Welcome back to Komodo’s world! The team have a number of great announcements for the community and some major developments in store!
Komodo is excited to release the 2019 Annual Report, summarizing all of the milestones of the previous year, and the 2020 Technical Roadmap! In addition to that, the team is also announcing the launch of a new community portal, a place to connect with developers and community members. You’ll have a great opportunity to ask questions and share your experience with other blockchain enthusiasts.
In this Biweekly you’ll also find out all the details about Komodo’s Fourth Annual Notary Node Election which will begin on March 15, 2020 and the voting period will last until March 31, 2020. At that point, the newly-elected Notary Node Operators will be announced. A total of 30 Notary Node Operator positions will be chosen in the upcoming election. With so many positions available in the Notary Node network, the Komodo team would like to encourage everyone who is interested to run. The Komodo Notary Node Elections are stake weighted, meaning that those who hold more KMD have more voting power in the election. Read on to learn more about cross-chain notarization, the voting process and other important details about the upcoming Notary Node Election.
Komodo looks forward to developing new features and technologies which will mark a new year of growth and breakthroughs!
More news to follow!
Development
GitHub metrics:
Developer activity (from Coinlib.io):
Komodo’s 2019 Annual Report
The Komodo team is excited to release the Komodo 2019 Annual Report to summarize all of the milestones and progress made throughout the year.
In 2019, Komodo developed a number of new features and technologies.
Read a brief recap of last year’s major developments here.
There are 3 primary areas of focus for the Komodo Team in 2020: Komodo Core, Antara Framework, and AtomicDEX.
Komodo Core
Komodo Core is the engine that powers the Komodo main chain and extends blockchain platform services beyond the single-chain platform model to a multi-chain architecture. Further advancing Komodo Core as the most secure and most sophisticated platform architecture in the blockchain industry is a top priority for 2020.
The Komodo Dev Team will advance Komodo Core in several ways. First, Komodo is refactoring the Komodo Core code base to increase performance and reduce memory usage. Second, Komodo is rewriting the Delayed Proof-of-Work (dPoW) security mechanism in Rust to reduce transactions costs and improve efficiency. Finally, Komodo is continuing to develop nSPV with the addition of libnSPV, which will help make nSPV features production-ready.
Antara Framework
Antara Framework is a powerful toolkit for custom blockchain development that provides a next-generation alternative to ordinary smart contracts. Providing an existing library of built-in modules, the ability to code custom modules, and an open API with which external applications can connect to a Smart Chain, the Antara Framework gives developers all the tools they need to build blockchain-based software.
Komodo’s development priorities for Antara Framework in three primary areas: reviewing and optimizing the existing Antara Module library while also finalizing development on the stablecoin modules; improving developer tools (RPC wrappers and a custom module development toolkit); and new standalone initiatives, like the Antara Incubator and the Finite State Machine module.
AtomicDEX
Komodo has been the industry leader in atomic swaps for several years, and continues to be today. In 2020, Komodo will continue to lead in this regard by furthering development of AtomicDEX, Komodo’s third-generation decentralized exchange.
AtomicDEX priorities for 2020 have three dimensions:
- building reference implementation products,
- adding new features,
- optimizing the networking layer, and integrating new protocols to the underlying atomic swap technology.
Reference implementations include desktop versions of AtomicDEX for Windows, Linux, and MacOS, as well as the beta web-based version of AtomicDEX that will run in any browser. New features will include market-making tools and z-transaction atomic swaps with privacy coins like Pirate and HUSH. Lastly, the Tezos protocol will be added to AtomicDEX and exploratory research will begin on integrating the Tendermint protocol.
Komodo’s New Community Portal
To promote more thoughtful and educational discussions, the Komodo team is delighted to announce a new platform for the Komodo community — our very own community portal.The Komodo Community Portal is a place to connect with other developers and community members; it is a place to learn, ask questions, and join in conversations with other blockchain enthusiasts.
