I am writing because of Official Byteball Airdrop to Steemians post again. I was amazed how many people were helping each other out with the Steem attestation fee (it works probably because there is a referral rewards for those who do it), but I quickly realized that many people were asking the same questions over and over again, and now when the post has over 2000 comments, it is almost impossible to read those comments because it is so slow to browse (read it on Busy.org instead). Steemians have made that blog post so slow with thousands of comments, the same way they have made Byteball network confirming the transactions also slow.
So, while we wait for Byteball network to recover from massive interest of Steemians, here are some common questions about Byteball that can be confusing for newcommers:
How much does a transaction cost on Byteball network?
Over 500 Bytes and under 1 000 Bytes, which is worth currently less than 0.0001 US dollars (1 000 000 000 Bytes ~ $120). Basically, transaction costs as much as it takes space on Byteball DAG database.
Why does the blog post then say that I need to borrow 0.0006 GB (Gigabytes) for Steem attestation?
At the time of the announcement blog post mentioned above, fee for attestation was 500 000 Bytes, but it was advertised as 0.0006 GB (Gigabytes). Fee was then reduced to 49KB. Bot was initially sending “Payment request 0.5 MB” link as a payment request, but then started sending “Payment request 0.049 MB” (or 49 000 Bytes) link. Attestation bots ask fees to cover expenses like running the bot and posting attestation data about you to DAG (longer your name is, more it costs). Sometimes it can also include expenses like paying somebody to review your documents (Real Name Attestation bot).
Wait, what? GB, Gigabytes, Bytes, KB and MB?
Byteball Bytes are listed as Gigabytes (GByte ticker) on cryptocurrency exchanges, so initial fee was advertised as 0.0006 GByte is 0.6 MByte, 600 KByte or 600 000 Byte. Basically, fee was reduced from 500 KBytes to 49 KBytes, which is same as 500 000 Bytes to 49 000 Bytes, but since you also need to pay transaction cost when sending the attestation fee, it will most likely cost you now between 49 588 and 50 000 Bytes. Payment request is displayed in unit size that you have selected from wallet app settings (default is simply Bytes).
So, how much will it cost me to send somebody Steem attestation fee, so I can get referral reward?
Great question. You need to send them 50 000 Bytes, which is also 50 KByte, 0.05 MByte or 0.00005 GByte, but when you are sending them that amount, you will be paying first the transaction cost to send that amount to them. So, for referrer, it will cost 50 588 - 51 000 Bytes total, which is worth currently around 0.006 US dollars (1 GByte ~ $120). You can't send the amount directly to the bot address that was displayed to them because the payment needs to come from the user who is doing the attestation.
How many Bytes do I get when I do the Steem attestation and how much do I get when I refer somebody to do it?
Another excellent question :D Official Byteball Airdrop to Steemians post says that attesting a Steem user account with different reputation score will get you different US dollar amount worth of Bytes and 50% will be given immediately and 50% will be vested for a year in smart-contract. Also, referral reward depends on the reputation of the referred user and will get you 25% reward immediately and 75% will be vested for a year in smart-contract. All rewards are paid in Bytes and may be subject to change.
So, if you have reputation score at 37 then you will be rewarded with $20 worth of Bytes, which currently (1 GByte ~ $120) is 0.16722408 GByte, 167.22408 MByte, 167224.08 KByte or 16722408 Byte, you will get half now, half in one year.
If you are already attested your Steem account (this is a requirement to be able to refer somebody) and you are referring a user with reputation score at 37 then you get the same amount, just 25% now and 75% one year later.
So, how many Steemians like me (reputation 37) can be rewarded before the distribution fund runs out?
Wow, where do you get so smart questions? To calculate that, we need to know how much is in Byteball distribution fund and how much is already in circulation. Easiest place to find that number is CoinMarketCap, currently it shows that circulation supply is 645 946 GByte and total supply is 1 000 000 GByte, this makes that there is 354 054 GByte left in distribution fund yet to be distributed.
So, in case GByte price doesn't change (it will), all distribution fund will get distributed to only Steemians (it will not), all attested Steem accounts have reputation score at 37 (very unlikely) and every attestation would be referred by some existing Steemian (also not very likely) then we could do a calculation like this 354 054/(0.16722408*2) ~ 1 058 621.
We can calculate rough estimates in case most Steem users who attest are between 40-50 by dividing the number by 2, so in that case it would be 500 000 users.
If most users have reputation between 50 and 60 then it would probably last for 250 000, but that is only if the other conditions don't change.
Amount of already attested Steem accounts can be seen there https://byteball.co/attestors as Steem attestor.
Math is hard. How am I suppose to be able to calculate these Byteball amounts?
Well, one of the reasons why I made this blog post is because I made a tool for that and if you have noticed, I have already linked previous examples to it, here is the link to that tool again https://tarmo888.github.io/bb-convert/
Can that tool do anything else than just calculate different amounts?
OK, you probably have figured it out already that these are not real questions and I am actually answering to my own questions (still based on answers that I have given in that blog post comments). So, with that tool, you can calculate many fiat (government issued) currency amounts into Byteball amounts, including different Byteball own amounts (GByte, MByte, KByte and Byte).
The whole point of that tool was initially to help users, for example, send 5 US dollars (or 5 euros) worth of Bytes to other users by simply filling some fields and clicking the "send with Byteball wallet" button, which would automatically open your Byteball wallet app waiting to be confirmed to send right amount of Bytes.
Then couple days later, I figured, it could also be used to request $5 worth of Bytes by sending a link of automatically filled form to somebody or showing somebody a QR code that gets generated when the form is correctly filled (Byteball wallet app has QR code reader built in). That link can also be used to add a $5 dollar donation link to your website or blog, like this: please donate me $5 worth of Bytes if you find this tool or blog post useful.
You could also ask other users to donate 1 STEEM worth of Bytes to your Steem username like this (change the username to yours) (this last link needs at least v2.4.1 wallet).
And that is not all (now this blog post is 100% commercial parody), if you wish, you can send $160 (maximum reward for Steem attestation) to 120 people (maximum amount for mass payment) by adding all the addresses (multi-address form supports currently only Byteball addresses) to multi-address sending form. By clicking on one of the "copy" buttons below (depends what unit size you have selected in wallet app settings - default is Bytes), it will put a equally divided payment order list to your clipboard, ready to be pasted into Byteball wallet app. How neat is that?