Autonomous Agent

From Obyte Wiki

Overview

Smart contracts embody voluntary relationships between two free equals.

However, there is another class of applications that are not covered by smart contracts: applications where an autonomous central counterparty interacts with multiple users and does so strictly according to the rules that are public, known in advance, and can never be changed. That’s what Autonomous Agents are.

An Autonomous Agent (AA) is a special address (account) on the ledger that acts according to a program associated with it. Its behavior is similar to that of a vending machine that receives coins and data entered on a keypad and in response, releases a cup of coffee, plays a song, or does whatever it was programmed to do.[1]

This is the first major upgrade to the Obyte protocol. It has been under development for 9 months. It was released to Testnet 18 June 2019, where testing and development was expected to take 2-4 months. The release had been expected in January/February 2020, after AA-based ODEX's addition to livenet too.[2]

Mainnet release

Wallet version 3.0.0 was released Feb 19, 2020.[3] AAs became activated on mainnet on 29 February. The first mainnet AA can be seen on Explorer.[4]

Developer contest

To celebrate this massive milestone, we invited developers to join a running contest to build the most innovative, impressive, useful, exciting and spectacular Autonomous Agents.

Total Prize Pool worth $38,000 at current rate.

The contest kicked off July 18, 2019 and ran until mid-October. Every two weeks, a jury of Obyte team members led by the platform’s founder, Tony, announced the best entries. Autonomous Agents were live on Testnet, and the easy-to-use online editor is available for developers to explore. It even has a few nice templates to help get everyone off to an easy start.[5]

Results

Round 1, announced 4 August[6]

  • 1st place (140 GB / 422 GBB): Fabien — “A Simple DAO”
  • 2nd place (70 GB / 147.7 GBB): Barborico — “Bank With Secrets"
  • 3rd place (35 GB / 73.85 GBB): Pmiklos — “Lottery With Community Governance”
  • Best guide/tutorial (55 GB and 116.05 GBB): Pmiklos — “Getting Started With Obyte Autonomous Agents”

Round 2, announced 19 August[7]

  • 1st place (140 GB / 422 GBB): Pmiklos — “Autonomous Subscription Service”
  • 2nd place (70 GB / 147.7 GBB): Alvarlaigna — “EOS-like Crowdsale”
  • 3rd place (35 GB / 73.85 GBB): Hey_monkey — “The Attested Reputations Autonomous Agent”
  • Best guide/tutorial (55 GB and 116.05 GBB): Pmiklos — “Stateful Autonomous Agents”

Round 3, announced 3 September[8]

  • Postponed because of testnet crashes (good for antifragility)
  • Special testnet crash-testing bonus of 10 GB and 21.111 GBB each: Whoisterencelee, hey_monkey and barborico
  • Best guide/tutorial (55 GB and 116.05 GBB): Hey_monkey — "Understanding Obyte AA Bounce Fee"

Round 4, announced 16 September[9]

  • 1st place (140 GB / 422 GBB): Hey_monkey — “Offer reward to get triggered in the future (THAANKS)”
  • 2nd place (70 GB / 147.7 GBB): Barborico — “Ownerless AA Registry”
  • 3rd place (35 GB / 73.85 GBB): Whoisterencelee — “Red vs Blue”
  • Best guide/tutorial (55 GB and 116.05 GBB): Hey_monkey — “Understanding AA Structures”

Round 5, announced 2 October[10]

  • 1st place (140 GB / 422 GBB): Hey_monkey — “Joint Account Autonomous Agent (JAAA)”
  • 2nd place (70 GB / 147.7 GBB): Vik — “ByteKeeper”
  • 3rd place (35 GB / 73.85 GBB): Whoisterencelee — “Time For Birthday Fiddle”
  • Best guide/tutorial (55 GB and 116.05 GBB): Pmiklos — “How to set up devnet for rapid development”

Round 6, announced 15 October[11]

  • 1st place (140 GB / 422 GBB): Crypto Girl — “ObyStack”
  • 2nd place (70 GB / 147.7 GBB): Hey_monkey — “WEAALTH Use An AA To Establish Your GBytes Testament”
  • 3rd place (35 GB / 73.85 GBB): Sharjar — “Simple Public Asset Storage”
  • Best guide/tutorial (55 GB and 116.05 GBB): Crypto Girl — “ObyStack AA Stack Game”

Round 7 (Final round), announced 1 November[12]

  • 1st place (140 GB / 422 GBB): Frank Bee — “Autonomous Auctioneer”
  • 2nd place (70 GB / 147.7 GBB): Lion’s Heart — “Certificate of Deposit”
  • 3rd place (35 GB / 73.85 GBB): Hey_monkey — “A Renting Guarantee Autonomous Agent (ARGAA)”
  • Honorable mention (10 GB / 21.111 GBB): Whoisterencelee — "Obotic"
  • Honorable mention (10 GB / 21.111 GBB): Vik — "EmailBank"
  • Best guide/tutorial (55 GB and 116.05 GBB): Hey_monkey — “Use a web page to interact with Obyte powered AA”

Oscript editor

Autonomous Agents are written in Oscript — a new programming language developed specifically for this purpose.[13] The editor offers everything you would expect from a modern editor. Syntax highlighting with tooltips and help, auto completion and the editor even has built-in code validation. In other words, a full fledged code editor ready for real world adoption.[14]

References