The following is a summary of an AMA from our 'Meet the Candidates' Season 6 Notary Node Election event on Discord.
Check out our announcement post for more details about the Season 6 Notary Node Election timeline.
Above is the full AMA video from the Discord event. Below is a text summary of the answers.
What is dPoW, and how does dPoW work?
- A cross-chain notarization network that helps protect blockchains of any size from 51% attacks.
- Achieves security by writing the state of a participating blockchain onto the Komodo (KMD) blockchain, and then summarizes/records the hash to the Litecoin (LTC) blockchain.
- An attacker would have to disrupt Litecoin’s very high hash rate to carry out a 51% attack on any blockchain that uses dPoW.
Which wallets will be supporting VOTE2022?
The following wallets either currently support the VOTE2022 token or will support before the voting deadline.
Are Binance and the rest of CEX wallets excluded from the vote?
Individual users who have CEX wallets won’t receive the airdrop of VOTE2022 tokens. We assume that CEX operators have no interest or incentive to vote in the Notary Node Election. However, any votes which originate from a known CEX address will be excluded from the final vote tally.
Are there any crypto puzzles in some of the proposals?
Yes, look closely through the proposals of Decker and Dragonhound. We have hinted that they hid 150 KMD and 50 KMD in their proposals, respectively.
How do Notary tests mediate Komodo's DEX technology and a premium product that is scalable, and when will the next test take place?
There isn't much correlation between Notary Nodes and AtomicDEX. The main benefit is that Notary Nodes ensure that any coins that use dPoW won't have experience attacks that would result in chain reorgs. You can be confident that coins will have a high level of security. Of course, since AtomicDEX supports dozens of blockchain protocols, the vast majority of cryptocurrencies listed on AtomicDEX don't use dPoW.
We don’t have any plans for a public AtomicDEX Stress Test at the moment. Recently, we tested AtomicDEX on testnet in preparation for the launch of WebDEX. Our DEX technology can handle hundreds of trades per minute, which is more than enough to handle the current traffic. Plus, it’s easy to scale up the DEX network by adding more nodes if needed.
Is there a limited number of users who can participate in the Notary Node Testnet?
At the moment, only 16 people are using the Notary Node testnet. We don't currently have a known limit on the number of testnet participants. Anyone can try out the testnet. You don’t have to be a candidate in the Notary Node Election. Just send a DM with your testnet pubkey to #smkhound7640 on Discord.
What could be done to prevent the constant price fall of KMD?
We truly believe in the potential of AtomicDEX technology and its bright future. Once we reach the point of having a growing user base with liquidity we are certain that it will also bring more people into the Komodo community. Today we are preparing for this day and getting everything ready.
We are researching new KMD use cases with the goal to tie KMD more closely with our AtomicDEX tech stack. Currently, AtomicDEX taker orders that use KMD already receive a 10% trading fee discount. We also have an item on the roadmap about a ‘discounted KMD trading fee’ that is scheduled for Q3 2022. This would require American Call Option swaps that we’re currently researching. The idea is that the user would need to pay a fee in KMD to receive a substantial trading fee discount. For example, a user might be able to pay just $0.10 or $0.25 per trade (priced in fiat rather than crypto).
We're also researching new mechanisms that will help make KMD a deflationary asset.
Are there any additional changes to KMD (besides Notary Node keys) taking place during this year's update?
There will not be an update to block size, but some work has been done to reduce the likelihood of long waits between blocks which we detected a few times this year due to mining hash spikes and the way notary mining eligibility was determined.
As mentioned in the Komodo roadmap, we will be doing research on Zcash Zebra beginning in Q4 2022, which can later be implemented for a more Web3-ready KMD 2.0. We will follow up with more info about it later this year.
Can I mine KMD without being a Komodo Notary Node?
Yes, KMD is a Proof of Work chain using the Equihash algorithm. We have a dedicated channel for miners in our Discord and are available on numerous mining pools like Luckpool, Luxor, K1 & ProHashing.
The KMD Notary Nodes mine around 75% of the blocks as a reward for securing the network.
The block reward is 3 KMD, but sometimes there are “bonus blocks” due to unclaimed rewards. Last season one of the blocks was around 125,000 KMD!
What mechanism makes it possible for Komodo to have such low fees?
It’s related to consensus rules. Komodo doesn’t have gas fees like Ethereum. We have scalability solutions that Ethereum doesn’t use, which makes it possible to process more transactions as needed.
Can you share the project roadmap of the Komodo project? Also, what great plans do you have this coming second quarter of 2022?
AtomicDEX Roadmap: https://roadmap.atomicdex.io/
Komodo Roadmap: https://roadmap.komodoplatform.com/
When will WebDEX alpha v0.1 be released?
Nothing truly novel is built in a day. Atomic swaps have gone through various iterations in the past with InstaDEX, BarterDEX, and now AtomicDEX. All of these iterations have vastly improved atomic swap tech but are still less accessible to the end-user compared to web-based DEXs like Uniswap and PancakeSwap.
We should consider WebDEX as an entirely new product - one that levels the playing field for us to compete with the major DEXs. But even then, it will take time and consistency to build a sustainable user base.
That all being said, we look forward to our first closed group alpha release at the beginning of June. The main goal of the release will be to get feedback and find bugs with the help of our community.
Why is WebDEX exciting?
- Simple for anyone to use from a web browser, doesn't require downloading or installing an application
- Compatible with any device (mobile, desktop, tablet, and even IoT devices)
- Lots of new features are planned (hardware wallet support, HD wallet support, researching MetaMask integration, and more)
- Researching how to implement a swap routing protocol that uses other DeFi protocols to make atomic swaps cheaper