In our recent blog post “Censorship: Why all Blockchain Projects Should Join Steem we said:

As one of the most mature projects in the space, we have proven through action that we believe in blockchain, cryptocurrency, decentralization, and censorship resistance. That’s why we want every project, regardless of whether they are powered by Steem, to feel welcome on this platform we have created.

That’s why we’re so excited that Byteball is joining the Steem community! You can see more about their plans here.

More Than an Airdrop

What we find so exciting about the Byteball Team’s plans for Steem is that they go well beyond a simple airdrop, or even just posting announcements to Steem. They are creating a “bridge” from Byteball to Steem and using it to improve their own platform. For example, one of the things every Steem user will be able to do today is link their username to their Byteball address which will enable Byteball users to send Bytes (and other Byteball-issued tokens) to human-readable Steem usernames instead of the less user-friend addresses typical of cryptocurrencies.

User-Friendly Protocols

This highlights the potential of this project as it combines the strengths of both projects without requiring that either one change! One of the things the Byteball Team feels is special about their platform is that their smart contracts are human-readable, making it an especially user-friendly experience with respect to developing apps. Of course, developing on Steem is also incredibly simple. After all, it is by leveraging SteemConnect that the Byteball Team was able to quickly and easily program all of their innovative plans for Steem integration into their platform.

The SteemMonsters Team recently sat down with Steemit Inc.’s Content Director (@andrarchy) and one of the things they discussed was just how easy it was to get their dapp up and running on Steem.

Steem is literally built for websites to use it ... I’m not a blockchain developer. I’ve never done a smart contract. I don’t know cryptography, or any of that stuff. I’m a web developer. There’s tons of web developers because the internet’s been the biggest thing for the last twenty years and that’s what Steem is built for. It has everything ready to go for you to use the skills you already have as a web developer and get the benefits of a blockchain. Which you don’t have on Ethereum…

• @yabapmatt, Co-Creator and Developer of Steem Monsters

Common Goals

All in all, we found that the Byteball Team’s history and goals were tightly aligned with our own. Like us, they have been in the space for a long time, beginning their development in 2014 and releasing their software just a few months after us on Christmas of 2016. Like us, they pioneered a novel consensus algorithm that flew in the face of the blockchain status quo, and like us they have survived all the vicissitudes of this challenging space.

An Ecosystem of Opportunity

The Byteball Team desires to create a platform in which everyone can play a role--not just those capable of setting up mining rigs--and that is capable of powering real apps that can a make a difference in people’s lives today. At Steemit, we believe that Steem is the Blockchain of Opportunity, and we hope that the bridge between Steem and Byteball will manifest entirely new opportunities for both Steemians and Byteballers.

We hope you’ll join us in welcoming the Byteball Team, and the Byteball community, to Steem. We look forward to seeing them leverage Steem’s powerful resources (including its amazing community) to progress toward a user-friendly dapp development platform and through its integration with Steem, increase even further the opportunities available to Steemians.

Steemit Team