DigiByte accomplishments over the last 3 years
Talking with my wife, and she made a suggestion: Why not finish your time with DigiByte with more of a “celebration” of what you’ve done?
So, that’s what this is, a bit of a look at some of the main things I’ve been involved with, directly pushing forward or making happen.
It’s also a great opportunity to look back over the last 3 years and see just how far DigiByte has come! So that’s what this is, an ode to success, if you will! 🙂 It’s not a complete list of all the contributions I’ve made, but it’s something!
DigiByte Infopaper (like a whitepaper, but not)
Back in November 2019 I began to write the DigiByte Infopaper. I finished writing most of it over a few days between Christmas / New Years. Jared got wind, asked me to stop, until he’d released his book which he wanted to base the infopaper off.
12 months later and he was still nowhere to be seen and the finish of his book nowhere in-sight, so I tidied it up with the help of a few friends, and Nigel / Demi spruced up the look of it giving us what we have today.
This is hosted on the DigiByte website:
And it’s a fantastic introduction for people into DigiByte, along with an abbreviated history, and a look into the future.
Over 500 videos / interviews
I want to start by thanking all those who followed me on YouTube:
Although not all that I participated in ended up on my own channel (A good number, at least one a week, were me being a guest speaker on others channels talking about DigiByte), I started a DigiByte-related podcast, did over 250 update videos, and was interviewed countless times. All up totalling over 500 across the last couple of years. What started as a friend simply suggesting I step up and fill the void in 2019 became a near daily occurrence keeping people updated with what was going on.
CreateDigiAssets, DigiAssetDividends & DGBData
When DigiAssets were announced at the DigiByte Summit, they were still unable to be issued by the general populace.
Gary (DigiContributor, not to be confused with Barry) had issued the first assets that were used there with DigiVault that he was working on, an application which tied directly in to the Core Wallet. That was never finalized and released properly and wouldn’t sync right. Then, support was partially added to DigiByte Go, but that was never finalized either and the DigiByte Go wallet ended up being abandoned.
So we’d been told “Here’s DigiAssets, it’s amazing, go use it”, but there was no way for normal people to actually use it and issue assets.
So I took a small bank loan and paid a developer privately to make the CreateDigiAssets.com website, which allows people to easily issue assets NFTs on top of DigiByte (for a small ~$5 fee which goes back towards paying off that loan).
It’s grown a bit since, we’ve added animated images, and video support too (Also to the mobile wallets as a result of this website), but this was something that was a HUGE hole in the DigiByte ecosystem that needed filling.
I also paid someone privately to create the DigiAssetDividends.com website which allows people to issue dividends to DigiAsset holders in a fast and easy manner. Again another huge hole in the DigiAsset ecosystem.
Lastly I also personally funded the creation of the DGBData.me website to allow people to store a hash on the blockchain quickly and easily. It’s a very simple manner of confirming a document has not been tampered with, since X time etc and works really well.
Bounties for mobile SPV wallet
This was how we found Yoshi, with him claiming some bounties for fixing the SPV sync issues (where it was stalling previously). He also updated the iOS wallet for us too in many ways, and later began doing a lot of work on Core too.
I fundraised / crowd sourced when nobody else would (I don’t believe anybody outside of the DGBAT overall have done crowdsourcing / raises in the last few years). We posted some bounties to help get a few showstoppers finished + fixed, and it’s why we have the apps today.
Mobile UI redesign contest
We had a HUGE turnout of people submitting designs for Android & iOS wallets. It was absolutely fantastic, and we were able to do a “knock-out” voting style. The bounties raised were all distributed to the winner + runner-ups and the mobile apps got a great UI overhaul as a result that made it really stand out.
The winner, Damir, would go on to help with Digi-ID logo / website, some demonstration icons for use with DigiAssets, the DigiAssets logo, and was involved to begin with in the new logo proposal that spiral later would make for DigiByte.
Thanks again to Yoshi and Noah for the implementation of the UI redesign.
DigiFacts
I wrote a list of over 70 easily shareable “facts” about DigiByte that would encourage others to start sharing details on social media etc
Then I asked a friend through Telegram to create nice images from these facts (see more at https://github.com/digibyte-core/digifacts):
Fun fact, one of them originally said we were early adopters of the ProgPoW algorithm because work was underway with it, but that was replaced before being shared on social media due to it being torpedoed by the Founder. You can still see it in the GitHub history.
