Obyte: Totally new consensus algorithm + private untraceable payments

[ico_reviews]

See our review of Byteball here - https://coins.best/ico-reviews/byteball/

[kola-schaar]

After August 7 we'll reach more than 50% distributed coins and will start a new phase of our distribution.

It was stated from day one that the purpose of this distribution is to get this coin into the hands of as many people as possible.  Both coins (bytes and blackbytes) are meant to be used as currencies, and this is only possible when there are many users and apps to interact with.  We already have a sizable community, a number of unique apps, and we are the only crypto project to have an app distribution platform (the Bot Store), but there is still a lot of room to grow in terms of user count, number of apps, and willingness of users to use these apps.

Up until now, we were distributing only to holders of BTC and Bytes, i.e. we were rewarding holding.  Now we are adding actual users into the mix, i.e. we are going to reward transactions.

To get you an idea of how we are going to do it, we are going to partner with several categories of companies:
- merchants
- payment processors
- "Bitcoin debit card" companies
and offer 10% cashback, paid in Bytes, for all qualifying purchases (no matter how the purchases are paid).  The cashback will be funded from the undistributed pool.  For example, a customer who bought for $100 receives $10 cashback in Bytes, paid to his Byteball address, at the current exchange rate.  For merchants, this is something that would drive sales and they would put effort into promoting the offer.  In competitive industries, a 10% cashback is a very powerful tool to lure customers.  For customers, this is a 10% discount (which matters a lot in some industries).  For Byteball, it is new users who will have to get involved into the system in order to receive the cashback.

A few companies have already expressed interest (not disclosing the names while it is a work in progress).

A few extensions of this offer:
- 20% cashback if the purchase is paid in bytes or blackbytes.  This would incentivize merchants to start accepting bytes and blackbytes, and the infrastructure will stay after the distribution ends.
- merchants can offer additional cashback to their customers.  Merchants fund it themselves by buying bytes from the market, and for every 1% funded by the merchant we add 1% more from the undistributed pool.

If you see similarity with existing loyalty points schemes, it is similar indeed.

At a minimum, we receive many new users who learn about Byteball from their merchants, plus working payment integrations.  And the users are not just crypto fans, it may be their first crypto coin for many users.  With the most user friendly wallet in the industry, we are in the best position to expand beyond the crypto village.

We can continue adding 10-20% to existing byte balances to incentivize keeping the received bytes before more infrastructure is built, rather than cashing out immediately.  

Two negative sides:
- the scheme is less transparent than plain adding on top of existing balances, and some share of fraud is inevitable.  Merchants might try to deceive us to receive coins for themselves by reporting nonexistent sales or selling to themselves.  This is mitigated by good choice of trustworthy merchants and our ability to disconnect any merchant at any time on suspicion of fraud.  Their customers can also try to find ways to abuse the system, again we'll require the merchants to prevent that by excluding some types of purchases, monitoring customers, enforcing caps, etc.  Additionally, if the merchant funds part of the cashback himself, he has skin in the game to counter the customer fraud.
- these new users are not holders for the most part, they are more likely to sell.  Not a big problem, the point is they already know about Byteball and it's easy for them to get back.  The new users are new to crypto, many of them won't use exchanges, and somebody will have to create new easier-to-use channels to fiat, which is positive for liquidity.  Also, 10%-20% monthly distributions discourage fast selling while the distribution is ongoing.  And lastly, the merchants who fund 50% of the cashback would partially balance the markets by buying coins.

On balance, I'm sure that these negatives are tolerable when we are going to achieve a vast expansion of our user base and acceptance at merchants.

For the current distribution round, nothing changes.

For the next distribution on September 6, we are changing the ratios in favor of Byte holders and slowing down the distribution to have more time to build out the cashback program:

BTC to Bytes: every 160 BTC gives you 1 GB from the distribution (or 0.00625 GB per BTC).
Bytes to Bytes: every 10 GB of existing balance gives you additional 1 GB from the distribution (in other words, +10% to existing balances).

Similar ratios for blackbytes.

For those who receive their first bytes from cashbacks, Sep 6 will be the first distribution when they receive +10%.

I'll make announcements as we add merchants in the cashback program.

Good decision - very professional. The growth was/is strong, it is time to refill some more substance,
to achieve sustainable growth.
Real world access and adoption is the only thing that helps to cross the Death Valley.
Only very few coins will survive this. I think byteball has a good chance to reach the plateau of productivity...

[tonych]

To get you an idea of how we are going to do it, we are going to partner with several categories of companies:
- merchants
- payment processors
- "Bitcoin debit card" companies
and offer 10% cashback, paid in Bytes, for all qualifying purchases (no matter how the purchases are paid).

