Komodo Platform has always been a leader in the blockchain space, with a long history of delivering one groundbreaking technology after another.
While some crypto projects are only now becoming aware of the blockchain industry’s most pressing challenges, like interoperability and scalability, Komodo recognized them years ago and has been working tirelessly to provide solutions ever since.
A Brief History Of Komodo Platform
At the beginning of 2016, Komodo’s Lead Developer, James ‘jl777’ Lee, was developing a project called SuperNET on Nxt, one of the world’s very first blockchain platforms.
The Nxt development team implemented major adjustments to the codebase without consulting any of the projects built on the Nxt platform. The changes broke SuperNET’s backend tech, requiring hundreds of hours of work to repair the damage.
This event turned out to be a blessing in disguise because it made the limitations of the single-blockchain platform model perfectly clear. In response, jl777 issued the following statement:
Declaration of Independence
We the asset holders hereby declare our independence from any single blockchain.
An open and jointly developed specification on cross-chain atomic asset transfers will be developed. Any current or future blockchain is invited to join. Each blockchain will need to not only promise protections for asset holder interests, they need to live up to them. Otherwise, all the assets will simply move to blockchains that do.….
This is an interop standards effort and it needs to be blockchain agnostic and asset centric.
James ‘jl777’ Lee
This declaration shows that jl777 saw the challenges facing the blockchain industry long before most. Not only did jl777 understand the challenges, he had a vision of what the solutions would look like and publicly announced a plan to implement them years before terms like “atomic swaps” and “interoperability” were even part of the blockchain vernacular.
In accordance with jl777’s vision, the Komodo Platform was born. With a strong focus on the principles of independence, autonomy, and collaboration, the Komodo team sought to create a fully-decentralized and open-source blockchain ecosystem.
The objective was to design an independent blockchain architecture that would allow all blockchain projects to avoid the shortcomings of the original, single-blockchain model.
Now, two and a half years since jl777’s Declaration of Independence, Komodo Platform has made enormous progress towards accomplishing these foundational goals.
Komodo Platform ICO
On October 15, 2017, Komodo Platform began its initial coin offering (ICO). Bitcoin was the only accepted form of payment (although Bitcoin Dark holders were allowed to exchange their BTCD for KMD coins). KMD was sold a rate of 0.00012908222 BTC per coin, or 7747 KMD for 1 BTC. The ICO ended on November 20, 2017.
During those 37 days, the price of BTC fluctuated between $628 and $756 USD, with an average price of $691.62. This means that investors paid, on average, $0.089 USD per KMD coin during the fundraise.
One-hundred million KMD coins were issued, with 90% of them sold to investors and the remaining 10% held as working capital for Komodo’s development and marketing.
Over the course of the ICO, Komodo Platform raised a total of 2,639 BTC. The closing price of BTC on November 20, 2018 was $731.03. Using that same price, we see that Komodo raised a total of $1,929,188 USD.
It’s worth taking a moment to put this figure into perspective. Next to most other blockchain projects that held an ICO in 2017, Komodo raised a very modest sum of money. For the sake of comparison, here is some data about ICOs of several well-known crypto projects:
While hundreds of crypto projects bring in huge amounts of capital with ICOs, very few ever deliver any functioning technology. In fact, a study released in May 2018 by researchers at Boston College showed that around 56% of crypto projects that hold an ICO fail within four months.
Other researchers have put this figure even higher. Satis Group LLC, a NY-based ICO consulting firm, released a report estimating that around 81% of ICOs were scams.
While Statis Group used a rather broad definition of “scam” to arrive at this result, their findings are actually on par with research on the percentage of venture-backed startups that fail.
Shikhar Ghosh, a Professor of Management in the Harvard Business School, estimates that 75% of VC-funded startups fail. Between 30% and 40% of those deceased startups take all of their investment capital with them, leaving not a penny behind for the investors who gave them life.
Recall that Komodo brought in less than $2 Million during its initial coin offering. This visualization from CoinDesk may help you to put that figure into perspective. In the world of blockchain startups, it is a comparatively small amount of capital.
Moreover, the funds Komodo raised in its ICO are primarily used to pay the Bitcoin transaction fees required to notarize the KMD blockchain onto the BTC ledger, which happens every ten minutes as part of the delayed Proof of Work security mechanism.
Now, with all of this information in mind, let’s have a look at everything Komodo Platform has accomplished since the end of its ICO in November 2017.
