Source: DexStats

Komodo Micro Bounty Campaign

Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday Komodo will share a Google form/Gleam campaign through their social media channels and you will have 24h time to participate and complete the tasks. After 24h the team will analyze the results and draw the winner and announce through the social media channels.

The prize will depend on the difficulty of the quiz.

For questions that are easy to solve, you can win 7.77 KMD. For questions with a medium difficulty level, you can win 20 KMD. For tricky questions, you can win 30 KMD.

They will announce the difficulty level and the prize at the time of the announcement of the lucky winner.

The team are going to improve the Micro Bounty Campaign with different prizes and their creative ideas.

Join the discussion on the Community Portal and bring forth your own ideas and suggestions.

With this campaign, they want to increase awareness and highlight Komodo’s unique features playfully.

The Fourth Annual Notary Node Election will begin on April 13, 2020. Everyone who wants to run in the election must submit a proposal to announce their candidacy by 12:00 UTC on April 12.

The Notary Nodes who will be automatically re-elected for outstanding performance will be announced on April 12. Then, on April 13, the Komodo team will airdrop VOTE tokens to all KMD holders 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(es) of their preferred candidate(s). The voting period will last until May 4, 2020. The newly-elected Notary Node Operators will be announced on May 11.

There are a total of 64 nodes in Komodo’s Notary Node network. There are four Notary Node regions: Europe (EU), Asia-Russia (AR), North America (NA), and the Southern Hemisphere (SH). Each region contains at least 13 notary nodes, boosting the physical distribution and security of Komodo’s Notary Node network. In 2020, each region will have an even 15 Notary Nodes.

Important dates for Season 4:

KMD snapshot: April 12th, 2020

Autoelection announcement: April 12th — cutoff time: April 12th 2020, 12pm UTC

Proposal deadline: April 13th 2020, 12pm UTC

Vote2020 airdrop: April 13th 2020, 12pm UTC

Season 4 Election start: April 13th 2020, 12pm UTC

Season 4 Election end: May 4th 2020, 12pm UTC

Public Komodo update announcement: May 11th, 2020

dPoW season 4 start: June 14th, 2020

Komodo Core and AC hardfork activation:

Komodo core hardfork activation: KMD block 1.903.000 (Sunday, May 31st, 2020)

SmartChain hardfork activation: Timestamp 1590926400 (Sunday, May 31st, 2020 12:00:00 PM UTC)

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 the NN spot gets 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.

Candidates may choose to run for one seat in one of the four regions. That means that, at the most, any individual candidate can seek 1 Notary Node position in their first election participation.

If that candidate proves his reliability and ability to operate a NN by making it to the top 3 rankings for his region at the end of the season, he is able to apply for up to two additional NN spots in different regions for the next elections. Three is the maximum number of spots that any one candidate is permitted to seek.

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.

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 will be airdropped to KMD holders at a 1:1 ratio. If you have 1000 KMD, you will receive 1000 voting tokens. The current supply of KMD is around 120 Million, so roughly 120 Million voting tokens will be airdropped to the Komodo community.

It’s important to note that you must hold your private keys in order to receive these tokens. If you hold your KMD on a centralized exchange, then you do not hold your private keys and you will not receive any 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 voting tokens. Once you’ve received them, 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 voting tokens is strictly prohibited. Anyone caught buying or selling them will be disqualified from participating in the election. Apart from that, community members may vote for any candidates in any region.

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 technical 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

The hardware requirements for the 3P NN server are as follows:

OS: Ubuntu 18.x or Debian 10.x is recommended.

CPU: A High-Performance CPU (e.g. Xeon, i7/i9, Ryzen, EPYC, etc.)

RAM: 32 GB or more

Disk: 500 GB SSD or greater

Bandwidth: 100 Mbps 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 voting 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.

For more information about running in the election, please see this guide to setting up a Notary Node. This guide will explain how to setup your Main Server, then go through the process of setting up the 3rd Party Server separately. After that there are instructions on how to create your Notary Node pubkeys, import them to your servers and then, create a basic start script for each server. Having a second server (or VM) is now a requirement for Komodo Notary Nodes. There are ways to have a single server and then creating separate virtual machines on it, instead of having two separate servers. This guide won’t touch on how to do that. Join the #notarynode channel on the Komodo Discord Server if you face any problems.

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.

To find out more information about Cross-Chain Notarizations, the Limitations Of Notary Node Capabilities, please, read the article on Komodo website and go to Komodo Github.