Example: Say I'm new to this, and I buy a new phone from a merchant in the program. I pay $200 for the phone, and my merchant asks me to install a Byteball wallet? Is that how it will work?

Exactly.

This would fit perfectly in the idea of using Tokens as a loyalty scheme, but as a new user I wouldn't want to install software to receive anything after a purchase.

If you don't install, you don't receive.
There's been a fair amount of media noise around cryptos lately, someone might be already interested in entering the game but didn't know how to do it.  Here we offer an opportunity.

[tonych]

Follow-up question:
I'm doing a $500 giveaway this month (on behalf of Rollin.io online casino). As far as I know none of the people who joined use Byteball yet. Would this qualify for the 10% cashback? I'd be happy to ask winners for their Byteball address and give them 10% extra in bytes. Other giveaway threads could do the same.
Could this qualify? It's not a purchase.

Giveaways do not qualify.  I expect users to pay real money for something.

[Limx Dev]

After August 7 we'll reach more than 50% distributed coins and will start a new phase of our distribution.

It was stated from day one that the purpose of this distribution is to get this coin into the hands of as many people as possible.  Both coins (bytes and blackbytes) are meant to be used as currencies, and this is only possible when there are many users and apps to interact with.  We already have a sizable community, a number of unique apps, and we are the only crypto project to have an app distribution platform (the Bot Store), but there is still a lot of room to grow in terms of user count, number of apps, and willingness of users to use these apps.

Up until now, we were distributing only to holders of BTC and Bytes, i.e. we were rewarding holding.  Now we are adding actual users into the mix, i.e. we are going to reward transactions.

To get you an idea of how we are going to do it, we are going to partner with several categories of companies:
- merchants
- payment processors
- "Bitcoin debit card" companies
and offer 10% cashback, paid in Bytes, for all qualifying purchases (no matter how the purchases are paid).  The cashback will be funded from the undistributed pool.  For example, a customer who bought for $100 receives $10 cashback in Bytes, paid to his Byteball address, at the current exchange rate.  For merchants, this is something that would drive sales and they would put effort into promoting the offer.  In competitive industries, a 10% cashback is a very powerful tool to lure customers.  For customers, this is a 10% discount (which matters a lot in some industries).  For Byteball, it is new users who will have to get involved into the system in order to receive the cashback.

A few companies have already expressed interest (not disclosing the names while it is a work in progress).

A few extensions of this offer:
- 20% cashback if the purchase is paid in bytes or blackbytes.  This would incentivize merchants to start accepting bytes and blackbytes, and the infrastructure will stay after the distribution ends.
- merchants can offer additional cashback to their customers.  Merchants fund it themselves by buying bytes from the market, and for every 1% funded by the merchant we add 1% more from the undistributed pool.

If you see similarity with existing loyalty points schemes, it is similar indeed.

At a minimum, we receive many new users who learn about Byteball from their merchants, plus working payment integrations.  And the users are not just crypto fans, it may be their first crypto coin for many users.  With the most user friendly wallet in the industry, we are in the best position to expand beyond the crypto village.

We can continue adding 10-20% to existing byte balances to incentivize keeping the received bytes before more infrastructure is built, rather than cashing out immediately.  

Two negative sides:
- the scheme is less transparent than plain adding on top of existing balances, and some share of fraud is inevitable.  Merchants might try to deceive us to receive coins for themselves by reporting nonexistent sales or selling to themselves.  This is mitigated by good choice of trustworthy merchants and our ability to disconnect any merchant at any time on suspicion of fraud.  Their customers can also try to find ways to abuse the system, again we'll require the merchants to prevent that by excluding some types of purchases, monitoring customers, enforcing caps, etc.  Additionally, if the merchant funds part of the cashback himself, he has skin in the game to counter the customer fraud.
- these new users are not holders for the most part, they are more likely to sell.  Not a big problem, the point is they already know about Byteball and it's easy for them to get back.  The new users are new to crypto, many of them won't use exchanges, and somebody will have to create new easier-to-use channels to fiat, which is positive for liquidity.  Also, 10%-20% monthly distributions discourage fast selling while the distribution is ongoing.  And lastly, the merchants who fund 50% of the cashback would partially balance the markets by buying coins.

On balance, I'm sure that these negatives are tolerable when we are going to achieve a vast expansion of our user base and acceptance at merchants.

For the current distribution round, nothing changes.

For the next distribution on September 6, we are changing the ratios in favor of Byte holders and slowing down the distribution to have more time to build out the cashback program:

BTC to Bytes: every 160 BTC gives you 1 GB from the distribution (or 0.00625 GB per BTC).
Bytes to Bytes: every 10 GB of existing balance gives you additional 1 GB from the distribution (in other words, +10% to existing balances).

