Ok opening question, for an unacquainted audience, what is Komodo?

It is a decentralized project that has a unique approach to solving crypto’s problems. Security, privacy, scalability are the main ones, KMD does not aim to replace bitcoin but it uses bitcoin’s security just as it uses the privacy tech from zcash.

Right, do you mean through delayed proof of work mechanism?

We also have a DEX that I am pretty sure is the most used atomic swap DEX. Yes the security from the dPoW, it piggy backs onto bitcoin and “recycles” all that electricity used. Many people complain about it, but the way I see it, bitcoin will keep on hashing away no matter what people say. So if its there, might as well use it, the incremental footprint KMD creates over BTC is negligible electricity costs, but it gets to secure the entire ecosystem with it.

It’s an interesting feature, would you mind giving a brief overview of how it works?

OK. Most blockchains rely only on themselves which is fine if you are using up more electricity than england (or whatever country its up to now), but most coins have nowhere near that amount of hashrate and are actually quite vulnerable. What dPoW does is writes KMD blockhashes to the BTC blockchain really its quite a simple idea, just really expensive as we have to pay BTC txfees for the special transactions that do this we can't have just anybody writing the KMD hashes to the BTC chain, we as a community elect 64 notary nodes to be responsible to write the KMD hashes to the BTC chain. This allows all nodes to verify which chain is the notarized chain and what new blocks are invalid as they are trying to rewrite what has already been notarized kind of like a write protect switch being added to the blockchain.

Mechanically, does it slow down the confirmation time?

Not at all, the notarizations are not at the block level, it is just an ordinary transaction as far as the blockchain sees it, well until it notices it is a notarization. then it updates the latest notarized height. What all this does is create dynamic checkpoints with every notarization

So it seems the tradeoff for this security is a small fee that other blockchains don’t have to use, and increased centralization. How are the 64 notaries elected?

There are the BTC fees, but not sure how it centralizes things as the notarizations are not part of the block consensus directly. There is an annual stake weighted election and most notaries are known community members. The notaries don't have power to create anything that is invalid, they have power to withhold notarizations, but this is far from the powers that other systems like dPoS has.

What do you think the killer app of the komodo platform is going to be? It’s most famous for the decentralized exchange, but are there other areas you see becoming more important?

I think the ability to create runtime forks will help many create their own blockchain and of course the scaling solution that can handle nation state level transactions

Can you explain more about this scaling solution?

Komodo can now create a new blockchain at runtime and it can be configured to have 0% to 100% PoS in a PoW/PoS hybrid, can be only private z transactions, and many other customizations. The scaling solution first it needs to be noted that the komodo parallel chains all have dPoW built in, but instead of notarizing to BTC, they notarize to KMD. What we did is then add a bit of data to the notarization data, which initially was just the height and blockhash. now we also send back what we call the MoM, for merkle root of merkle roots. this allows Komodo to construct a customized MoMoM (merkle of merkle of merkle) for all chains in a cluster and that data is sent back to the notarizing process, so it too, is added. This all might seem a bit arcane, but what all these merkle roots allow is for any chain in a cluster to validate any transaction done by any other chain and if you have a burn protocol transaction, you can combine it all into a system where an arbitrary number of chains in a cluster can all create a constant overall supply of coins, with cryptographic proofs so you can (and we have!) setup 1024 chains and “connect” them into a single cluster, even as they are operating independently. Since these are otherwise independent chains, each one adds overall capacity linearly we expect we can reach 1 million crypto tx/sec with 4096 chains, so using what is basically bitcoin/zcash codebase with some clever MoMoM, we can create a scalable solution that uses time proven crypto.

This is getting quite complicated. So KMD piggybacks on BTC, and in the same way you’ve created a system that creates new coins that can piggyback on KMD?

Yes and believe it or not, it all runs from the same Komodo executable file.

So if you went ./komodod -ac_name=SKY -ac_supply=100000000 it creates a new blockchain called SKY which can have dPoW notarization to KMD activated if you added -ac_cc=nnn, then you can create a cluster of chains that can maintain a supply across all chains. The -ac_cc stands for CryptoConditions, which we also have incorporated into the codebase. There is also the insight explorer required additions that is part of the baseline komodod so there is no need for a custom daemon, and we are just getting some new rpc calls like snapshot, that allows to get a complete list of all address balances. this is important when doing airdrops, which many projects like to do

So to distill this for my viewers, the trick to creating a high volume of transactions per seconds is by using this fancy merkle tree contraption to create 1000 auxiliary blockchains that are then linked back through this piggyback method, which uses a minimal amount of PoW?

Yes, that’s pretty good!

Let’s move on to you. Now scheduling this interview we are doing text because you are pretty rigorous about protecting your anonymity. Why is anonymity important?

The fact that privacy is not assumed to be important anymore, well, that is one of the reasons why I have been working so hard. Privacy should be a right that people have just because they want it. Many best selling novelists don't use their real names.

I like that idea. Can I ask how long you’ve been involved in blockchain?

Why should someone that is successful have to disclose their personal details? That is dangerous in any world. I started end of November 2013, before that I had no idea about blockchain, but I was a pretty good C programmer.

What attracted you to the space in the first place?

As soon as I realized what bitcoin was, well, it was obvious that it was the next big thing, like the internet. just maybe bigger since it was money itself

What do you think the most important thing that bitcoin enables is? Or a better question, what do you think the most important application of blockchain tech is? currency? smart contracts? something else?

Money is certainly a pretty big thing, but so is property and the assetization of it. Actually there is a lot more property than money, but the velocity of money is a lot more than the velocity of property, and of course all the potential smart contracts, but I don't think we know what the really big and important ones will be yet. The internet globalized the world, it blurs the line between nations but most nations are still living in the past where there a walls keeping their people in and foreigners out. All these barriers between nations, very inefficient. Crypto allows money to be used in a way that matches the internet. It also creates a lot more accountability.

A freedom-enabling tool?

Yes.

I like the accountability point.

Time is money, right? But if money is something controlled by the govt, that means they control your time!

Well said.

That just seems wrong, doesn't it? It’s your life, why should some govt official who has no idea about anything that you do, dictate to you all these rules you must follow, or else.

I often wonder why people don’t ask these questions more often.

Most people, if their parents did that to them, probably wouldn't listen. It seems people are trained to conform from schools to company jobs. Always arbitrary rules that must be followed, or else. Like the big elephant who is restrained by a small rope, just due to conditioning.

Government is trying to control crypto by controlling exchanges, and one of the most prominent features of komodo is the decentralized exchange. Let’s talk about that?

Yes, being able to use your money for what you want to, seems an important right, which people are losing via all the regulations on exchanges.

Komodo is famous for having the most atomic swaps of any decentralized exchange, can you explain what this is?