’s witness address will be pushed to all of the active wallets from the default hub. Therefore, when you open up your Obyte wallet and see the notification to update the Order Provider list, please accept it if you agree with Bind becoming your Order Provider. If you agree your wallet will be automatically updated with the new Order Provider list including Bind.If you run a headless node (such as a hub), you are requested to update your witness lists as well by changing the address BVVJ2K7ENPZZ3VYZFWQWK7ISPCATFIW3 to the Bind Creative witness address DXYWHSZ72ZDNDZ7WYZXKWBBH425C6WZN. Please check the headless-wallet tools folder for the script that facilitates replacing witness addresses on headless nodes.Thank you to the candidates, and to everyone who voted in the poll. Decentralization of the network is a top priority so your continued participation is vital. The next poll will be announced shortly once everyone has had time to update their wallets and nodes.Bind Creative Chosen to Become an Order Provider on the Obyte Public Network was originally published in Obyte on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Road to Decentralizatio...

Launching Thursday March 19th at 12:00 CETDuring these crazy days and tumultuous times we at Obyte continue with business as usual and are pressing on with our mission to decentralize order provision on the Obyte network. We have been in talks with several new candidates who are interested in becoming Order Providers/Witnesses, but due to the very fluid situation that many organisations are facing these days, they are not yet ready to participate in the next Order Provider poll.Nevertheless, Obyte does not want to unnecessarily delay this very important process and wants to continue with its commitment to fully decentralize the network. Therefore, we are happy to present a new poll between the two loyal members of the community that got some support from users, but didn’t win the previous poll — Raivo Malter and Bind Creative.Raivo MalterFor those that do not know him, Raivo is a crypto veteran who has been a fan of Obyte since he discovered it in early 2018, and was greatly impressed by the power, functionality and simplicity of the platform. Please check this post, and his video interview to learn more about Raivo and why he would like to become a Witness.Bind CreativeBind Creative, the team behind the Obby Chat instant messaging app and the Precious Metals Exchange Rate Oracle, among other Obyte projects, has been increasingly involved in the Obyte community for the last 8 months. Now they are keen to deepen their involvement in Obyte by becoming an Order Provider. Please have a read of this Medium post to learn more about Bind Creative, if you are not aware of who they are and what they have been up to.PLEASE CAST YOUR VOTE FOR THE NEXT DEFAULT ORDER PROVIDER!As usual, we will use an Obyte poll to determine who will become the next default Order Provider/Witness, so we need you to vote on this question:Who do you approve of becoming the 5th independent Order Provider (also known as Witness) on the Obyte network?Bind CreativeRaivo Malterneither of themRegister your vote in the Polls section on Obyte.io or find the “Poll Bot” in the Bot Store in your wallet and cast your vote through that.Going ForwardThe poll begins today Thursday, March 19th at 12:00 noon CET and will last until 11:59 AM CET on Thursday April 2nd. As always, the results will be visible in real time, and the winner will be announced in a new post once the poll closes. If the leader changes during the last 24 hours of the poll, we reserve the right to extend the poll.Please remember that each Obyte wallet can cast a vote, and only the most recent vote per wallet counts. Votes are based on balances held by the wallet that casts the vote, like shareholding voting in a public company. The candidate that receives the most votes, i.e. the greatest balance in GBYTE, will win the poll.Please participate and help us on our way to becoming a fully decentralized DLT platform. Thank you, and stay safe and healthy!The Road to Decentralization Continues: The Next Obyte Order Provider Poll was originally published in Obyte on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What’s Next For Obyte: Dece...