Update: As of October 2021 these are now all being re-shared for a second time by DigiByteCoin on Twitter, just without the images (so they’re less effective at grabbing attention)?
iOS App Store listing
One of the main struggles was we got the Android app submitted to the Google Play store, but despite GTO90’s best efforts he’d been unable to get the iOS app accepted. I had to create a business here in New Zealand specifically for this! I then registered it with the New Zealand Companies Office, obtained a DUNS and more… then after a bit of back and forth arguing with Apple, I finally got the iOS app listed on the App Store as a result!
Binance listing
Ever since early 2018, I was submitting listing requests for Binance. These are no small feat, they’re massive listing requests, often 30-odd pages in length. As the listing requirements changed, each time I would fill it out again. 5x in total in fact!
I can’t claim sole responsibility for this though, as we still don’t know specifically why Binance listed DigiByte, but DigiByte was finally listed in 2020 a couple of weeks after Jared made an announcement he was not going to be involved with the DigiByte project.
Digi-ID front & center
One of the things I pushed for in 2018 was for Digi-ID to be brought into the spotlight as it was basically invisible in the apps.
Now, the Android & iOS apps have Digi-ID front-and-center, and we had a few plugins created for things like Wordpress, WHMCS etc.
I’ve also authored the Digi-ID.io website with Damir, to help introduce people to Digi-ID. Another great success!
Translations in mobile
Although this was something I was pushing, and setup / got started with POEditor, a lot of other people were actually involved. Hundreds of people in fact.
But, this was something I was passionate about us having, along with Rutger, Murat, Nigel and especially Glenn, we now have DigiByte in 50+ languages covering close to 99% of the worlds population!
Huge shout-out to those gentlemen for all their massive effort involved.
Donations to David Hay / Venezuela
We managed to raise several thousand US dollars which was amazing, and we gave thousands of bottles of water to the red cross who distributed it to people crossing the border.
We also provided food to feed 160 children in an orphanage for an entire month. This still warms my heart seeing this video, I wish we could have done more.
Proposal for DigiBytes use as a currency
One things not many are familiar with was the proposal to use DigiByte as a currency, specifically for use in Venezuela, as part of an initiative that David Haye was attempting to get off the ground. I wrote this document and then had Damir spice it up, as well as some help from others translating it:
If you haven’t looked it over I’d highly recommend it. It’s old but it’s aged relatively well and has a lot of still key points.
DigiByte Wiki
2018 saw me start off the DigiByte Wiki! We needed somewhere to point people to that wasn’t centrally controlled by just one or two people, that we could spread the load with (say for updating pool details or exchange information), and so the wiki was born.
While I’m not alone in contributions, this is something I still host, and helped with a lot of the article creation.
Big thanks to Nigel & Murat especially who’ve also done so much to keep it updated.
Further help in Venezuela
We did so much to help, I can’t list it all, but everything from more fundraising to help a school, providing tablets to children to learn English and Spanish, along with resources like tablets, scissors, chairs, pens and more:
More fundraising / development goals + Trezor support
There was 10 development initiatives setup, most of those were claimed too. This was for everything from an initial Stats site (mctrivia), through to wallet recovery tools (also mctrivias DigiSweep), and Trezor support. I worked closely with the Trezor team to get that support across the line (it took SO long to do the sync initially during testing but we got there).
Trezors Blockbook is what’s currently running on DigiExplorer & the Testnet Explorer, which brings me to the next item:
Running DigiExplorer + Testnet Explorer
A few old hands who’ve been around will remember how badly the DigiExplorer server was maintained previously, with consistent issues such as crashing entirely, not being fully syncd… I took over running the servers in 2020 and we had zero downtime for over 12 months! A far cry from the fortnightly issues of days prior when Jared was maintaining it.
Often times it could be a week or more of it being offline, before Jared could be reached back in the day (an early foreboding) and then get DigiExplorer subsequently restarted /brought back to life. The server costs were astronomical too, with it reaching over USD$1,000 a month at times.
We had our first fault with DigiExplorer while under my control, in the 2nd quarter of 2021, where it crashed and needed resyncing. We then had another issue a month later so the Insight server was replaced with Blockbook (due to Jared and DigiContributor being otherwise unavailable / unresponsive), and again it’s been solid since.
I also then started up a Testnet Explorer to help with exchanges integrating DigiByte, and I have also run the primary (and at many times sole) Testnet node, Testnet-1.us.digibyteservers.io
Side note: more Testnet nodes would be great
It’s all running beautifully now, and I’m quite proud that we went from a couple of issues a month when I wasn’t looking after it, to one in a year on the server. All of this while shaving the server-costs down to around 10% of what they were, meanwhile the utilization is over 10X more than what it was at it’s previous peak. Roughly a 100X improvement, all while being more stable!
