My Experience Using Byteball Chatbots

Good day friends. I'm delighted to have you on my blog. I started a series few days ago, and I'll be talking about it some more today. I'll be relating my experience using the Byteball bots, addictional features I'll love to see, the bots drawbacks and why you should be interested in the project.

Repository

https://github.com/byteball/byteball

What is a Byteball chatbot?

Byteball is a crypto currency platform based on Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) technology. The difference between DAG technology and blockchain technology was mentioned in my previous post.

Today, we are looking at a different feature the app has to offer. The main difference between Byteball and most projects that utilise DAG (IOTA, Nano and IoT Chain), is the use of bots and accessibility to in-wallet dApps.

The use of chatbots is a key feature that makes Byteball unique, when compared to IOTA. Just like Siri and other popular smartphone bots, Byteball's chatbots do not require special expertise to use them.

Simply put, a Byteball chatbot is an in-wallet dApp.

_{Rare picture of a Byteball chatbot :D | Image by Clker on Pixabay}

Byteball has a growing list of bots. These bots can be found by clicking the Chat tab, then the Bot Store button at the top right corner. On the Bot Store, you can find bots, ranging from ICO bots to exchange bots, sports bots, game bots and attestation bots.

_{• Screenshots from ClearCost ICO and Nousplatform ICO bot}

ICO bots

Byteball provides ICO services to several cryptos. From the Bot Store you see TitanCoin ICO bot, Worldopoly ICO bot, Aworker ICO bot, Nousplatform ICO bot and ClearCost ICO bot.

Byteball is one of the few cryptocurrencies platform that didn't do an ICO, but offer ICO services to other cryptos. Other platforms on DAG, like IOTA, did an ICO. The primary reason Byteball is good for ICO is because of it's real name attestation services and accredited investor services (both chatbots).

Real Name Attestation

It's an awesome bot that is used to verify one's real name. This bot helps provide KYC services to other bots that needs it. Once the real name attestation is done, it stores a person's information on the public ledger. That doesn't mean everyone can see it though, you have to disclose it to services that needs it - like the ICO bots. Yeah, this is one of the reasons ICOs can be done on the app, because it provides KYC services to them.

I tried the real name attestation when I downloaded the wallet months ago. Unfortunately, it failed and I was told that the platform Jumio, who is responsible for verification, has no return policy. I didn't want to risk loosing more funds, so I just gave up. I normally don't give up easily, you know. Just thought you should know, hehe... Jumio charges per attempt, so if I am to try again, I'll have to pay a new fee.

_{• Screenshots from Exchange bot and Bytes-BTC exchange bot}

Bytes exchange bots

They are several exchange bots on the platform. The exchange bots include Byte-BTC bot, Exchange bot for ICO tokens bot, BTC oracle bot, Byteball - Altcoin Exchange bot and Exchange bot for dual - chain tokens bot.

The purpose of these exchange bots is to provide Over The Counter (OTC) transactions without having to use exchanges. Why is this important? Byteball has low liquidity and a low volume when compared to IOTA and Nano. A currency need volumes to fulfil its functions as a currency. This is where Nano supersedes Byteball. Nano (formerly Raiblocks) is also widely used in Venezuela due to their economic situation, it also looks promising when it comes to crypto to fiat exchange. The exchange bots on Byteball are still progressing, so they have challenges.

Byte - BTC bot

Since the trades done in these exchange bots are peer-to-peer, some users capitalise on that by sending low bids. I once tried to convert some bytes to BTC with the Byte-BTC bot. The problem was that the price the bot gave me was far lower than the actual price of BTC at the time, and that was its highest bid. If you do not look carefully at the rates the bots give, you end up losing some coins.

A friend once traded $30 worth of bytes for 0,0002 BTC worth $1.20, quite pathetic! The bot acts a decentralised exchange between users, but I feel the rates users offer should be regulated. The bot needs to do more, some users use the bot in a haste. It shouldn't be possible to place bids lower than 10% of the price available on Exchanges.

On the other hand, there is a limit to the amount of Bytes that can be traded on the Byte-BTC bot. Minimum of 0.1 gbyte and maximum of 1 gbyte. Less than 0.1 gbyte is taken as a donation, many users have unknowingly sent donations. :)

_{• Screenshots from Blackbytes exchange BEEB (trustful) bot and Blackbyte Exchange (semi-trustless) bot}

Blackbyte Exchange

Just like the conventional currency bytes, blackbytes can be traded using several bots in the Bots Store - Blackbytes Exchange Beeb bot, Blackbyte Exchange bot and Buy Blackbytes bot. Blackbytes is an anonymous currency.

Some other coins have safety measures to decrease traceability, such as Monero, Zcash, etc. What makes Blackbytes standout amongst them is its extra measures, like its recent option to send blackbytes as Textcoins without knowing the recipient address. One could say that it takes privacy to an even higher level than Monero or Zcash. Blackbytes can even be sent through Whatsapp, Telegram, and even email.

