OBYTE WITNESS OVERVIEW

Obyte isn’t a blockchain, it’s a DAG.

There are no miners, no blocks and therefore no block size limit.

Payments and any other message types are connected

the same way as blocks are connected in blockchains.

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DAG VS. BLOCKCHAIN

Blockchain (Bitcoin) DAG (Obyte)

Through block producers Direct for full nodes,

Access
(miners and mining pools) indirect via hub for light nodes

Full node validate blocks,

Everyone full node runs a
Consensus block producers decide which
“reality test” based on witnesses
transactions go into the next block

Probabilistic finality based on

Deterministic finality based on
Security money spent on electricity
real world stakes of 12 witnesses
and specialized hardware

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DOUBLE-SPENDS
Obyte needs witnesses to be able to prevent double-spends. A transaction is always
referred to by someone else’s transaction. Most of them are referred to by
transactions by unknown users. But some transactions are made by known users
called witnesses. These could be big merchants, exchanges, or just reputable
individuals or organizations.

If a full node sees 2 conflicting transactions, the full node validating them will look for
the 2 transactions’ previously referenced transactions and check if some of those are
created by known users. The transaction with most “witness” referenced transactions
is “best” and the other is deemed invalid. We call these users “witnesses”, because
they “witness” the reality for those who come after them.

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WITNESS DIFFERENCE

A witness is just a regular, frequently posting full node, with one big difference:
the identity of the person or organization running it is publicly known.

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WITNESS REQUIREMENTS

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 Have a lot to lose (material and/or nonmaterial) in
case of misbehavior. The loss is trust in your
business (outside Obyte) and/or reputation; 

Have a publicly known real Have enough technical expertise to ensure

name, no anonymity uninterrupted operation 24/7 and security of your
private keys (they must not be stolen and used to
post on your behalf); 

Be prepared to adapt your own witness list when

you feel the community wants to change the list in
some way and the new candidate satisfies the
Be well known and trusted in above rules. This includes removing your witness
the community from the witness list.

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CONSIDERATIONS - RISKS & BENEFITS

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Consider the following implications if you want to become a witness: 

You witness transactions, you cannot change them or otherwise influence

them in any way;
This means that you cannot be held responsible for transactions you
witnessed, you didn’t do anything to them but just witnessed them taking
place.

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Your reputation in the real world should not be negatively affected by bad actors
on the Obyte platform, it should only be affected if you misbehave by:

Posting transactions out of order; 

Not posting transactions at all; 
Colluding with other witnesses; 
Do anything that causes you to lose the trust of the community.

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Right now it’s barely profitable to run a witness, you would do it mostly to help
out the network and set yourself up for a good position in the future; 
Helping Obyte to decentralize by becoming one of the first witnesses will most
likely give you a large amount of credit and fans in the community. This can
become important later on when the price of Bytes is much higher and the
payload fees will actually generate a steady income for you.

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REQUIRED INVESTMENTS

Required time to set up Server requirements: Such a server on a

a full node to use TOR: at least 1 core CPU, Virtual Private Server (VPS)
1-2 hours for a network 1-2GB of RAM and will cost ~$20/month
administrator at least a 50GB SSD

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MORE DETAILED INFORMATION

There are 12 witnesses involved in every transaction.

Each witness collects part of the transaction fee (the payload fee)
This list varies very little from transaction to transaction.
There cannot be more than one change in the witness list.
The witnesses majority (12/2+1) show the path to the “main chain”.
A witness may even be down for an amount of time without affecting the network.
The security of the network would only be threatened if 6 witnesses colluded,
which is theoretically possible but practically implausible.

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We threw out miners and introduced witnesses. Doesn’t that make them a new
privileged class?

To some extent, but there is an important difference:

While miners look at your transactions and decide if they like the transaction or not
(usually based on how much in fees you pay), a witness has no direct influence. It’s
users that look for witnesses to determine the consensus order of transactions.
Witnesses don’t decide anything about individual transactions. They ensure the
integrity of the network simply by being there.

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MORE DETAILED INFORMATION

The platform was set up with 12 witnesses all being the founder, Tony Churyumoff
(Tony). He is, of course, "a highly reputable user with a real-world identity", and totally
trustworthy. But whilst Tony controls the majority of witnesses, Obyte is centralized;
unwelcome in a going-to-become decentralized world. At the time of writing (October
2019) Tony runs 10 witnesses, independents run 2.

See the live witness statistics.

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FURTHER RESOURCES
Wiki page about witnesses, including Frequently Asked Questions

Technical witness documentation on Github

Presentation about Obyte, including witness explanation

Video and written interview with the first independent witness candidate
(community feedback was largely positive and the candidate was added to the witness list
of the default hub)

Written interview with the second independent witness candidate

(community feedback was again largely positive and the candidate was added to the witness list
of the default hub)

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INTERESTED IN BEING A WITNESS?
Please let the community know by posting on either

Obyte Discord
http://discord.obyte.org

Obyte Subreddit
https://www.reddit.com/r/obyte

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