Komodo Platform’s Tech Milestones
— February 21, 2016 — jl777’s Declaration of Independence
— October 15, 2016 — Beginning of Komodo Platform ICO
— November 20, 2016 — End of Komodo Platform ICO
— January 2017 — Komodo Mainnet launched, complete with independent assetchains and delayed Proof of Work security
— January 31, 2017 — KMD coins issued
— March 2017 — Atomic swap protocol developed, allowing trustless swaps of KMD coins
— July 2017 — Thousands of atomic swaps made publicly on Komodo’s DEX
— August 2017 — Private, zero-knowledge trades made possible with Jumblr
— October 2017 — “Lite Mode” Atomic swap trading made possible (eliminating the need for traders to download entire blockchains)
— November 2017 — First GUI for for atomic swaps testing released
— January 2018 — Beta version of Agama mobile released
— February 2018 — Public Stress Test allowed 13,900 atomic swaps in a 48 hour period
— March 2018 — Komodo bridged the gap between Bitcoin-protocol-based coins and Ethereum-based ERC-20 tokens, providing support for 95% of coins and tokens in existence
— March 2018 — Notary Node Elections
— May 2018 — World’s 1st decentralized ICO launched on Komodo
— June 2018 — Beta release of HyperDEX, a new GUI for BarterDEX
— July 2018 — Komodo 2.0 features announced: Federated Multi-Chain Syncing and Cross-Chain Interoperability Linking
— August 2018 — CryptoConditions and UTXO-based Smart Contracts in testing phase
Rankings And Recognition of Komodo Platform
As Komodo continues to develop and implement blockchain solutions, the project is receiving recognition for its efforts. This includes praise from Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of Binance, the world’s most largest cryptocurrency exchange.
On August 2, Fortune published an article about Changpeng Zhao, in which CZ is quoted as mentioning Komodo as a tool that he thinks will be useful in the future of the blockchain industry.
Here’s what the author wrote:
“CZ cited newer tools like Komodo and Tendermint that make it possible to write blockchains for specific purposes, suggesting the future will consist of numerous bespoke ledgers.”
Komodo agrees with CZ’s assessment that there will be much demand for independent, special-purpose blockchains in the not-so-distant future. This is precisely what Komodo’s tech is designed to do.
In addition to praise from industry leaders, Komodo has received a number of high rankings over the last several months from independent, objective evaluators. Here are 3 examples.
Chinese MIIT Blockchain Rankings
In May of this year, China’s Center for Information Industry Development (CCID) released a report that analyzed and ranked 28 of the world’s most prominent blockchain projects. Komodo was ranked #5 overall and #2 in terms of innovation.
On August 17, the CCID released their fourth edition of blockchain project rankings. In this most recent report, Komodo was given 3rd place overall out of the 30 major projects that were evaluated. Komodo was also given the 5th highest score in terms of technology and the 3rd highest score with respect to innovation.
CryptoMiso Ranking
Cryptomiso.com is a website that ranks 866 different blockchain projects according to the Github commit history of that project’s most popular repo. Komodo is ranked #1 overall for Github commits over the last 12 months, with a total of 5,931 commits.
This is a huge victory, as the project in second place, EOS, has only 4,864 commits over the last year — only 82%of Komodo’s total.
On top of that, this is just an analysis of one repository. In reality, Komodo has a much higher number of commits because the Komodo dev team works out of several different repos, not just one. When all 16 of Komodo’s repos are taken into consideration, Komodo actually has 62,000 commits over the last 12 months.
Blocktivity Ranking
Blocktivity is just what it sounds like — a ranking of major crypto projects according to the amount of activity on the blockchains. Unlike CoinMarketCap, Blocktivity.info ignores the prices of each cryptocurrency and simply ranks according to the activity on each project’s blockchain.
Komodo is currently ranked #6 on the Blocktivity ranking. Despite being only a tiny fraction of the same price, the KMD chain has one-third as much activity as the BTC blockchain.
Komodo Is Preparing A New Roadmap
Komodo Platform has a long history of delivering functioning tech and making our roadmaps a reality. Now, as we prepare for the future, Komodo is preparing an updated roadmap to reveal our plans for the rest of 2018 and 2019.
To be among the first to see the new roadmap, sign up for our weekly newsletter and join our thriving community on Discord.
Join us as we continue to create solutions and lead the innovate the blockchain industry into the future.
https://komodoplatform.com/komodo-platform-a-commitment-to-innovation/