Similar ratios for blackbytes.

For those who receive their first bytes from cashbacks, Sep 6 will be the first distribution when they receive +10%.

I'll make announcements as we add merchants in the cashback program.

To be honest this is the worst decision and it sucks.Price of byteball will fall now.I am out and dumping my gbytes now

It is best decision of tonych. Just couple days ago I thought,that it was worst idea,to increase rewards up to 20%.
Tonych is really smart guy,and he made this platform for real world use,not only speculation.
I put my hat down tonych. You got my respect!

I aggree, only the scam protection is small problem.

[Bramen]

If I make the microtransaction directly from my Kraken account, will I get byteballs in the airdrop?

[fudge]

If I make the microtransaction directly from my Kraken account, will I get byteballs in the airdrop?

Nope. You should use wallet like Electrum etc.

[megashira1]

Probably mentioned a million times but does bittrex honor byteball distribution for GBYTE holders?

[pockets1989]

The majority of you guys saying people should  dump byteballs now are missing the point.  For those of us here since the beginning we  have  always  known tonych has had the best interests of byteball at heart and hasnt sold  off a single  GB  from his own personal stash.  The future of this project depends on widespread adoption and getting byteball  out in the real world.

I think the plan is genius about cashback rewards while also reducing bitcoin holders stake since they are the ones continuing to dump and devalue the price of byteball.  I support a softer landing in terms of the byte  distributions.   I was worried that future development was up in the air but after reading over  what tony plans  to do in terms of real world adoption a lot of you dumpers are gonna be  really sorry in a year or  so.  Byteball to the fuckin moon in 2018!

[Gatekeeper]

if future distributions will see btc holders lose 90% of their allocation compared to previous drops i might actually hold my GB this time as it means a lot less instant dumps for the next phases. I'm guessing the 1gb for every 10gb for holders is on top of the 20% bonus?

[Kwelstr]

I want to say that I really really really like the new distribution scheme from Tonych. Finally one crypto developer that wants to focus on usability in real life payments and commerce, this is a breath of fresh air! I have high hopes for byteball now as a leader.

[muleroaa]

Great changes to the distribution in my opinion. This should create a lot more value for the tokens in the long run.

[MagnusHH]

As it's not totally clear, and I think it's quite important to put in these terms...

The new rules mean that GB holders now get 5x more compared with BTC holders than they did previously, which is a massive advantage to holding GB.

The amount from the cashback scheme is unknown, but a huge amount of that giveaway just comes from what used to go to the BTC holders before GB holders will see any increased loss in value through an expanded money supply.

Certainly there is every reason to expect that the next round will be better for GB holders than this one, if it's not just the same.

[Cryptian]

I had an idea, someone probably already thought of this but just throwing it out htere.....

 would it be possible to do random airdrops for GB holders through some kind of algorithm (e.g. within a 30 day period one random airdrop or something like it).
I think it would increase incentive to hold and provide price stability which is important for merchants and users.

[MagnusHH]

I may be totally wrong as I'm pretty tired, so sorry if this is incorrect, but I just did a quick back of the envelope calculation, and at the moment BTC holders are getting more coins than GB holders by a not insignificant margin, where as next time the numbers I used suggest they get a fraction, and at 20% cash back, people would need to buy about $7.7 million dollars worth of stuff using GB in order to make it the same as it is now.

If that's true then great, because either GB holders are getting a much much better deal, or ca. $7.7M are being spent using this currency on actual products in a single month.

Someone please do double check me here though.

[memberx]

Question, I currently got some GBYTE in the Small Expense Wallet, linked to a empty BTC address. This one will receive 20% GBYTE later.

I also got a small amount of GBYTE in a sub wallet, SMART WALLET. will I receive 20% there as well? Or do I need to transfer or do I need to link another BTC account?

[CoinCidental]

there are a few  whales with an ungodly amount of tokens only  because of their btc balance
66k btc
54k btc
2500x10 btc  are some  i have noticed

whales of this size are a risk to the project and they make people afraid
 to invest because they could dump and send the price/liquidity to zero in a
 1 click market order

we expect crypto to be volatile but thats just ridiculous
it would be  beneficvial if the small new users with no balance
got a bigger incentive than btc whales who dont need it anyway

[skicripto]

Does the light wallet have the same security as the full? What do you recommend? Thanks.

