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Digibyte has been around for a relatively long time in the context of cryptocurrency. Launched in early January 2014, it has been ever present through the rise and fall of many short lived altcoins and continues to progress quietly in the background. Earlier this year I wrote about Digibyte’s proposed switch to a Myriadcoin style multi-algorithm approach to hashing. The transition was successfully completed at block 145,000 on the 1st of September, allowing Digibyte to be mined using five separate algorithms that cater to all types of mining hardware. Not only does this mean that Digibyte is much more secure than it was, but also allows for a wider and fairer distribution of coins.
We got in touch with Jared, the founder and creator of Digibyte to see how things were going:
Congratulations on the switch to multi-algorithm. How much work was that and were there any major complications?
Thank you! The multi-algo switch was very complicated. It took two of us about 3 months to figure it out, test it & finalize the release. We are still working through a few minor issues as well. Overall the most difficult part was the switch at block 145k which allowed people to begin mining DigiByte on multiple algorithms as changes had to be made throughout the entire codebase. It is much easier to launch a coin from the start with multiple algos than it is to convert an existing blockchain from one mining algo to several.
Is Digibyte a full time project for the team?
DigiByte is definitely a full time project. There have been dozens of people contribute different things over the last ten months as well as two of us working full time since December of last year on the project. We are currently working to bring more experienced people into the project work full time on future developments. As we have stated since day one, we are in this for the long haul and our goal is to make DigiByte a successful world wide payment network.
How was the Bitcoin Expo conference in Shanghai? What were you able to take away from this?
The Bitcoin Expo in Shanghai was somewhat disorganized but had an excellent attendee list from which we made several great connections. The biggest thing that we learned and picked up at the shanghai expo was that the Chinese view digital currencies more as a gamble or the lottery than a viable method of payment within China. They do, however, seem to think that digital currency is a good way to move money out of China to other countries. The Chinese also pronounce Bitcoin as “B 2 B.” Litecoin is pronounced “L 2 B.”
I saw you attended the Digital Currencies 2014 Convention in New York which aimed to “bring together bankers, regulatory institutions and the minds behind digital currencies”. What was the general “feeling” you got from regulatory institutions and banking industry towards digital currencies?
We came away from the digital currency for bankers conference with a very positive future outlook for digital currencies. Existing financial institutions are very excited about the potential for block chain payment technologies to improve their KYC and AML reporting requirements. The term “live spreadsheet” was coined at this conference. It is no longer a matter of “if” banks adopt parts of this new innovative technology, but “how” and “who” will be the first to do it.
On your ANN thread on Bitcointalk it says that Digibyte is working on its own exchange. How is progress going with that?
Yes, we are currently working on an exchange but we are not quite ready to open the beta version to the public. We are still alpha testing the platform, more details to come soon. We are also talking with potential banking partners and we are very much interested in talking with more banks who would like to begin entering this space.
Any hints about what might be in store for the future?
We are working on several very exciting things right now but we are not ready to disclose any details at this particular moment. More details will be released in the near future. We can say one area we are focusing on besides an exchange is getting an Electrum wallet as well as IOS & Android wallets released. We want to make using DigiByte as simple & as straight forward as possible. We will also be releasing a detailed series of guides explaining how to use as well as mine DigiByte.
The Android Wallet has been released this week for testing and some new developments are in the pipeline. The Digibyte team appear to be very dedicated, from the foresight to update the algorithm to the conferences and conventions they have been attending, making Digibyte one to keep an eye on.