The Komodo Community Portal has several major objectives:
- Accelerate community growth by providing more value for the existing community and by easing the learning curve for all newcomers.
- Build a culture of peer-to-peer community support and start documenting all the valuable information into a growing knowledge base that can be easily accessed.
- Increase the adoption of Komodo technology by building a stronger open-source developer community and facilitating discussions around building with Komodo.
- Support the growth of the Komodo ecosystem by bringing people and projects closer together.
You can become a part of Komodo’s vibrant community!
Finance
Transactions, Payments and Total Transacted Volume on Komodo KMD per Day
Source: DexStats
Komodo’s Fourth Annual Notary Node Election To Begin On March 15, 2020
The Komodo Team is thrilled to announce that the Fourth Annual Notary Node Election will begin on March 15, 2020.
Every year, the Komodo community elects a new cohort of Notary Node operators. The first Notary Node Election was in January 2017 and the previous annual Notary Node Election took place in April 2019.
Notary Nodes perform cross-chain notarizations to provide security, scaling, and interoperability features. Cross-chain notarizations are transactions that store a small piece of crucial blockchain data from one blockchain on the ledger of different blockchain.
Notarizations are required for Delayed Proof of Work (dPoW) security, which recycles the hash rate of the Bitcoin network to secure third-party blockchains, as well as Platform Synchronizations, a technology that makes scaling and interoperability features available to all Smart Chain projects.
KMD holders will receive VOTE tokens at a 1:1 ratio to the KMD coins they hold in a private wallet. The Komodo community will cast their ballots by sending the VOTE tokens to the address of their preferred candidate(s). The voting period will last until March 31, 2020. At that point, the newly-elected Notary Node Operators will be announced.
A total of 30 Notary Node Operator positions will be chosen in the upcoming election. With so many positions available in the Notary Node network, the Komodo team would like to encourage everyone who is interested to run.
Cross-Chain Notarizations Explained
The Komodo Notary Node network performs dozens of notarization transactions every hour, including one notarization transaction on the Bitcoin blockchain approximately every ten minutes. The remainder of these notarization transactions are on the Komodo blockchain.
Komodo’s Notary Nodes take block hashes write them onto different blockchains with notarization transactions. For the most part, Notary Nodes write block hashes from third-party Smart Chains onto the KMD ledger. There are also approximately 6 notarization transactions per hour that notarize a KMD block hash onto the Bitcoin ledger.
The Limitations Of Notary Node Capabilities
- Notary Nodes are not masternodes.
- Notary Nodes cannot withhold or censor transactions or blocks for any blockchain.
- Notary Nodes cannot mine blocks with an easy difficulty on any chain except KMD.
- Notary Nodes cannot determine the validity of a block; a blockchain’s decentralized network must reach consensus before a block hash is eligible for notarization.
Notary Nodes simply take publicly-available and network-approved data that already exists on-chain — a block hash — and save it onto the ledger of a different blockchain. This is accomplished by performing a transaction, which any ordinary user could do manually if they wish.
While the notarization process is critical to the security, blockchain interoperability, and scalability of the Komodo ecosystem, Notary Nodes don’t have any special powers over any blockchain. It is simply a decentralized mechanism for cross-chain notarizations.
The Governance of the Notary Node Network
There are a total of 64 nodes in Komodo’s Notary Node network. The nodes are evenly spread across four geographic regions: Europe (EU), Asia-Russia (AR), North America (NA), and the Southern Hemisphere (SH). Each region contains at least 15 nodes, boosting the physical distribution and security of the network.
Every year, the 30 top-performing nodes — meaning those that participated in the most notarizations — are automatically re-elected for another year in the network. This ensures continuity in the notarization process and provides an incentive for Notary Node Operators to run their node diligently.
The 30 lowest-performing Notary Nodes lose their position. Of course, they may run for election again, if they so choose. But they must receive enough votes from the Komodo community in order to reclaim their role.
