For any investors interested in the proof-of-work space right now, crypto-enthusiast Chris MacDonald discusses with The Motley Fool's Eric Bleeker why DigiByte (DGB 4.43%) may be worth a look -- on this episode of "The Crypto Show" from Backstage Pass, recorded on Nov. 10. 

Eric Bleeker: DigiByte, which at a market cap of 870 million, pretty small in this space. It's the 120th largest crypto. This isn't something that I think most people watching today are going to be familiar with cryptocurrency that had its time in the sun in 2017 and roared back recently.

What's interesting about DigiByte, and what problem is it trying to solve?

Chris MacDonald: Yeah, I think it's interesting if you look at the chart there and see it's fallen off the wagon a little bit or just maybe investors are a little bit less interested in it right now.

I think we spend most of our time, or I spend most of my time looking into a lot of the DeFi plays and proof-of-stake plays because I think that there's a lot of compelling reasons to look at that and where the crypto world is headed.

Digibyte is interesting in that it's a proof of work platform network. It's similar to Bitcoin (BTC 1.03%) in that regard, but it's an interesting one to look at when you compare it to Bitcoin or other proof-of-work cryptocurrencies in that it's a unique three-layer cryptocurrency. Its focus is on security.

Like other networks, there's decentralized applications that can be built on top of it. But what DigiByte does differently is their algorithm is a multi-step process where it secures the platform. There's five different algorithms used to secure Digibytes network, and what that means is it creates an incredibly secure, decentralized blockchain where the experts have said it's nearly impossible to do a 51 percent attack on something like Digibyte whereas with Ethereum Classic (ETC 2.28%) we've seen what various attacks can do for crippling the price of a given token.

For a proof-of-work option, it's definitely an interesting token to consider. It's very community-based, so it wasn't funded by an initial coin offering. It doesn't have a parent company or CEO, unlike a lot of other projects so it's essentially a truly decentralized network. These community-driven roots speak to the transparency of this platform, which is very important because in the crypto world, the true intentions of the creator of a given cryptocurrency can be masked pretty easily and we saw what happened with the Squid Game rug pull, that Squid Game token, and how dangerous certain cryptocurrencies can be.

DigiByte's focus on security and it is also extremely fast compared to Bitcoin or Ethereum (ETH 2.13%) its a much faster option as well. There are reasons that investors might want to look at the smaller cap token. Started looking at tokens that are a little bit lower down the list, maybe ones that have been beaten down a little bit. Where there might be value so this is definitely an interesting one to look at from maybe a value perspective right now.

Eric Bleeker: It should be noted, the projects that we're having Chris work on are essentially going through and building out essentially the key investment factors to watch across an incredibly wide berth of the crypto space. A lot of people go deep into one particular thing.

What's great about having Chris as a resource is he is going deeper into crypto than just about anyone you can imagine. I would say with some of your initial research completed into Digibyte, we often think of this as a funnel. We've got this incredibly why funnel that we're beginning with and we narrowed it down and only the best ones get added to something like digital explores.

Where would you put Digibyte on a scale of one to 10 in terms of your interest?

Chris MacDonald: I think right now it's more on the lower end of the spectrum in terms of just being a token that I'm interested in. I was looking more into the proof-of-work space and other options just to get a little bit away from the proof-of-stake space, which is not to say that I don't think that that's a super intriguing place to be, I do, I just wanted to see, let's compare Bitcoin and Ethereum in its current state.

I know Ethereum's moving toward proof-of-stake, but compare Bitcoin and Ethereum with some other options, and Digibyte was one that popped up for its security profile and I think it's just one that caught my eye.

You can see on the chart how beaten down it is. It might be an interesting one to take a look at it. It was a lot higher previously in terms of market cap.