GameCredits, a proof-of-work cryptocurrency project that has previously suffered a 51% attack has announced their plan to combat the threat. The group will be leveraging the Komodo blockchain through use of a cross blockchain notary system that causes the two chains to become interlinked and able to verify each other in the event of an attack.

Komodo and GameCredits

GameCredits is a project that aims to “revolutionize the gaming industry” by creating what it calls a universal gaming currency. The company wants to create a standardized cryptocurrency to be used across various gaming platforms. It’s native coin, called GAME, is currently trading for just over a dollar each and holds a market cap of $70 million, giving it a rank of 165 on coinmarketcap.com.

Read our Complete Guide to GameCredits

The project is seen a large increase in value since it launched going from less than one cent each to an all-time high of more than six dollars to today’s current one dollar.

Komodo on the other hand is an entirely different type of project. The Komodo platform is a blockchain services company that can assist projects in running various types of ICOs, and provide security features. The platform also operates its own decentralized exchange that is based on atomic swaps and offers a very low counter party risk. They also offer an anonymity service that is connected to their decentralized exchange, BarterDEX.

The native currency of the platform, Komodo coin, is interesting because it claims to offer a 5% approximate annual percentage rate that is paid out to all holders of 10 coins or more in the Komodo wallet. This is comparable to a number of other proof-of-stake coins like PIVX.

Currently Komodo coins are trading for just over $2.50 after falling from an all-time high of just under $13. The currency has a total market cap of $265 million and is ranked number 61 on coinmarketcap.com.

The Komodo Solution to 51% Attacks

As we talked about in our article on the subject, a 51% attack occurs when, in simple terms, an attacker overwhelms a network temporarily with hash power and is able to create a longer chain than the primary chain. This allows them to either falsify transactions, perform a double spend, or in the case of Verge and its time warp attack, mine an incredible amount of coins due to tricking the system itself.

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The solution that GameCredits is employing makes use of a security offering by Komodo wherein every so often, blockchain data on the GameCredits chain is copied over to the Komodo chain as a kind of notarization or backup. In the event of another attack, the chain can be restored via backed up data gathered off of the Komodo chain copy.

Another way to think of this is to compare it to an automatic data backup system, such as iCloud or Carbonite. As the files on your computer change with use, the off-site backup automatically updates the copy every so often. If the files are lost or deleted, then they can be recovered from the backup.

Here is how the process is described by GameCredits: “At a certain interval of blocks, these notaries get the hash of a block and write it into the Komodo chain. They also note down which Komodo block has the notarization within the GameCredits chain.” With this upgrade, they hope Komodo can help “keep our POW chain secure and scalable for years to come”.

Growth Area for Komodo?

According to the official GameCredits blog post, GameCredits is the first company to employ this feature from the Komodo platform. As the number of 51% attacks increases, other, smaller proof-of-work coins could find a great advantage in using a service like this to maintain a secondary backup of their chains.

Further, according to the Komodo website, these sorts of services are paid for exclusively with the Komodo coin. If other projects start to take up this kind of security service, then it’s conceivable to guess that demand for Komodo coins would also increase proportionally.