Obyte: Totally new consensus algorithm + private untraceable payments

[ArabMist]

I can run Bitcoin through Tor - does it make Bitcoin anonymous payment system? If that's really the case that you have to run Byteball throught Tor to make blackball anonymous it should be clarified. There's not a single word about it in the whitepaper.

Byteball whitepaper says nothing about being anonymous payment system. It allows private transactions. Privacy and anonymity are two different things.

Well quoted. Having byteball run through TOR is an unexpected bonus I guess.

Other question. Transition bot is asleep by the look of it. As next round is mid Feb, am I to assume that my linked wallet from the first round will behave for the second round if I don't deposit/withdraw?

[Limx Dev]

It doesn't matter which feature have a coin.
Value is made of people feelings. If byteball feelings is to sell without a proper buy support, means people doesn't feel to buy at current price cause is high.
Byteball price could be 1 satoshi. it doesn't matter. Market makes price, not tech behind it.

And remember that only 10% has been distribuited, and price is collapsing.
Imagine when we have 100% out delivered.
Until sell pressure is biggher than buy pressure, price will collapse.

Byteball is a complete new crypto solution and every buddy can now cheap buy from weak holders. 

[piebeyb]

I thought it would be cool if byteball have their first trading sites, at least other people can have some byteball for their bags

[grzem]

Its crazy, they are listing some shitcoins daily, but miss the opportunity to list something so promicing.
Livecoin asks for 2.5 btc to list Byteball !!??  . In fact they should be standing in the queue now, asking for people to come on their exchange and trade Byteball...
Maybe thats why they are small, after all . And will stay small, with such stupid behaviour...

They list coins for easy money, Cryptox did it because project is very promising, tonych great job, was not for money too.
Lots shitty ICO's go easily to the biggest markets, because they got your money (ICO investors) to pay for it, then they can show you huge volumes, and finally you ... . You know.

[jeremy grol]

Its crazy, they are listing some shitcoins daily, but miss the opportunity to list something so promicing.
Livecoin asks for 2.5 btc to list Byteball !!??  . In fact they should be standing in the queue now, asking for people to come on their exchange and trade Byteball...
Maybe thats why they are small, after all . And will stay small, with such stupid behaviour...

They list coins for easy money, Cryptox did it because project is very promising, tonych great job, was not for money too.
Lots shitty ICO's go easily to the biggest markets, because they got your money (ICO investors) to pay for it, then they can show you huge volumes, and finally you ... . You know.

Exchanges don't like free coins to list.
Specially when they got the news that biggest holder of byteball are waves and lisk owner.
Byteball failed. distribution wasn't decentralized. who own more money, received more byteball.

[grzem]

Its crazy, they are listing some shitcoins daily, but miss the opportunity to list something so promicing.
Livecoin asks for 2.5 btc to list Byteball !!??  . In fact they should be standing in the queue now, asking for people to come on their exchange and trade Byteball...
Maybe thats why they are small, after all . And will stay small, with such stupid behaviour...

They list coins for easy money, Cryptox did it because project is very promising, tonych great job, was not for money too.
Lots shitty ICO's go easily to the biggest markets, because they got your money (ICO investors) to pay for it, then they can show you huge volumes, and finally you ... . You know.

Exchanges don't like free coins to list.
Specially when they got the news that biggest holder of byteball are waves and lisk owner.
Byteball failed. distribution wasn't decentralized. who own more money, received more byteball.

If you belive is better to pay for new coin, you got it now, you can buy Byteball's.

[HI-TEC99]

Its crazy, they are listing some shitcoins daily, but miss the opportunity to list something so promicing.
Livecoin asks for 2.5 btc to list Byteball !!??  . In fact they should be standing in the queue now, asking for people to come on their exchange and trade Byteball...
Maybe thats why they are small, after all . And will stay small, with such stupid behaviour...

They list coins for easy money, Cryptox did it because project is very promising, tonych great job, was not for money too.
Lots shitty ICO's go easily to the biggest markets, because they got your money (ICO investors) to pay for it, then they can show you huge volumes, and finally you ... . You know.

Exchanges don't like free coins to list.
Specially when they got the news that biggest holder of byteball are waves and lisk owner.
Byteball failed. distribution wasn't decentralized. who own more money, received more byteball.

Exchanges find it more difficult to list coins with new code bases as opposed to Bitcoin code based altcoins. Cryptsy took a long time to list Nxt and ripple because it had to write new back end code to integrate with those coins instead of making a few changes to its existing back end code to integrate a run of the mill coin. The bigger exchanges will integrate byteball eventually.

[tonych]

Hello tonych

Im running a witness and it crashes with this

events.js:160
     throw er; // Unhandled 'error' event
     ^Error: write EPIPE
   at exports._errnoException (util.js:1022:11)
   at WriteWrap.afterWrite [as oncomplete] (net.js:804:14)


And how come it says this "distance above threshold, will witness" in the logs, but I havent told anyone about the witness ID/public-key, how come it is trying to witness?