The remaining 4 nodes in the network are maintained by Komodo team members for research and debugging operations, which include the usage of custom and experimental code.
Those running for election must declare in which region they intend to operate their Notary Node. If anyone is discovered to be running a node in a region other than the one for which they were elected, this operator will be immediately disqualified and that Notary Node position will be assigned to the next candidate in the election result list. This keeps things fair, as different geographic locations offer Internet connections at varying costs and speeds.
Those who would like to run in the 2020 Notary Node Election must announce their candidacy by February 28, 2020.
Incentives For Notary Node Operators
Komodo’s globally distributed network of 64 Notary Nodes carry out notarization transactions every ten minutes, every hour of every day, 365 days a year. In exchange for performing these duties, Notary Node Operators are rewarded with the ability to mine one block with an easy difficulty level roughly every 90 minutes.
This allows Notary Nodes to easily earn block rewards as compensation. Diligent Notary Node Operators — meaning those that ensure their node has no or very little down time — can mine 16 or 17 blocks per day. At present, KMD block rewards are 3 KMD per block, so this adds up to about 50 KMD per day, or around 1500 KMD per month per Notary Node.
The Voting Process
The Komodo Notary Node Elections are stake weighted, meaning that those who hold more KMD have more voting power in the election. The process works as follows.
A special voting token — let’s call it VOTE2020 — will be airdropped to KMD holders at a 1:1 ratio. If you have 1000 KMD, you will receive 1000 VOTE2020 tokens. The current supply of KMD is around 120 Million, so roughly 120 Million VOTE2020 tokens will be airdropped to the Komodo community.
It’s important to note that you must hold your private keys in order to receive your VOTE2020 tokens. If you hold your KMD on a centralized exchange, then you do not hold your private keys and you will not receive any VOTE2020 tokens. If you’re a KMD holder and you wish to participate in the election, now is time to withdraw your coins into a private wallet.
All candidates will publicly post an address in which they can receive VOTE2020 tokens. Once you’ve received your VOTE2020 tokens, you may cast your ballot by sending them to the candidate(s) of your choice.
The only rule for voting is that the sale of VOTE2020 tokens is strictly prohibited. Anyone caught buying or selling VOTE2020 tokens will be disqualified from participating in the election. Apart from that, community members may vote for any candidates in any region.
Voting will be open from March 15 until March 31. KMD holders are highly encouraged to read through the proposals of all the candidates before casting their vote. The proposals contain important information about how each candidate intends to help the Komodo ecosystem.
The election ends on March 31 and the winners will be announced the same day. The Komodo Core update is planned for April 1 and the hardfork activation is scheduled for May 31, 2020.
How To Run For A Notary Node Operator Position
Anyone with the required hardware and knowledge can run in the Notary Node Election. Candidates don’t need to own a single KMD coin to become a Notary Node Operator. In fact, candidates don’t need to be a current member of the Komodo community or know anything at all about the inner workings of Komodo’s technology.
The only requirements are technical in nature. Candidates must own or have access to two computers that meet the following requirements:
- OS: Linux is mandatory. Ubuntu 18.x or Debian 10.x recommended.
- CPU: A High-Performance CPU, e.g. Xeon, i7/i9, Ryzen, EPYC, etc.
- RAM: 64GB or more
- Disk: 1TB SSD or greater
- Bandwidth: 100Mbps or higher
In order to run in the Notary Node Election, candidates must submit a written proposal to the Notary Node repository on Github. Proposals can contain, among other things, a brief bio, motivations for running in the election, and planned contributions to the Komodo ecosystem.
At a minimum, a candidate’s proposal must state which region they are running in and post an address to which KMD community members can send VOTE2020 tokens. Candidates may choose to run for one seat in one of the four regions. That means that, at most, an individual candidate can seek 1 Notary Node position in their first election participation.
Those who would like to run in the 2020 Notary Node Election must announce their candidacy by February 28, 2020.
