Obyte is celebrating its ninth anniversary with new governance, DeFi apps, and a virtual city built on its DAG-based, fully decentralized crypto network.
Summary
- Obyte’s DAG-based network now performs full on-chain management, allowing GBYTE holders to vote on upgrades and select order providers that keep the DAG in sync.
- Milestones for 2025 include the election of CariPower as the first community order provider and the launch of Obyte City, a virtual network where plots and houses are managed on-chain.
- The roadmap adds Obyte Friends for social rewards plus new DeFi, social apps and sidechains, expanding Obyte’s ecosystem beyond just its core payments and token tools.
Obyte, a decentralized cryptocurrency network, celebrated its ninth anniversary on December 25, 2025, nine years since its launch as Byteball in 2016, according to the project’s official blog.
Obyte develops new ecosystem
The platform has expanded its ecosystem in 2025 with new community-focused applications and governance structures, the blog said.
Obyte runs on a directed acyclic graph (DAG) architecture and offers multiple decentralized tools, including ODEX for token swaps, Oswap.io for liquidity provision, and the Counterstake Bridge for asset transfers between networks. The platform also supports trading on centralized exchanges including NonKYC.io and Biconomy.
The network’s infrastructure includes autonomous agents, smart contracts, attestations, private tokens, and token creation capabilities. Additional features include Prophet for prediction markets, Kivach for open-source project donations, and Pythagoras Perpetual Futures for advanced trading.
In late 2024, Obyte deployed a major network upgrade that introduced full on-chain governance, allowing GBYTE token holders to participate in network decisions through a dedicated governance site, the announcement said.
In March 2025, the network selected its first order provider through decentralized community voting. Order providers manage public nodes that send periodic transactions to maintain DAG synchronization, although they cannot approve, block or censor transfers, the blog explains.
CariPower, a sustainable energy company based in the Caribbean, became the first order provider to be selected through on-chain governance after receiving more than 31,000 GBYTE votes. The company has announced plans to explore distributed ledger applications for peer-to-peer energy markets and infrastructure.
In June 2025, Obyte launched Obyte City, a virtual environment where users can purchase lots on a digital network. The system randomly assigns coordinates to purchased plots, and when two undeveloped plots are placed next to each other, both owners receive a house and two additional plots by connecting via Discord or Telegram, according to the platform description.
Plots are priced in CITY tokens, which are tradable on Oswap.io. The city operates through autonomous agents on the Obyte DAG, with limited settings that can be adjusted via on-chain governance by plot owners.
The project announced plans to launch Obyte Friends, described as a community engagement platform that will reward users for daily social interactions and promoting the network. Additional decentralized financial applications, social systems and side chains are planned for 2026, the blog said.