Blackbytes are completely off chain transactions and this results in higher anonymity. It also reduces the amount of storage required to run full node. Blackbytes, being traded solely P2P, it is unlikely to get a chart that shows history of exchange rates between GByte and blackbytes. There is no data available for the creation of charts.

Blackbytes integration with black markets would be so cool. The challenge is that publicly celebrating such integration to black markets could potentially hurt the project in several ways. Blackbytes are private, therefore making it really difficult to make any public activities involving it.

According to Byteball, there are 2.11 times as many blackbytes as Bytes.

_{• Screenshots from Sports betting bot (semi-trustless) bot and Luckybytes Lottery (provably fair) bot}

Betting bots

Byteball can also be used for betting. The common betting bots available are Sports betting bot, Luckybytes Lottery bot and sports oracle bot. They are also working to include a bot for https://tradetheodds.io.

With Byteball, you don't need any third party websites to place a bet. You place a bet while even on the app. Quite different from other DAG projects like IOTA and Nano, they are not even notable payment options on most betting website.

If I am to compare the sports betting bots to conventional betting websites, the latter might prevail. The sport betting bots takes time to announce betting results, because it requires multiple oracles to confirm the outcome. And time is money to a punter.

If a match is cancelled, postponed or not played for a different reason, all bets that were placed on it gets annulled. Then the bets placed are refunded 5 days after the match was initially scheduled. Conditions of the smart contract associated with the bet can be found in the bot. By clicking the eye-icon on it, one can easily see these conditions.

Luckybytes bot

The luckybytes bot is a lottery that is played using bytes. Just like every other kind of lotteries out there, it is based on luck. It has a weekly jackpot and three game modes - luckybaud, luckybyte and luckyint. I'm not one who believes in luck, so I haven't tried the service, only surfed around it.

_{• Screenshots from World Community Grid linking bot}

World Community Grid linking bot

This was the second bot I tried out when I downloaded the Byteball app. It involves contributing your computer power to help science in discovering cures for Ebola, AIDS, childhood cancer etc. It's a way to support an extremely important initiative to overcome some of humanity's biggest threats while earning some bytes at the same time.

To use this bot, you need to visit the Bot store and add the World Community Grid bot. Then register on worldcommunitygrid.org. The next step is to link your byteball address to the WCG website using the bot. The bot usually sends instructions once you add it.

You get rewarded in bytes according to the amount of points you generated on world community grid. The bot just connects to WCG, picks up the score of the users and calculates a reward based on that. If you get 100,000 points, you are rewarded $1 worth of Bytes. Since Byteball only made an API integration to pick up points of Byteball users, they don't have any direct influence over WCG projects.

The bot pays out bytes once a day. No matter how little or many points you generate, the bot pays a relative amount of Bytes. The bot is not completely automated, so it skip days at times, sometimes 2 or 3 days delay. When the bot skips a day, it takes the score that you had the last time it paid, so even if payouts doesn't occur one day, those points will be added to the next day's pay out.

Although the WCG bot is not primarily for the rewards, If you have an idle computer you can make some bytes by running the program. The computer's CPU speed and cores determines the points you get from WCG. It's not going to get you wealthy, but it is a great cause to support while having an additional benefit of earning bytes. If you try to game the system by engaging in industry mining, Byteball would notice and will reduce the rewards.

Other bots

Steem attestation bot. This was the bot that brought me to Byteball. I talked about the bot in details in my last post.

Byteball has a private chat room bot. It can also be used for chatting with multiple individuals. The messages sent with the bot are encrypted. Such encryption helps in providing privacy.

Byteball also have game bots like Slice & Dice MUD bot, Zork I game bot and Dice bot. I haven't tested any of the games yet.

There is also a poll bot, the challenge with the poll bot is that your polls wouldn't show on the bot. You have to visit a website that would redirect you back to the poll bot to cast a vote. The poll bot really needs improvements.

I'm sure I must have missed one or two bots, as time and characters wouldn't permit me to go any further. Byteball asset manager bot, username attestation bot, email attestation bot, flight delays oracle and flight delay insurance bot are also available on the Bot Store.

Drawbacks

The major drawback to the use of bots on Byteball is trust. Users have to trust the bot developer, since they cannot see the code it runs, on the public ledger. Only the transactions can be seen.

The bots also crashes during momentous events. Most times, due to several users sending messages to the bot at the particular time. During the fuss of steem attestation around July 12, the steem attestation bot crashed. That crash lasted for some days. About 2 weeks later, the byte-btc bot also crashed.

Bot lags is another challenge for some users. Sometimes you have to delete the bot and add it again from the Bot Store after updating to a new wallet.

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In conclusion, Byteball has numerous impressive chatbots. They provide valuable service to the app users. When you compare Byteball with other DAG projects, like IOTA and Nano, it is outstanding. Its chatbot features, prediction market, private currency (blackbytes) are just incomparable.

I'm longing to see what you think about the article. Pip pip, Cheerio!

Official links

• Byteball
• Byteball Wiki
• Byteball's Telegram
• Byteball's Slack

Series Backlinks

• My Experience Using Byteball app