In general, the Komodo community elects Notary Node Operators who are committed to the development of the ecosystem. If your primary motivation is personal financial gain, you may find it difficult to garner support.
Conversely, even if you are an ardent supporter of the Komodo ecosystem, you may fail to win a seat if your technical skills are lacking. A balance of both attributes — dedication to the Komodo ecosystem and strong technical abilities — is the ideal combination.
For more information about running in the election, please see this guide to setting up a Notary Node. You’re also encouraged to read the Notary Node Bible, which contains more information about the duties and responsibilities of a Notary Node Operator.
If you’re interested in becoming a candidate in the Notary Node Election, please join Komodo’s Community Portal to connect with the team and other community members. The Komodo team is more than happy to answer questions and provide support when needed.
The Komodo team just launched a brand-new Community Portal and, to celebrate, they’re running a bounty campaign! The prize pool has over 3000 KMD.
Social encounters
Atomic DEX — How the Komodo Decentralized Exchange enables atomic swaps
Kadan Stadelmann, the Komodo Platform’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO), gave an interview to Crypto Conversation (new podcasts from BNC) hosted by Andy Pickering.
You’ll hear why Kadan’s experience working in opsec at the nation-state level led to a realization that trustless, decentralized solutions are the most effective means to change the world. Plus, hear Kadan’s diplomatic assessment of the McAfeeDEX, and learn why Kadan is extremely pessimistic about humanity’s future. Kadan’s background includes coding from an early age which led to him becoming a white-hat hacker and operations security and penetration testing at the nation-state level.
Key takeaway:
To date, most decentralized exchange solutions have been clunky and lacking in users. Komodo says that the AtomicDEX is now the industry leader. Komodo has been working on atomic swaps since 2014 and has collaborated with their inventor, Tier Nolan. Komodo has launched the first DEX for mobile phones, on-boarded thousands of users, and executed the first web browser-based atomic swap. Komodo is on a mission to make it so that if you want to trade crypto without a middleman, you can do it by typing in a URL or pulling out your phone.”
Komodo has conducted the world’s first web browser-based atomic swap and is expanding its decentralized exchange solution, AtomicDEX, to web browsers. The atomic swap is a smart contract technology that allows users to trade digital assets without any third-party involvement.
Follow this link to hear the whole interview with Kadan Stadelmann.
Komodo Blockchain Training for Government
Komodo is constantly working on training resources and marketing initiatives that improve awareness of the ecosystem.
ChainZilla has partnered with Panama’s Government Innovation Agency (AIG), a government-backed entity to jointly launch a training program for developers and government officials on the Komodo blockchain.
On January 22 and 23 they trained 40 government officials on blockchain-based solutions for real-world applications. The first phase of the training program was a success and a second phase will be rolled out in the second quarter of 2020.
Industry-focused education projects in Central America
In late August 2019, the Panamanian government announced its plan to implement a blockchain-based bidding platform for government contracts. This move will increase traceability and transparency for government projects and spending.
Upcoming events:
Roadmap
There are 3 primary areas of focus for the Komodo Team in 2020: Komodo Core, Antara Framework, and AtomicDEX.
Partnerships and team members
The Komodo Development team is looking for a Full-Stack Developer with at least one year of experience working in Rust. Previous experience working with the Bitcoin and/or Zcash protocol(s) is preferred but not mandatory for this role.
Don’t miss a chance to become a member of Komodo’s progressive team!
Check out a list of responsibilities and requirements here!
Rumors
In The Future You Can Create Your Own Stablecoin With Just A Few Clicks Or Commands
Kadan Stadelmann doesn’t see a limit as to what can be done with blockchain and stablecoin technology. “If you are from the fintech sector, you could basically build up a derivative trading platform in a decentralized fashion,” he said. “Blockchain tech is melding with the traditional financial sector. Everything that we see, all these tools, all these financial products in the traditional financial markets can somehow be attached to the blockchain world.”
