Interview with Komodo team ($KMD)

Komodo is built on a federated multi-chain architecture which offers much more flexibility over the single shared blockchain model that most first generation “blockchain platforms” employ. One of the core tenants of Komodo’s philosophy is the belief that every project should have their own independent and dedicated blockchain, with the freedom to grow and adapt as they need with no limitations.

How would you describe the main pillars of the project?

• Security — Komodo’s delayed-proof-of-work (dPoW) takes snapshot “backups” of the entire KMD ecosystem every 10 minutes and inserts them into BTC. This serves as the foundation of our technology as it allows Komodo to extend bitcoin-level security to customized independent blockchains into our ecosystem. Compromising any single chain in our ecosystem requires overpowering the target chain, KMD network, and BTC network — all at the same time.
• Scalability — Every project launching on Komodo get’s their own independent and dedicated blockchain secured to bitcoin’s hashrate. As this chain isn’t being shared by 100–1000s of other dApps/projects, scalability and unpredictable performance becomes less of an immediate concern. When a single chain is no longer sufficient, every project can scale on demand by deploying a clone of their chain and linking those two chains into a cluster, which then acts as a single logical blockchain. You can continue to deploy additional chains to scale independently and linearly to meet the demands of your project. Komodo has successfully hit our 20K tps and 45Ktps milestones, with the final target of 1M tps being planned with AWS. It is important to note that 1M tps would not be a limit on what the KMD ecosystem can handle, but a limit we’re extending to the cluster and individual project level.
• Interoperability — Since Komodo is built on a multi-chain architecture, it was important that these chains had interoperability built-in at multiple levels. Phase 1 of interoperability has been driven by Komodo’s leadership in Atomic Swaps technology. Every Komodo chain has atomic swaps built-in — extending the ability to exchange value and data between KMD ecosystem chains to every bitcoin based protocol and ETH/ERC20 blockchain. Through Merkle proofs and our notary node network, every chain in our ecosystem is aware of all the transactions happening on every chain through a syncing process that follows the security process. This “federation” enables cross-chain fungibility, verifications, and smart contracts to become a reality. Future plans for blockchain bridging (UTXO/ETH already in development) are the third and last phase to our interop plan.
• Adaptability — In any emerging technology, the ability to adapt and be flexible is crucial to accelerating development. Every independent chain is highly customizable, allowing you to choose from consensus algo, mining configuration, cpu/gpu/asic optimized mining algos, rewards/staking, zk-snarks, permissions, and many more options. Every upgrade to the core KMD stack is also pushed to all chains in our ecosystem as free updates. Our federated multi-chain architecture not only allows you to scale on demand, but can also support application-specific chains, meaning you can have chains that are dedicated to payments, smart contracts, exchange, etc.

About the team and supporters, what are your strengths?

• Our founder and lead developer, James “jl777” Lee has a long history of innovation in the blockchain space. Being a gifted C programmer allows him to solve issues and create solutions through low-level code without introducing additional layers of complexity. He is also one of the most responsive lead devs in the industry, answering any and all questions.
• Our CTO, Kadan Stadelmann, is a white-hat hacker and security expert who has in the past led IT security projects for both the Tunisia and Austrian governments. Kadan’s background and expertise in blockchain allows us to drive a security-first strategy around all out technologies.
• Our core strength has and will continue to be anchored around technology leadership. Komodo is currently #1 in github commits across all cryptocurrency projects. Komodo has also consistently been in the top 10 for actual blockchain activity on blocktivity.info, which is actually understated as it doesn’t reflect all of the independent chains in our network. China’s Government’s (CCID) blockchain rankings have consistently had Komodo in the Top 15, although we feel they don’t truly understand the extent of our technologies.

Thinking about the future, do you have any roadmap with relevant upgrades or partnerships?

Sapling integration, Rebrand, Developer tools and portal, Komodo 2.0 + 3.0, 1Mtps scaling solution, AWS partnership, China and Korea targeted expansion, large proof-of-concept opportunities, and much more that I can discuss on a call under NDA.

What’s the added value of Komodo in comparison with other competitors ?

Vs. other “platforms” — We offer every project their own customized blockchain(s) which grants them the freedom and autonomy to take ownership of their blockchain infrastructure and business. Single shared architectures introduce a high level of uncertainty — from congestion, future technology support, gas costs, tx costs, and proprietary vendor lock-in.

Also with the recent addition of our embedded smart contracts, we’ve added gateways, oracles, and tokenization. This means Komodo is the only “platform” that allows our customers the ability to build their very own blockchain platform. As these chains are federated and interoperable, token to token exchanges do not require an additional dex layer (like 0x and Kyber for ERC20) and are treated as native on-chain atomic swaps without additional tx fees. Smart contracts on Komodo are also transaction vs balanced based like ETH. This means contract vulnerabilities can be shut down at the tx level and doesn’t expose the entire balance from being lost.

What are the use cases you are looking to cover?

We’ve only recently introduced our smart contract technology and logic framework. It was important for us to first finish the federated multi-chain architecture as it would serve as the foundation for the ecosystem. This would ensure that the framework would be future-proof and adaptable, removing the need for additional layer-2 solutions. Komodo’s approach to smart contracts is different in that we’ve embedded the logic and functionality into each chain and at the core daemon level. This follows a Serivce-Oriented-Architecture (SOA) approach in which we’ve built functionality into individual and modularized “services” that can be interfaced through an API layer and simplifies the process for developers to create their own custom contracts or logic. Our next focus is to start building reference architectures (blueprints) for use cases that can be leveraged by anyone in the ecosystem.

Short term:

• Security Tokens Platform
• Non-fungible Token Platform
• Stable Coins
• Oracles — integration and management of 3rd party data with smart contracts
• Atomic Swap DEX
• Multi-Coin wallet + cryptocurrency
• dICO platform

Long term:

• Permissioned options
• Enterprise options
• KMD sidechains for ERC20/BTC protocol based projects — get KMD features and functionality without having to fully migrate off current blockchain, which also offers a seamless migration plan to KMD.
• Supply Chain / Logistics
• Betting/Gambling
• Still finalizing prioritization on this. Nearly any use case can be addressed. As we gather requirements for diff use cases and verticals we build the logic functionality into the KMD codebase.

How are you aiming to provide scalability to your service?

Additional chains can be deployed and linked to enable independent and linear scaling on demand. Komodo also supports multiple payments (50–100) per transaction which means our 1M tps scaling solution will support up to 100M payments per second.

Evaluation of the current scenario for Komodo and the blockchain industry.

Prior to joining Komodo, there was no focus and budget allocated to marketing. We have been going through a complete transformation over the past year and the technology has matured to a point where we’re now in a position to be a true competitive player and thought leader in the industry. We’ve hired Ideas by Nature (makers of shapeshift) to lead our rebrand and UX/UI efforts (major KMD gap). The goal of the rebrand is not to just be a new logo or visual identity, but to re-introduce the evolution of the new Komodo. This will help educate the public that Komodo is not just a privacy coin/platform, or atomic swaps, but a whole new approach to blockchain platforms.

It is also important to note that Komodo ICOed in 2016 and raised a total of $1.9M. 90% of those funds were allocated for the sole usage of paying for the bitcoin level security of the ecosystem for the next 10 years. While you see a majority of projects investing millions into marketing and promotions, Komodo has invested it into the guaranteed security of our network. The bear market over the past year has also allowed us to quietly continue development progress and build on our proven track record.

Thanks for your time

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