So recently we had a great airdrop from the lovely people over at byteball — it’s a wallet that I’ve been wanting a reason to take a look at and play with for a while but without any of the native crypto currency that can often be part of the reason why you don’t explore any further.
HAPPY TO SEND PEOPLE THE FEE THEY NEED TO GET STARTED ON THE AIRDROP IF YOU ARE NOT ALREADY SETUP - LEAVE DETAILS IN THE COMMENTS BELOW (I GET A REFERRAL BONUS WHEN I DO THIS)
Enter stage left then byteball doing an airdrop to steemians — a match made in heaven if you ask me and a worthwhile one it was too especially when you consider the benefits — being a level 67 something I got $80 out of the transaction all being told, if I was 70+ I’d have got double, rep really does mean something when you are dealing with crypto!
syncing was a bad idea
So first things first, I installed byteball on a whim about six months ago after hearing good things about it and for the fact that a lot of the crypto shills were talking about it in high regard and for the fact that it ran a DAG rather than a blockchain — having other technologies enter these arenas is always a good thing because it keeps the momentum of the ship of change moving (hopefully forward)
problem was with the wallet I installed (I grabbed the update too) was that I had selected full wallet which basically grabbed several gigs of local (presume blockchain like) copy of the whole thing running locally, turns out mine was syncing extremely slow and going on previous blockchain techs I presume I needed a full copy before I would see any of the funds that people had said they sent me so I could do some of the attesting things (more on that later)
bots pages not loading
then to top things off the actual part that I was interested in and that would get me my airdrop stopped working, I got 404 errors and the bot was down, frustrating no #2 — at this point a lot of the average Joe blogs would just give up and be done with it, it it’s not like their remote control at home for the television people are not gonna use this.
not be able to load at all
Then triple whammy no #3 after playing around with hubs the whole thing just broken completely putting up a message that when I clicked ‘ok’ shut the whole application down.
we were not off to a good start, after a few days of frustration and not wanting to delete my whole app because of the wallet id I had given out to people to send me some bytes to do the attesting thing I decided that I should start from scratch this time using the local wallet instead of the big sync.
I really wanted to support the whole thing but if it was gonna take forever to sync then forget it — again, I’ve been spoiled by blockchain like LBRY that actually sync in a timely manner.
finding witness things on the web
Another thing that I think is something that needs to be worked on and for all blockchains is the stuff that you find on the web about blockchains, different hugs, faucets, things that people (like me) plug into without truly knowing what they do.
I’m a tinkerer but tinkering with this stuff is the difference between having access to your funds and waking up to find them gone, one wrong click, one rogue malware and you could be in trouble — we need to be alert to this stuff and educate ourselves.
I think all blockchains could do better here to make sure they list or are found at the top of google search results even for services they don’t control or even condone — you still need to educate as to what other people are trying to make you do with your blockchain.
finally getting the bytes
But in the end in true fashion after bot services being down and not having the bytes to do the verification thing we were rolling and boy oh boy is this thing speedy — for me the little chat bots MAKE this service/blockchain and we certainly need to consider some of the same similar functionality for the steem blockchain, how rad would it be to have similar functions for instance for block trades for instance.
Changing steem and sbd into bitcoin and sending it to some addresses we have in bookmarks that we can just say yes or no too in a chat — that would be something that would make me sending and transfers and handing of crypto currency easier and would make for great tutorials and helping of people in the flesh, we need those tools — we were promised a steem wallet at last years steemfest two in november of last year but it’s the middle of july and we have seen nothing of that yet.
I understand that they have been working on appbase and scaling so it makes no point making something to then re-engineer it later but it’s probably not a good idea to hype us up that it’s gonna be coming soon when it’s six months later and nothing has been said on the matter! :)
the bots were fast in operation
So what makes byteball interesting to me is the little chat bots — I can TOTALLY see these things being smart/ai powered to get to know you and become a fast virtual pa of the digital tasks you need to do on a daily basis — I can totally see some kind of upward system for digital nomads, activation of volunteers and instant payments, just in general distributed and fast payment activities. Once I was up and running all the processes I’ve done so far were fast and I know I’m just scratching the surface!
half cash, half smart contract
So this was clever (I don’t expect anything less from people who can make these things) they gave you half of you free airdrop in bytes (the native byteball currency) that you can spend now ($40 in value right now) and the other half in a smart contract that would unlock in a years time.
As someone that wants to learn more about smart contracts and how I can use them in my day to day life as a digital worker I think that little bait and carrot is a great way of making you look deeper into a product, it’s also like having something labeled in the house — you’ve got this little attachment to come back too, it’s an asset you own, it keeps your interesting. Super smart.
check out the video
So I give you a quick look around the application in the video and you should totally head over to the byteball blog post (which btw has had so many comments that it’s actually a nightmare to load in a browser tab without timing out!) — and also give the official steemit post a read too because it’s a big deal to steemians, especially if you have a rep and you have been here a long time, it’s basically free ‘value’ too good to miss!
I can send you bytes
If you need some bytes to get started (like I did) just post your address in the comments below and I’ll send you some byteball bytes over — I get a referral kickback and tbh the only way I’m gonna get to using this on the daily is if I’m actively sending funds to people and I’m learning what I can expect from this wallet and platform.
I’m gonna be doing more on 
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pinterest epic wins pinboard → brand advocate for nokia, 1000heads, verisign → won vloggie for node666 (san fran 2006) → television for time team history hunters 1999 (burton on trent) → sold me.dm to evan williams in april 2011 → went to phil campbell, alabama to help raise money after tornado ripped up the town (was on sky news, bbc news)→ CNN for sxsw 2013 about austin south by southwest event → video chat with robert scoble from rackspace → music video can you spot me? → won the digital derry contest for 5k euros → crowdfunded digital signage concept called pi street → now living life through digital blockchains.
My video is at DLive