Atomic Swap Technology: Towards Friction-Less Trading

Atomic swaps are trustless peer-to-peer exchanges of digital assets from one user to the other, without any middleman or intermediary. Atomic swap trading is magnitudes more secure than trading crypto on a centralized exchange, as users never need to give up control over their assets.

Direct Value Exchange

Komodo’s AtomicDEX application allows peer-to-peer atomic swaps, making trading easier and more accessible than ever.

Non-Custodial Trading: Traders always control their private keys and their funds while making trades.

Mobile Ready: AtomicDEX is available for both Android and iOS, enabling mobile P2P swaps.

Unrestricted Trading Pairs: Direct trading pairs exist between any two assets listed on AtomicDEX.

Minimal Fees: The trader who takes an offer pays 0.13% of the trade’s value. Makers pay no fees.

Instant Order Matching: When two traders agree upon a trade, the orders are matched instantaneously.

No Deposits & Withdrawals: Trading occurs within the wallet. No need to make deposits or withdrawals.

Asset Agnostic: Komodo’s AtomicDEX framework supports over 99% of all coins and tokens.

An Open, Industry-Wide Atomic Swap Framework

Komodo’s AtomicDEX framework is available to all existing blockchain projects, digital asset exchanges, wallet providers, and new blockchain startups.

Liquidity Multipliers: Liquidity providers can place several orders with the same funds, multiplying liquidity.

Free integration: the vision is to support all coins and tokens

Shared Liquidity Pool: All projects that adopt AtomicDEX share liquidity, promoting the network effect and encouraging adoption.

Open API: Any existing exchange, wallet provider, or blockchain project can integrate for free.

An Open Standards Effort: AtomicDEX is an open standards effort to promote mass adoption of blockchain technology.

AtomicDEX Objectives & Roadmap 2020

Launch Reference Applications: Launch release candidate for mobile and beta versions of Desktop and WASM web applications.

Full Production API Rollout: Planned release following mobile release candidate, which will enable 3rd party integrations and custom soluions.

New Features and Integrations: UX/UI overhaul, gift card off-ramp, fiat gateways, instance exchange support, shielded transactions, + more

Learn more from Komodo Roadmap 2020 further in the article

Reference Applications

Atomic swap technology is used to build a new reference product where a secure wallet and non-custodial decentralized exchange are rolled into one application. You maintain control over your privatekeys at all times.

With the beta software you can start making atomic swaps today.

AtomicDEX Mobile

Available for Android and iOS. Get it today and make your first swap! Note that the application is in beta and should be considered as experimental technology.

Status: Beta release publicly available.

Learn More: Learn more on atomicdex.io

AtomicDEX Browser

AtomicDEX running in a browser. It is a standalone WASM web app without external dependencies.

Status: Ongoing Development and Testing

AtomicDEX OTC

A special version of AtomicDEX mobile with pubkey whitelisting feature to enable OTC swaps. API refactoring is a prerequisite.

Status: PoC Development and Testing to begin in April

Development Team

Kadan Stadelmann — Chief Technology Officer

James Lee — Core Developer, Founder

Artem Pikulin — Senior Software Developer

Artem Grinblat — Senior Software Developer & DEX Engineer

Yuri Khiznichenko — Full Stack Developer & Frontend Engineer

Mateus Rodrigues Costa — Full Stack Developer & Frontend Expert

Tolga Ay (Naezith) — Developer & Blockchain Architect

Roman Sztergbaum — Software Developer & Blockchain Architect

Resources

source

Delayed Proof of Work

Komodo’s delayed Proof of Work (dPoW) security is a secondary consensus mechanism that recycles the giant hash rate of the Bitcoin network through a series of cross-chain notarizations.

A Second-Layer Consensus Mechanism

Delayed Proof of Work (dPoW) does not act as a blockchain’s primary consensus mechanism. Every dPoW-protected blockchain’s decentralized network still validates each transaction.

Cross-Chain Notarizations

dPoW security protects every integrated blockchain with the power of the Bitcoin network. A series of cross-chain notarizations make leveraging Bitcoin’s hash rate possible.

These cross-chain notarizations are carried out by Komodo’s Notary Node network. Notary Nodes are dedicated servers that perform notarization transactions for the Komodo ecosystem.

dPoW is a second-layer mechanism that provides an extremely high level of security in addition to a blockchain’s normal consensus rules. It is available to both PoW and PoS blockchains.

dPoW Security in 7 Steps