Does it make any sense to run a byteball-relay as well as a witness, the logs seem to be the same, is the witness also doing relay?

Is this the entire error message?  Looks generic and no references to our code.
Also make sure you are running node.js v4 or above.

What witness does, it only posts small transactions just to prove its presence.  When another node trusts this witness, it will look for units posted by this witness to make sure it is on the legit version of the DAG and not being sybil'd.

Yes, the witness is also relaying transactions, like any full node for that matter.

[tonych]

I looked through the transactions in the block explorer and couldn't understand the technical terms. In this example transaction what are Unit, Authors, Children, and Parents? Is the Unit like a Bitcoin transaction ID and the Authors like a Bitcoin sending address?

https://explorer.byteball.org/#zD17W8iMLjb4Uxtt66NIcdhiCv9MCAtQFaBDY4jSXNo=

Unit zD17W8iMLjb4Uxtt66NIcdhiCv9MCAtQFaBDY4jSXNo=
Authors
UGP3YFIJCOCUGLMJUFKLXLNYNO4S7PT6
Children
V1UF7jRtqFUDWsOxmSLz23rTs7s0azPbpiNrXncsH74=
Parents
EjR+BnqoiGywB7WIEpELtxjyLku2bVylF8EcAjVGteE=
KSy9G0vl4PdpqZb9VCLJ2pnZyDtcUT+gE30O3uaX9uE=

Unit is hash of data unit, similar to bitcoin transaction ID, but unit can have more than just a transaction.
Authors are addresses who signed the transaction, similar to bitcoin sending address.
Children and parents are pointers to later and earlier units in the DAG (see the arrows between units).

Thanks

Also, in the advanced section of the wallet there was a string starting with xpub if I remember correctly. Is that like a Bitcoin public key, and is it safe to let others know it?

<edit>

This is the xpub string I referred to, and it is an extended public key for an HD wallet.
https://github.com/byteball/byteball-merchant

The merchant runs as a daemon and it doesn't hold any private keys. Instead, it knows only the extended public key and uses it to generate a new receiving address for each order.

xPubKey: extended public key of the home wallet that is to collect funds. To find it out, open the GUI wallet, click gear icon -> Advanced -> Wallet Information, look for "Extended public keys", double-click to select it (it starts with "xpub"), copy and paste into the conf.

I only know of one problem for Bitcoin HD wallet extended public keys. You can safely reveal an extended public key, but if you also reveal one private key from any generated in the same HD wallet an attacker can calculate all the other private keys from that wallet.


https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/deterministic-wallets-advantages-flaw-1385450276

The problem is this: although you certainly can securely hand out child keys with no risk to the parent key, and you can hand out master public keys with no risk to the master private key, you cannot do both at the same time. The exploit for when that situation does arise is actually quite simple

Does Byteball have this same problem with extended public keys and private keys? Is it safe to reveal your extended public key provided you don't reveal any of your private keys?

We use BIP44 for HD wallets, and it is the same as in Bitcoin, and the same safety measures apply.

[BionicleBarnicle]

I missed the Initial Giveaway but who knows what the future holds, I also read there will be many more Byteball giveaways but with more every time

[kola-schaar]

.. to make byteball as one of the best coin in the industry.

..... I'd expect the price go much higher later.

I know I compare apples and pears ...
but <<0.015 is definitely not a good price to sell...some people are so hectic -
I am surprised - but it's o.k. Money had to move and not everyone is a marathon runner (
and this will definitely be a long way )

[SatoNatomato]

Hello tonych

Im running a witness and it crashes with this

events.js:160
     throw er; // Unhandled 'error' event
     ^Error: write EPIPE
   at exports._errnoException (util.js:1022:11)
   at WriteWrap.afterWrite [as oncomplete] (net.js:804:14)


And how come it says this "distance above threshold, will witness" in the logs, but I havent told anyone about the witness ID/public-key, how come it is trying to witness?

Does it make any sense to run a byteball-relay as well as a witness, the logs seem to be the same, is the witness also doing relay?

Is this the entire error message?  Looks generic and no references to our code.
Also make sure you are running node.js v4 or above.

What witness does, it only posts small transactions just to prove its presence.  When another node trusts this witness, it will look for units posted by this witness to make sure it is on the legit version of the DAG and not being sybil'd.

Yes, the witness is also relaying transactions, like any full node for that matter.

I solved it, the above error happens when no /usr/sbin/sendmail is present, a crash in the mail.js
Then I added a dummy sendmail script to just save the "mail" to file instead as I dont want emails, but my script didnt read stdin, and then the above happened.

Ive now just removed the mail.js function to instead use console.log with a prefix .

Now then, witness, does it require funds/bytes available on its address to operate? I got "will witness" messages and then "no more funds" and a crash, so I sent a few kilobytes to the address of the witness and that worked better and I could see it wasting funds in the ebesr explorer. So a witness will earn fees but also has ro have some small funds to send its approvals?