With Autonomous Agents recently activated on mainnet, we expect to see many dapps that will issue their tokens. Multiple stablecoins pegged to various assets and with varying parameters, prediction market shares for various events are just a few examples.All these coins will be tradable on ODEX exchange, Oswap, and other exchanges and we need a fair, fast, scalable, and decentralized way of assigning human-friendly names to myriads of tokens.There is already an asset registry operated by long-time community member Péter Miklós and the names from this registry are displayed in Obyte wallets. However those names are usually too long, and for good reason — to have a clear and fair naming system. It is good to have clear descriptive names in the wallets but they are not quite suitable for trading interfaces where traders are used to see short ticker symbols like AAPL, MSFT, BTC, etc. The asset registry does assign ticker symbols but they are not guaranteed to be unique.AA-powered token registryNow that we have AAs, we can build a token registry that is fair, fast, scalable, and decentralized.The registry will be managed by a single Autonomous Agent that will allow to assign ticker symbols to tokens. The agent will store associations between asset IDs (44-character cryptic strings) and token symbols. The agent’s storage will be available to everybody, including other AAs and centralized apps.The most interesting part is how these associations are created in a fair way. Some existing systems for assigning names, such as domain name registrations, are arguably not fair. They work on a first come, first served basis and early registrants get an unfair advantage, which incentivizes them to squat the available names for resale, not for use. Also, tying a name to a single owner makes it dependent on the whims of that owner. Which is not right for names of things that are not associated with any particular person or company, for example decentralized stablecoins.To register a name for an asset, one needs to send the asset ID and name, plus some deposit, to the token registry AA. If the name is not taken yet and no other name is registered for this asset, the association between the asset and the proposed symbol name will be immediately created. The first registrant doesn’t get any particular privileges on the asset or name, he is just the first registrant. Anybody else can send the same name-asset pair along with his own deposit to increase the support for the pair. The supporters can withdraw their deposits without destroying the name-asset association.What happens if somebody wants to associate an already registered name with another asset, or assign another name to a particular asset? They send their preferred name-asset pair to the AA, along with a deposit they want to lock in support of the new association. Multiple people can send their deposits in support of the new pair. As soon as the total support (in terms of the sum of all deposits) in favor of the new pair exceeds the support of the existing pair, a challenging period begins.During the challenging period, which lasts for 30 days, the supporters of the current name-asset pair have a chance to mobilize and increase the total amount staked for the current pair. The community of challengers can try to retain its leadership by also increasing its total stake.After the challenging period ends, the side that has garnered more support wins. If the incumbent side won, nothing changes. If the challenging side won, the name is assigned to another asset (or a new name is assigned to an existing asset, depending on what was challenged) and the old name-asset link is torn down.Why do we need a challenging period and don’t reassign a name or asset immediately? To give the existing community time to mobilize and defend their name. They, and everybody else, are used to associating their asset with a particular name and don’t want to be caught by surprise and find that their token name is now associated with some other token by a whim of some whale.Eventually, strong communities will be able to defend their names as long as their members are prepared to lock funds in support of the name. However, nothing lasts forever and as a token loses its community and falls into oblivion, its name can be easily snatched by another, stronger community. We believe it is fair to assign a name to a community that can garner the most support for the name.Having ticker symbols re-assigned to other assets is already an established practice. For example, Visa Inc. trades on NYSE under ticker symbol V but previously the symbol belonged to Vivendi, and before that to New York New Haven & Hartford Railroad, Irving Bank Corp, Vivra Inc, and Viking General Corp. The ticker symbol C is now Citigroup, it was previously used by Chrysler.To clarify, defending or seizing a name doesn’t require spending any money. The money is just locked in the AA and can be withdrawn in full (minus a small fee). The communities that compete for a name, compete to get more stake (deposits) locked in the AA. Therefore, supporting a losing name doesn’t make you lose money to the winning side. Only the name is lost, the money can be withdrawn in full.Similarly, the winners don’t pay anything to those who supported a previous token for the name. Thus, squatting popular names doesn’t make sense.To better defend their names, token communities can incentivize their members to lock money in various drawers with longer unlock periods: 1 day, 7 days, 30 days, 90 days, 180 days, and 360 days. This would ensure that the name always has significant support and is not easily lost to competitors. By default, drawer 0 is used, which allows the withdrawal of money at any time. Other drawers allow withdrawals after the corresponding warm-up period.Will there be fights for vanity 1-letter names? We’ll see.If you register a long name that nobody else wants, you don’t need to lock a large deposit on the AA for a long time. You can lock a minimum deposit just to register the pair and immediately withdraw the deposit. If somebody still “attacks” the name, you have 30 days to defend it.The supporters of a name-asset pair have an option to vote for a short (up to 140 characters) description of their token and the number of decimals used when displaying amounts in this token. These parameters can be read from AA state and used by (d)apps that enable trading of the token, such as exchanges.Next stepsThe token registry AA is already written (writing AAs is really easy) and can be viewed in the Oscript editor. ODEX already uses the AA to display token symbols and amounts with the right decimals. Developers building apps and dapps can also already read its data.We plan to implement a user friendly token registry UI in the coming months. Or, maybe you have good design and UX skills and want to implement the UI? Talk to us on discord and apply for a grant!What’s Next For Obyte: Decentralized Token Registry was originally published in Obyte on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Finding out what is being b...

