Things move fast at Komodo Platform. That’s why the Komodo team has decided to release a weekly briefing to cover all of the progress the Dev Team is making.
This series of posts is called the Tech Tuesday Updates.
In case you’ve missed a previous edition and want to catch up, you can find all the previous Tech Tuesday updates here.
Interested in Game dApps development? Komodo's ecosystem has many GUI requirements, two exciting ones are - blockchain poker (CHIPS) and blockchain rogue-like game (ROGUE)
Bear Market Blockchain Innovations - Part 2
Although many of the blockchain innovations by Komodo have come from the open-standards-based Custom Consensus framework, which implements a Turing-complete smart UTXO model, it is far from Komodo's only source of innovation. The ongoing list of open source innovation continues on through the bear market of 2018 and 2019. Here is a short list of innovation:
- History of blockchain innovation
- History of atomic interoperability
- Multi-coin open source DEX integration
- Multi-coin open source wallet integration
- Time based multi blockchain hard fork (more info on ecosystem sapling upgrade)
Further to the bullish future we believe in Komodo's innovation, in Tech Tuesday update 10 (week 46 2018) we posted a bounty and full time work for a blockchain 2FA solution using the Custom Consensus framework.
dPoW Blockchain Security for Exchanges and Any Coin for Double Spend Attack Solutions
Throughout Q3 2018, the dPoW blockchain security service began deployment for projects beyond the Komodo ecosystem. There are currently 45 blockchains using dPoW, plus several external third-party projects using Komodo's blockchain security service. These projects are all secured against double spending attacks through Komodo notarization transactions and then pushed into the Bitcoin network. Komodo offers the notary nodes privileged mining rewards of 75% for the service of observing the blockhash performed by network consensus of blockchains that are part of the security alliance. The blockhash collectively observed is then written by a multi-signature transaction to the Komodo & Bitcoin networks.
On February 1 in 2019, Chinese exchange Coinbene and Komodo announced a strategic partnership. As a cryptocurrency exchange, they endorse the dPoW blockchain security service. Further strategy involves atomic swap DEX integration discovery. Komodo is in the final stages of private testing of mobile DEX technology, our v3 of atomic swap DEX with peer to peer orderbooks.
Like in the telecommunications industry where there are a handful of big players, the modern day centralized exchanges will be happy with 0.5% of volume in the future of digital currencies. With increased volume, the convenience of a secure CEX platform able to provide services related to this 0.5% volume in reciprocal services through hybrid full custodian solutions. It's a little bit like selling recharge cards for your pre-paid mobile phones in partner locations - but for the service of liquidity in a digital economy - on a daily basis.
Importance of Custom Blockchain Routing for Validation and Network Consensus
In Tech Tuesday #7 (week 43 2018) I was able to explain what Komodo's Custom Consensus framework was after many weeks of learning about this new technology from its creator.
- OP_CHECKCRYPTOCONDITION is the traffic cop at the bitcoin script level, indicating to go to a Custom Consensus module's logic address
- At a Custom Consensus module's logic, lookup the identifier of that CC module
- Execute the code for that CC module
Every node on the network does this. In web developer terms, this is like url routing in react or vuejs. Currently only C++ is supported, but the Custom Consensus framework is multi algorithmic, multi language. It is an encoding format - understand the format, you're in. At the specification doc level, it is similar to SNMP MIBs for network monitoring. Network monitoring is everywhere - this is the future of the Custom Consensus framework. SNMP MIBs are described in a notation called ASN.1 - this is the same notation used by medical instruments to exchange data. It is a data interchange format.
Komodo's implementation follows the standard spec (as developed by IETF) and makes some enhancements to allow the Custom Consensus framework to have access to other blockchain modules. In Komodo, this includes the bitcore optimizations that allow for blockchain explorers to be incredibly fast in their responses. Komodo's Custom Consensus framework has this capability because it's now part of a blockchain daemon. No other blockchain technology has this open standards data interchange format for transferring value to this extent. Not Ripple nor Interledger.
The magic in Komodo's Custom Consensus framework is simply that any programming can become consensus code. If you have a software abstraction for a faucet object, this has been coded and turned into the faucet CC module. Tokenization of assets and an on-chain token DEX - this new set of objects is now the asset CC module. Cryptocurrency heir - similar mechanism coded into objects - these objects are now referenced by an identifier in the look up of a UTXO's eval code and this code executed as part of network consensus.
Dynamic loading of consensus has also been incorporated into 2019's bear market blockchain innovations and is used by the second blockchain game based on the rogue-like genre. The same core daemon can be restarted by a developer with a different consensus scheme. This accelerates testing. This is not the only benefit. A CC module development cycle can be anywhere between a few days to one month. This is a 100x improvement for blockchain developer efficiency as proven by MuSig & dilithium signature scheme inclusions as consensus code. All Custom Consensus transactions are backwards compatible with existing software infrastructure - wallets, explorers and miners.
Fixing Proof of Stake's Problems - Nothing @ Stake / Weak Subjectivity and Providing Tools for Developers to Secure Their Projects In Early Phases
One of Komodo's advisors is Mike Toutonghi. Mike created a friendly fork of Komodo with the Verus Coin project. Verus' goals are to provide a decentralized public blockchain as a service. Mike earned the role of a technical advisor to Komodo because of his genius and a career that spans from the architect of Microsoft's .net framework as VP of engineering to the CTO of parallels - a virtualization and automation company. Mike took what Komodo had, and fixed a problem that other blockchain platforms and world computer experiments have not.
Nothing @ Stake and Weak subjectivity were covered in October 2018 with Tech Tuesday 5 (week 41). Further tools to help new projects secure their PoS chains were created by our dev & test teams, led by Alright with his PoS splitter python scripts written about in Tech Tuesday 9 (week 45).
More innovations from the Verus Coin project have been merged into Komodo - which will be highlighted in the next section.
KMDLABS discord channel (#kmdlabs) is dedicated to testing innovations, upgrades, new features and is a great way to get the necessary skills and knowledge for being a competent Notary Node operator.