Also, the witness code crashed on something else but am not close to computer now. In any case, the craah ahould cause the main process to also exit, now its hanging while nothing happens.

Also, another issue, Ive sewn transactions posted by my wallet containing a witness list, I assume this witness list will evwntually wnd uo in a witness list unit and be untamperable, but is it possible to make a modifyed wallet to send a witness list which is 12witnessws of my own choosing, my witnesses would see the transactio n right, modify the witness list to be 11 real ones plus my own and tske the transaction fee. The other witnesses wouldnt know anything, id just take all/many fees.

[yvv]

I missed the Initial Giveaway but who knows what the future holds, I also read there will be many more Byteball giveaways but with more every time

You can buy some bytes at cryptox.pl for dirt cheap right now. This is even easier than giveaway.

[tonych]

Agreed. Encrypted messaging and transfer of value anonymously as byteball's best chance of success. It does those two very well

I wondered about this too To make a private transaction you need to first pair your device with your counterparty. Doesn't it reveal your ip?

The IP is visible to the hub only, not to the counterparty.

[tonych]

Is the witness list included in transaction and cannot be tampered with?  

Everything in the transaction, including witness list, is hashed and signed, hence cannot be tampered with.

[tonych]

I am reading the white paper:

If two transactions try to spend the same output (double-spend) and there is no partial
order between them, both are allowed into the database but only the one that comes
earlier in the total order is deemed valid.

Do you remove the invalid transaction from the DAG tree? Or just leave it and mark it as "invalid"? How the tx that cover the invalid one gets re-org'd?

The invalid tx stays in the DAG but is marked as invalid and most of its data is removed.  Thanks to that, the txs that cover the invalid are not affected in any way.

Hmm this is interesting. But what about the parents? If the invalid tx gets some parents for the 1st time, he is suppose to get some fees. Will he actually gets it? If so then I can devise an attack by creating massive invalid double spending tx and the only purpose is to grab all the fees related to first time parents.

Recipients of fees are selected among valid transactions only.

[tonych]

I am reading the white paper:

If two transactions try to spend the same output (double-spend) and there is no partial
order between them, both are allowed into the database but only the one that comes
earlier in the total order is deemed valid.

Do you remove the invalid transaction from the DAG tree? Or just leave it and mark it as "invalid"? How the tx that cover the invalid one gets re-org'd?

The invalid tx stays in the DAG but is marked as invalid and most of its data is removed.  Thanks to that, the txs that cover the invalid are not affected in any way.

Hmm this is interesting. But what about the parents? If the invalid tx gets some parents for the 1st time, he is suppose to get some fees. Will he actually gets it? If so then I can devise an attack by creating massive invalid double spending tx and the only purpose is to grab all the fees related to first time parents.

That is quite an observation, if that is the case then what is stopping users attacking the network with double spend inputs that have been edited for the same time input, wouldn't both then be accepted at the same time since the timestamps are identical so it wouldn't know which one comes first.

There are no timestamps in Byteball protocol.  AFAIK it is the only cryptocurrency that doesn't use clock time at all.  Ordering of transactions is based on Main Chain within the DAG.

[Karartma1]

In the second round, which is expected in mid-February, we'll distribute 62.5 MB for each 1 BTC of linked balance and 0.1 new byte for each 1 byte received in the first round.

Here is a question about the second distribution phase: what if I change my Byteball address? Do I lose my 0.1 new byte per 1 byte received in the first round?

[tonych]

Now then, witness, does it require funds/bytes available on its address to operate? I got "will witness" messages and then "no more funds" and a crash, so I sent a few kilobytes to the address of the witness and that worked better and I could see it wasting funds in the ebesr explorer. So a witness will earn fees but also has ro have some small funds to send its approvals?

Yes, you have to spend in order to have an opportunity to earn.

Also, another issue, Ive sewn transactions posted by my wallet containing a witness list, I assume this witness list will evwntually wnd uo in a witness list unit and be untamperable, but is it possible to make a modifyed wallet to send a witness list which is 12witnessws of my own choosing, my witnesses would see the transactio n right, modify the witness list to be 11 real ones plus my own and tske the transaction fee. The other witnesses wouldnt know anything, id just take all/many fees.

Witness list unit is a reference to another unit that already lists your witnesses explicitly.  It is just another way to say who your witnesses are when the same witness list is reused.  It saves space, costs only the size of the unit hash (44 bytes) instead of 12 witness addresses (12 * 32 = 384 bytes).

[tonych]

In the second round, which is expected in mid-February, we'll distribute 62.5 MB for each 1 BTC of linked balance and 0.1 new byte for each 1 byte received in the first round.

Here is a question about the second distribution phase: what if I change my Byteball address? Do I lose my 0.1 new byte per 1 byte received in the first round?

If you didn't remove your wallet, you still have the old BB address (but your receiving BB address constantly changes, same as in Bitcoin wallets).  If you have a new wallet, you'll have to link again.  I'll announce all the details when we start the linking phase for the 2nd round.