Security is also a strong suit for DigiByte. It uses five cryptographic algorithms and a real-time difficulty adjustment in its mining process. This makes the DigiByte network extremely secure and without any known vulnerabilities.
Also noteworthy is DigiByte's level of decentralization. There was no initial coin offering (ICO) and only a 0.5% pre-mine. The project is run entirely by volunteers, and there's no company, CEO, or central authority in charge of it.
Where DigiByte came from
Jared Tate started working on DigiByte in 2013. He had been involved with Bitcoin (BTC -2.47%) since 2012 and wanted to make improvements to the core protocol. His aim was a fast, secure blockchain that could reach an even wider community than Bitcoin.
DigiByte launched on Jan. 10, 2014. Of the 0.5% pre-mine, 0.25% was given away to the public to encourage early adoption. The other 0.25% was used to support development for the first 18 months.
The DigiByte Foundation, a volunteer-managed nonprofit organization, helps promote and support the blockchain and its users. Tate helped develop DigiByte until 2020, when he stepped away due to frustration with greed in the crypto community.
How DigiByte works
The DigiByte blockchain has three layers, each in charge of different aspects of the network. These are the three layers and how they work:
- Applications/DigiAssets: The top layer runs smart contracts and can be used for building decentralized apps (dApps). The blockchain's DigiAssets protocol also runs on this layer, enabling the creation of all kinds of digital assets.
- Digital asset/public ledger: The middle layer is in charge of security and administration. It contains the unchangeable public ledger with all DigiByte transactions.
- Core protocol/global network: The bottom layer handles communication and operating procedures. It's how nodes running the DigiByte software and securing the network can communicate with each other.
Like Bitcoin, DigiByte uses the proof-of-work consensus mechanism to securely validate transactions. Proof of work requires that miners solve equations to demonstrate that they've expended computing power. The miner who does so first gets to validate a block of transactions and earn a block reward, which is paid in DGB tokens.
DigiByte introduced two new technologies to its crypto mining process that makes it much more secure:
- MultiAlgo: DigiByte uses five individual mining algorithms that are all equally weighted. This allows for different types of devices to mine DigiByte, resulting in a larger, more decentralized group of miners.
- MultiShield: DigiByte adjusts the difficulty of each mining algorithm after every block. This gives each algorithm a 20% chance of finding a block.
