The DigiByte (DBG) is a payments focused project that was launched in 2014 by Jared Tate. In a nod towards Bitcoin, the genesis block of the DigiByte blockchain contains a headline, "USA Today: 10/Jan/2014, Target: Data stolen from up to 110M customers".
DigiByte claims to be faster, more secure and more innovative in several ways than its competitors. The project has undergone several hard forks, each bringing with some significant changes to the network.
One of these hard forks brought about a feature that the projects highlights prominently: the use of five cryptographic algorithms to prevent mining centralization. One of these is Odocrypto, implemented recently in July 2019, which changes itself every 10 days. Two other hard forks brought DigiShield and MultiShield, which the team says protects the network from malicious attacks.
The team has also said that the Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence are two areas of innovation that they will be looking into in the future.
2019 saw two major updates to the project: the release of DigiAssets and the aforementioned Odocrypt hard fork. DigiAssets is a secure second layer protocol that “allows for the decentralized issuance of assets, tokens, smart contracts, digital identities and more.” The belief is that it will help DigiByte become a bigger presence in a variety of industries.
Q3 and Q4 2019 is expected to bring listings on more exchanges, scheduling of mobile payments, the launch of more ICOs and Dapps on the DigiByte blockchain, and browser and messaging applications.