[riskthebiscuit]

there are a few  whales with an ungodly amount of tokens only  because of their btc balance
66k btc
54k btc
2500x10 btc  are some  i have noticed

whales of this size are a risk to the project and they make people afraid
 to invest because they could dump and send the price/liquidity to zero in a
 1 click market order

we expect crypto to be volatile but thats just ridiculous
it would be  beneficvial if the small new users with no balance
got a bigger incentive than btc whales who dont need it anyway

it would be but the rich are always favoured no matter what industry it is. Crypto is no different here, they got the money so the money goes their way. Its only natural.

I am glad to see though a change up of the airdrop scheme, nice so things do not get stagnant throughout the 2nd half distribution of this coin.

[ofergul]

After August 7 we'll reach more than 50% distributed coins and will start a new phase of our distribution.

It was stated from day one that the purpose of this distribution is to get this coin into the hands of as many people as possible.  Both coins (bytes and blackbytes) are meant to be used as currencies, and this is only possible when there are many users and apps to interact with.  We already have a sizable community, a number of unique apps, and we are the only crypto project to have an app distribution platform (the Bot Store), but there is still a lot of room to grow in terms of user count, number of apps, and willingness of users to use these apps.

Up until now, we were distributing only to holders of BTC and Bytes, i.e. we were rewarding holding.  Now we are adding actual users into the mix, i.e. we are going to reward transactions.

To get you an idea of how we are going to do it, we are going to partner with several categories of companies:
- merchants
- payment processors
- "Bitcoin debit card" companies
and offer 10% cashback, paid in Bytes, for all qualifying purchases (no matter how the purchases are paid).  The cashback will be funded from the undistributed pool.  For example, a customer who bought for $100 receives $10 cashback in Bytes, paid to his Byteball address, at the current exchange rate.  For merchants, this is something that would drive sales and they would put effort into promoting the offer.  In competitive industries, a 10% cashback is a very powerful tool to lure customers.  For customers, this is a 10% discount (which matters a lot in some industries).  For Byteball, it is new users who will have to get involved into the system in order to receive the cashback.

A few companies have already expressed interest (not disclosing the names while it is a work in progress).

A few extensions of this offer:
- 20% cashback if the purchase is paid in bytes or blackbytes.  This would incentivize merchants to start accepting bytes and blackbytes, and the infrastructure will stay after the distribution ends.
- merchants can offer additional cashback to their customers.  Merchants fund it themselves by buying bytes from the market, and for every 1% funded by the merchant we add 1% more from the undistributed pool.

If you see similarity with existing loyalty points schemes, it is similar indeed.

At a minimum, we receive many new users who learn about Byteball from their merchants, plus working payment integrations.  And the users are not just crypto fans, it may be their first crypto coin for many users.  With the most user friendly wallet in the industry, we are in the best position to expand beyond the crypto village.

We can continue adding 10-20% to existing byte balances to incentivize keeping the received bytes before more infrastructure is built, rather than cashing out immediately.  

Two negative sides:
- the scheme is less transparent than plain adding on top of existing balances, and some share of fraud is inevitable.  Merchants might try to deceive us to receive coins for themselves by reporting nonexistent sales or selling to themselves.  This is mitigated by good choice of trustworthy merchants and our ability to disconnect any merchant at any time on suspicion of fraud.  Their customers can also try to find ways to abuse the system, again we'll require the merchants to prevent that by excluding some types of purchases, monitoring customers, enforcing caps, etc.  Additionally, if the merchant funds part of the cashback himself, he has skin in the game to counter the customer fraud.
- these new users are not holders for the most part, they are more likely to sell.  Not a big problem, the point is they already know about Byteball and it's easy for them to get back.  The new users are new to crypto, many of them won't use exchanges, and somebody will have to create new easier-to-use channels to fiat, which is positive for liquidity.  Also, 10%-20% monthly distributions discourage fast selling while the distribution is ongoing.  And lastly, the merchants who fund 50% of the cashback would partially balance the markets by buying coins.

On balance, I'm sure that these negatives are tolerable when we are going to achieve a vast expansion of our user base and acceptance at merchants.

For the current distribution round, nothing changes.

For the next distribution on September 6, we are changing the ratios in favor of Byte holders and slowing down the distribution to have more time to build out the cashback program:

BTC to Bytes: every 160 BTC gives you 1 GB from the distribution (or 0.00625 GB per BTC).
Bytes to Bytes: every 10 GB of existing balance gives you additional 1 GB from the distribution (in other words, +10% to existing balances).

Similar ratios for blackbytes.

For those who receive their first bytes from cashbacks, Sep 6 will be the first distribution when they receive +10%.

I'll make announcements as we add merchants in the cashback program.

very nice changes tony, this model is much better for the long run, keep up the good work