Multiple DigiByte Core releases
Throughout 2018 we had a number of releases that I was directly involved with helping test, get shipped out the door, bugfix, contact exchanges / pools / wallets (alongside others previously noted in my last Medium post). That in and of itself was quite the accomplishment.
For example, the reason that DigiByte was the first altcoin outside of Bitcoin / Bitcoin Cash (whos’ developers alerted BTC to the issue) was because I jumped on the issue immediately, provided the one line of code that needed fixing (brough from BTC) to DigiContributor, and he merged it. He and I tested it and rapidly got it released before any other Altcoin (I think we actually only got it out before LTC by a little under an hour).
Following this, and other releases, would require COUNTLESS hours with contacting Exchanges, Mining Pools, Service providers and the likes, to ensure that they all updated. Especially where we had the likes of the CVE-2018–17144, we needed mining pools to update and FAST.
Preparation for Odocrypt with the reservebits softfork happened, as well as:
Odocrypt & Dandelion
This was one of the biggest time-consumers throughout 2019, getting that all ready. MentalCollatz and I did SO much work together testing, resetting the testnet, but he’s definitely the brains behind the code. Same goes for Yoshi and the Dandelion implementation that he and I spent countless hours bugfixing.
I also spent considerable time working with other 3rd parties to ensure Odocrypt would be supported out of the gate, and it’s great to see the success that Odocrypt has been. I was also working with mctrivia, barrystyle, and the BlackMiner team, on an update for this throughout the end of 2020 / early 2021, which would further allay any fears that it is being ASIC mined.
As of June 2021, the latest mining pool that began to mine, was using BlackMiner F1 FPGA’s, and they were finding ~20% of all Odocrypt blocks, so it still seems to be FPGA-mined.
What is DigiByte / Digi-ID videos
Aside from having done over 500 videos in the course of 2.5 years, some of my favorites were the creation of the “What is DigiByte” and “What is Digi-ID” videos:
I wrote the scripts for the videos, had the audio professionally recorded by a radio DJ, and even paid for a large chunk of the animations directly myself too.
There were a number of other videos done where AmonUnlimited did the animations for, that I wrote all of the scripts for too. These videos have had hundreds of thousands of views across the various platforms and are great introductions to key aspects of DigiByte.
Coinbase listing attempts
Throughout 2018 / 2019 I was the primary author of a document here that ended getting us to the “shortlist” for a Coinbase listing.
It took countless hours to write the several dozen pages and have it authored to all look nice. I know that it was even printed, bound, and physically handed to several Coinbase employees back in the day.
I have to wonder if their reasonings for not listing DigiByte are either security-related or founder-related (like Binances was) at this stage?
Decentralization metrics
There were a number of articles throughout 2019 / 2020 around the decentralization metrics of DigiByte, from the unique miners, to block-time accuracy, I documented a whole bunch of things that I know have been read / referenced countless times by the community.
Unfortunately as those metrics are declining, I’ve “raised the alarm" and attempted to do things to improve them, such as bringing back CPU / GPU mining. Sadly these have been stifled and stonewalled, by Jared primarily.
DigiStats
The DigiStats server shows off historical information about the DigiByte blockchain in a beautiful format. It has several years worth of data now graphed that you can utilize, as it pulls it from my personal node.
Championing ProgPoW / RandomX
This has literally been 2 years in the making (since Odocrypt was implemented on Mainnet), and while ProgPoW / RandomX never got to completion prior to my departure (Thanks Jared…) it was great to be able to do so much and represent the community and the communities desires for a stronger, more secure, decentralized blockchain, with a broader participation of miners.
Somebody had to be there, pushing things along, and big shout-out to Barrystyle for all his hard work on getting that implemented. I hope one day the old-guard see your code for what it’s worth and stop stonewalling the progress over trivial and irrelevant matters.
That’s not all…
But it’s not a small list nonetheless. A lot of it has been shortened for brievity, but there’s still a lot in there.
It disappoints me gravely for people to so blindly follow a single individual who hasn’t been around, and does nothing but post hate-filled messages and conspiracy theories. Like lemmings being led off a hill.
Still, I can hold my head high with all of these massive accomplishments over the last 3 years with my involvement, and I wish DigiByte all the best for the future. I just hope Jared gets out of the way so the project can finally thrive.
To those who remain, I wish you all the best of luck. To the friends I’ve made along the way, I’ll truly miss you.
To those who’ve written me kind words on Twitter or in the YouTube comments: Thankyou! I’ve appreciated every single one of them.
