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# Development is now occurring on the DigiByte-Core repo
As of 2020, development has now moved to the DigiByte-Core organization, under the digibyte repo
You can find more over at
DigiByte Core integration/staging tree
=====================================
https://digibytecore.org
For an immediately usable, binary version of the DigiByte Core software, see
https://digibytecore.org/en/download/.
What is DigiByte Core?
---------------------
DigiByte Core connects to the DigiByte peer-to-peer network to download and fully
validate blocks and transactions. It also includes a wallet and graphical user
interface, which can be optionally built.
Further information about DigiByte Core is available in the [doc folder](/doc).
## What is DigiByte?
DigiByte (DGB) is a highly secure, decentralized, distributed and time-tested global blockchain that was founded in early 2014 with a focus on cyber security, payments & secure communications technologies.
For more information, as well as an immediately useable, binary version of the DigiByte Core software, see
## DigiByte FAQ
**Launch Date**: January 10th, 2014
**Blockchain Type**: Public, Decentralized, UTXO based, Multi-Algorithm
**Ticker Symbol**: DGB
**Genesis Block Hash**: "USA Today: 10/Jan/2014, Target: Data stolen from up to 110M customers"
**Max Total Supply**: 21 Billion DigiBytes in 21 Years (2035)
**Current Supply**: 14,293,304,147 DGB (May 2021)
**Block Reward Reduction**: 1% Monthly
**Current Block Reward**: 520 DGB (May 2021)
**Mining Algorithms**: Five individual: SHA256, Scrypt, Odocrypt, Skein & Qubit
**Block Interval**: 15 Second Blocks (75 seconds per algo)
**Algo Block Share**: 20% Block Share Per Algo (5)
**Difficulty Retarget**: Every 1 Block, 5 Separate Difficulties, independent difficulty for each Mining Algo
**SegWit Support**: Yes. First major altcoin to successfully activate Segwit. (April 2017)
**Hardforks**: 5. DigiShield, MultiAlgo, MultiShield, DigiSpeed, Odocrypt
**Softforks**: 3. SegWit, CSV, NVersionBits
You can mine DigiByte on one of five separate mining algorithms. Each algo averages out to mine 20% of new blocks. This allows for much greater decentralization than other blockchains. An attacker with 99% of of any individual algorithm would still be unable to hardfork the blockchain, making DigiByte much more secure against PoW attacks than other blockchains.
**DigiShield Hardfork**: Block 67,200, Feb. 28th, 2014
**MultiAlgo Hardfork**: Block 145k, Sep. 1st 2014
**MultiShield Hardfork**: Block 400k, Dec. 10th 2014
**DigiSpeed Hardfork**: Block 1,430,000 Dec. 4th 2015
**Odocrypt Hardfork**: Block 9,112,320 July 22nd 2019
## DigiByte vs Bitcoin
**Security**:
- 5 DigiByte mining algorithms vs. 1 Bitcoin mining algorithm.
- DigiByte mining is much more decentralized.
- DigiByte mining algorithms can be changed out in the future to prevent centralization.
**Speed**:
- DigiByte transactions occur much faster than Bitcoin transactions.
- 1-2 second transaction notifications.
- 15 second DigiByte blocks vs. 10 minute Bitcoin blocks.
- DigiByte has 6x block confirmations 1.5 minutes vs. 1 hour with Bitcoin.
**Transaction Volume**:
- DigiByte can handle many more transactions per second.
- Bitcoin can only handle 3-4 transactions per second.
- DigiByte currently can handle 560+ transactions per second.
**Total Supply**:
- 21 billion DigiBytes will be created over 21 years.
- Only 21 million Bitcoin will be created over 140 years.
- 1000:1 ratio. 1000 DigiByte for every Bitcoin.
**Marketability & Usability**:
- DigiByte is an easy brand to market to consumers.
- DigiBytes are much cheaper to acquire.
License
-------
DigiByte Core is released under the terms of the MIT license. See [COPYING](COPYING) for more
information or see https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT.
Development Process
-------------------
The `master` branch is regularly built (see `doc/build-*.md` for instructions) and tested, but it is not guaranteed to be
completely stable. [Tags](https://github.com/DigiByte-Core/digibyte/tags) are created
regularly from release branches to indicate new official, stable release versions of DigiByte Core.
The https://github.com/digibyte-core/gui repository is used exclusively for the
development of the GUI. Its master branch is identical in all monotree
repositories. Release branches and tags do not exist, so please do not fork
that repository unless it is for development reasons.
The contribution workflow is described in [CONTRIBUTING.md](CONTRIBUTING.md)
and useful hints for developers can be found in [doc/developer-notes.md](doc/developer-notes.md).
Testing
-------
Testing and code review is the bottleneck for development; we get more pull
requests than we can review and test on short notice. Please be patient and help out by testing
other people's pull requests, and remember this is a security-critical project where any mistake might cost people
lots of money.
### Automated Testing
Developers are strongly encouraged to write [unit tests](src/test/README.md) for new code, and to
submit new unit tests for old code. Unit tests can be compiled and run
(assuming they weren't disabled in configure) with: `make check`. Further details on running
and extending unit tests can be found in [/src/test/README.md](/src/test/README.md).
There are also [regression and integration tests](/test), written
in Python.
These tests can be run (if the [test dependencies](/test) are installed) with: `test/functional/test_runner.py`
The CI (Continuous Integration) systems make sure that every pull request is built for Windows, Linux, and macOS,
and that unit/sanity tests are run automatically.
### Manual Quality Assurance (QA) Testing
Changes should be tested by somebody other than the developer who wrote the
code. This is especially important for large or high-risk changes. It is useful
to add a test plan to the pull request description if testing the changes is
not straightforward.
Translations
------------
Changes to translations as well as new translations can be submitted to
[DigiByte Core's Transifex page](https://www.transifex.com/digibyte/digibyte/).
Translations are periodically pulled from Transifex and merged into the git repository. See the
[translation process](doc/translation_process.md) for details on how this works.
**Important**: We do not accept translation changes as GitHub pull requests because the next
pull from Transifex would automatically overwrite them again.