Meet MOOMuch has been built on Obyte since its launch 3 years ago, and we expect a lot more to be built once Autonomous Agents go live on mainnet. Finding information about everything that is happening and the people behind projects has not been straightforward, and we hope Made On Obyte will help with this.What is Made On Obyte?A website that makes it easier to find out what is happening at Obyte and who is working on what. There are currently 19 different projects. Additionally, you can use your Obyte wallet to login and “like” any developer, project or article. See this 30 second video on how to login and “like” content.https://medium.com/media/f303eefbf70cdb7f04557e3e51803057/hrefDonateYou can also leave comments and send donations in Bytes.Cream risesThe most popular content is automatically sorted on the front page, so if it’s a popular project, you might get exposure too once this site becomes a popular discovery method for Obyte projects.User profilesMany people have contributed to various Obyte projects but it’s not always easy to find who has worked on what. Made On Obyte makes this easier by using profiles so people can add others to various projects. Hopefully this will help with collaboration too. Your profile is created automatically once you login using your Obyte wallet. There is also a Makers section so developers can easily see who did what and who is available for hire.Possible mascotObyte uses the moon as imagery on social media, cherishing the most perfect shape that can exist; the one and only O. Imagery is powerful, it’s surprising there are not more projects using it. Off the top of your head, what images are synonymous with crypto projects?Obyte = moonBitcoin = goldDogecoin = dogThere are not many others. It has been suggested that Made On Obyte has its own mascot too, maybe you have already guessed what it might be? Made On Obyte = MOO = familiar sound =What do you think of the possible cow mascot? It was pointed out that in India cows are sacred which might be an issue, so we asked an Indian Obby who said in India many milk and cheese brands use cows as mascots and its fine. So on that front it should be ok, but feel free to leave a comment below or on the Obyte subbredit.Finding out what is being built using Obyte and the Obbies involved just became easier was originally published in Obyte on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Autonomous Agents On Mainne...

After 7 months of testing on testnet, 2375 Autonomous Agents deployed, 25482 AA transactions processed, and 7 rounds of AA developer contest, we are happy to make the next step: launch Autonomous Agents on mainnet.The original design of Autonomous Agents released in July of 2019 has undergone significant changes thanks to input that we received during the developer contest and new applications conceived during this time. Thanks to participants of the contest, a number of bugs were found and crash-and-burn rewards paid, a number of unmet needs discovered and changes in Oscript language introduced.The developer ecosystem has also improved, and in addition to easy to use web based Oscript editor that allows to quickly write new Autonomous Agents, we now have an AA testing framework to test your AAs and make sure they work as expected, and a number of excellent guides written by the contest participants. Obyte.js, a javascript library for working with Obyte ledger developed by Fabien, was significantly extended and now allows to easily develop browser based dapps.We hope that Autonomous Agents developed during the contest will be deployed on mainnet and further developed into easy to use dapps with nice UI (those that didn’t already have it).Oswap, Fabien’s project funded through Obyte grants program, should be ready shortly after the launch of AAs on mainnet. It will allow an easy and fast exchange between tokens issued on Obyte, powered by an AA and happening completely on-chain. It’ll be handy both for end-users for easy two-click exchanges and for other AAs that need to exchange tokens as part of their function.The core team is also developing several interesting DApps that will be released shortly after AAs go live on mainnet. They include stablecoins, predictions markets, decentralized oracle, and much more.A decentralized exchange, which will be an important infrastructure element that brings liquidity to thousands of AA-managed tokens, is ready, already works on testnet, and will be launched on the same day as AAs are activated on mainnet.With all this in place, we concluded that ceiling and visibility are OK (CAVOK) and the Autonomous Agents should be cleared for takeoff!Update your walletsAll Autonomous Agent features are set to activate at MCI 5,210,000 which is expected at the end of February. Since this is a protocol upgrade and therefore a breaking change, all nodes, including light nodes, need to upgrade to version 3.0.0 that was released today.For full nodes (both headless and GUI), the upgrade will take a very long time since the update also includes moving part of the data from SQLite database to a much faster RocksDB database. The move will improve performance of some queries, especially data feed queries that some AAs might actively use. The conversion of data will be done when you launch the wallet for the first time after the upgrade and it will take several hours (in our experience, from 3 hours on a dedicated server to 39 hours on a VPS), so please plan accordingly. RocksDB database will take additional 15 GB of disk space (but the data that remains in SQLite will grow a bit slower after the upgrade and the data that was moved to RocksDB will eventually be deleted from SQLite by a later update), please check that you have enough free disk space before the upgrade. Create a backup before upgrading.For light nodes, the upgrade will be much faster since their database is usually small, but light nodes with long transaction history can still experience a noticeable delay during the first start, especially mobile ones on older hardware.We are looking forward to the launch of AAs on mainnet and hope (and know) that with vastly expanded design space that they offer to developers, we’ll see a larger community of builders, more apps and DApps developed on Obyte, especially in the DeFi space, and more activity on the network.Autonomous Agents On Mainnet: Ready For Takeoff was originally published in Obyte on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

PolloPollo Approved to Beco...