And stablecoins are helping to make blockchain mainstream, according to Stadelmann. “People now realize that this is money that we were talking about,” he said. “Most centralized exchanges didn’t have any fiat relation one to two years ago. When you’d log into an exchange, you just have all these crypto pairs. Someone who is not into this space, not into this stack, would just see ‘BTC-KMD’ pair or an ‘LTC-ETH’ pair. But, now we have these stablecoin pairs, and it gives people that weren’t in the space a feeling that this is real money. There are USD pairs now. It’s stuff that hasn’t been here before.”
Source: Forbes
Ecosystem
- Hush is an implementation of the Zcash protocol with custom additions, offering a high standard of privacy preserving confidentiality of transaction metadata.
- Hush Messenger and HushList are state of the art private communications leveraging zkSNARKS technology.
- Using dPoW (delayed Proof of Work), making blockchains much more secure and attack resistant at 51%.
- Hush is often one of the most profitable EquiHash coins to mine. Mining is possible with GPU and ASICs. For help, join us on the ‘Mining’ channel of our Discord or connect to a pool.
- Verus uses VerusHash 2.1, a new cryptographic hash algorithm allowing mining with x64 CPUs while equalizing GPUs and offering a credible ASIC solution.
- With provable 51% hash attack immunity, Verus’ 50% proof of work/50% proof of stake consensus algorithm provides unprecedented blockchain security.
- Verus leverages zk-SNARK zero-knowledge proofs in a modified Zcash Sapling fork for optional private addresses that are completely opaque to the outside world.
PirateChain (ARRR) is a 100% private send cryptocurrency. It uses a privacy protocol that cannot be compromised by other users activity on the network. Most privacy coins are riddled with holes created by optional privacy. PirateChain uses ZK-Snarks to shield 100% of the peer to peer transactions on the blockchain making for highly anonymous and private transactions.
KMDLabs finds its origins in the testing conducted on the PoS64 staking algorithm created by jl777 for staking on KMD assetchains.
This algorithm was tested and improved by jl777 and the members of this PoS64 test group. From these experiments the need for a state of the art, dedicated testing platform became very clear.
Testing expanded its scope and STAKED was born. STAKED furthered its experience with incentivized testing while developing and refining the STAKED software over various cluster networks through its seven iterations.
Pungo offers an open source blockchain wallet along with a whole set of modules & services attached to it which give users a complete blockchain experience.
Utrum is a decentralized platform providing reputation-based and quality-curated Crypto Reviews, Insights, and Market Predictions for cryptocurrency investors and newbies.
Utrum brings together the best of both traditional business and agile crypto models, forming a platform which operates as “Freemium.” It is a revolutionary approach in which the platforms shares revenue with the user community. Utrum’s $OOT is the utility token powering this community.
The Einsteinium Foundation’s mission is utilize blockchain technology to generate funds for scientific research.
There are two ways this is accomplished. The first is through a mining tax which creates a pool of funds providing grants to deserving applicants. The second is maintaining a currency which allows for a more transparent and trustful way to support causes. Einsteinium coin is designed to reduce waste and eradicate corruption where it is needed most: charity and politics.
The Einsteinium blockchain is secured by Komodo’s Delayed Proof-of-Work security service.
GameCredits (GAME) is a digital currency based on blockchain. Its purpose is to become a universal currency for 2.6 billion gamers worldwide, to empower both large and small game developers in order to further propel the 100 billion dollar gaming industry, and to accelerate the wide adoption of decentralized cryptocurrencies as a better alternative to government-issued fiats.
GameCredits is secured by Komodo’s Delayed Proof-of-Work security service.
Social media metrics
Social media activity:
The graph above shows the dynamics of changes in the number of Komodo Reddit subscribers, Twitter followers, and Facebook likes. The information is taken from Coingecko.com.
This is not financial advice.
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