Thank you to everyone in the Obyte community that took part in the 4th independent Order Provider poll! As you know, we have made decentralizing the Order Provider (Witness) nodes a priority, and we are happy to announce that PolloPollo was the winner of the latest poll and will be joining Bosch Connectory Stuttgart, Fabien Marino and Rogier Eijkelhof by becoming an Order Provider (Witness) on the Obyte default hub.As always, we made an announcement in Medium, and across our channels, about the candidates (Bind Creative, PolloPollo and Raivo Malter) and the details of the poll, which closed on 4 February, 2020 at 12:00. The results were tallied in real time and visible to all, and in the end most of the votes were cast in favour of adding PolloPollo as a default Order Provider.PolloPollo is an amazing project, which does not only showcase the utility of DLT in general, and Obyte in particular, but it is all about changing people’s lives for the better one donation at a time, and there is no better raison d’être than making the world a better place. We applaud their efforts, and are pleased to have them take this role in supporting the Obyte network.On the implementation side, the next steps for Obyte users to add PolloPollo as an Order Provider are simple. The PolloPollo address will be pushed from the default hub to all of the active wallets, so the next time that you open up your Obyte wallet you will receive a notification to accept the change. Please just accept the change, if you agree, and the list of witnesses in your wallet will be automatically updated.We will also ask all full node operators and hub operators to update their witness lists as well by replacing the old witness address OYW2XTDKSNKGSEZ27LMGNOPJSYIXHBHC with the PolloPollo witness address APABTE2IBKOIHLS2UNK6SAR4T5WRGH2J. There is a script in headless-wallet tools folder that makes it easier to replace the witness.Last, but certainly not least, we would like to sincerely thank Raivo and Bind Creative for their participation in the poll and ongoing support of the Obyte project. They both will be able to take part in the next or any future polls, if they wish, and we hope that they do.The next poll will be announced soon after PolloPollo has been added to the network so please keep an eye on Medium for the details. If you are interested in becoming an Obyte Order provider, please contact us at o@obyte.org.PolloPollo Approved to Become a Default Witness on the Obyte Public Network was originally published in Obyte on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

LuckyBytes returns, the pro...

LuckyBytes, the provably fair lottery you can play from inside your Obyte wallet has returned, and this time with more languages. English, Chinese, Japanese, German, Russian are all now available.Select your language inside the bot, which you can add from the Obyte wallet Bot Store.LuckyBytes vs government lotteriesHow does LuckyBytes compare to the wildly popular government run lotteries? With government lotteries the odds can be awful and the payout % low e.g. the U.K. government lottery only pays 53% of revenue as prizes. Other major lotteries also only have prize pools of around 50%, for example Powerball which is one of the biggest lotteries in the USA only pays around half of revenue has prizes.With LuckyBytes 99–97% of the pot is paid out in prizes, with only 1–3% of ticket sales used to fund running costs. Players receive a discount on the ticket price when they buy more. For example, if you buy 1 ticket for 10.3 Megabytes (~ $0.26) then 97% is paid out in prize money. If you buy 100 tickets for 1010 Megabytes (~ $25) then 99% is paid out in prize money.Fun statisticsLotteries are estimated to make up around 29% of global gambling revenues, second only to casinos at 32%. Worldwide gambling revenues are around $USD 110 billion, but the gambling category only ranks 6th. Can you guess what’s number 1 without looking at the chart below?Note: the data source is from 2009, but it’s unlikely alcohol has lost such a big lead in only a decade.LuckyBytes is provably fairUnlike government lotteries and scratch cards, anyone can verify the legitimacy of the draws. Each draw has a draw hash which can be seen before each draw is played. The draw hash means you can later verify that the draw didn’t change the outcome. After the draw you can see the proof hash. With the proof hash you can recalculate the draw hash, and the outcome (winning slot number). LuckyBytes makes this easy to do so in wallet, just go to menu/draw history the click the name of the draw which will generate a webpage like this. The library used is open source, see the technical details.You might think a provably fair lottery isn’t important, after all, you can trust the government ones, right? Do your own research. Due to the huge amounts of money at stake, lottery fraud happens. The Swindled podcast has an excellent episode about a recent case in the United States.Automatically join new gamesAutoplay is a useful feature that lets you automatically join new draws when they become available. The video below shows how to add LuckyBytes to your Obyte wallet and enable the autoplay feature.https://medium.com/media/deb77fd09f3c901cb555578963de1aa5/hrefTickets only cost around 10 Megabytes each, that's around $0.26. Turn on Autoplay and start Luckybyting today. Good luck!LuckyBytes returns, the provably fair lottery played from inside the Obyte wallet was originally published in Obyte on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.