Komodo: A Detailed Guide
Originally published in the NOWNodes blog.

The Komodo platform, aimed at bringing new standards in cryptocurrency security and anonymity protocols, was founded in September 2016. Headquartered in San Gwann, Malta, the Komodo platform leverages the Zcash Zero-Knowledge proofs to help its users make 100% untraceable transactions. These transactions are protected by Bitcoin’s Petahash Proof of Work mechanism.

Komodo’s Unique Blockchain Platform

The blockchain platform offered by Komodo is open and composable. These fully composable solutions, built on multi-chain designs. It proves beneficial for solo developers, growing startups, and comparatively larger enterprises alike. These entities can leverage this aspect of composability to create a customized blockchain that is capable of hosting applications, software, and any other type of blockchain-based solution.

The composability of Komodo’s blockchain provides a wide variety of components that can be activated as and when needed and can be used in different combinations and configurations so that they can meet the specific needs of a specific use case.

Although launched in 2016, the development of the platform started further back in 2014. The initial development process took its cue from the tested technology paradigms of Bitcoin and ZCash. In offering customization facilities relating to the blockchain, Komodo enables projects to build a fully customizable and independent Antara smart chain that remains connected to the multi-chain ecosystem of Komodo through platform synchronizations. The smart chain is protected with bitcoin level security. Antara equips Komodo with the provisions of offering a toolkit for blockchain. The different development tools within this kit enable the users to build on advanced business logic. This facility is complemented by Komodo’s on-chain native app support.

The multi-chain design of Komodo allows many sovereign smart chain projects to co-exist in the same ecosystem with each one having its own consensus, network, and coin. However, these independent chains are capable of doing cross-chain transfers of value and logic leveraging Komodo Core’s Platform Synchronization technology.

The Antara smart chains keep on updating themselves with the progress of time and technology. All these smart chains are future proof and the users of these smart chains keep receiving free updates as and when they are released. New features are also added to the base Komodo technology stack on frequent intervals keeping the technology dynamic.

Developers, start-ups, and enterprises who build their own independent smart chain to meet their needs are free to scale up when they feel. The Antara smart chain allows them to scale on demand by bringing together multiple smart chains under the ambit of one logical chain. Not only expansion in the number of chains, but Antara smart chain technology also enables scaling up in terms of functionalities of the chain. One can introduce several new features and options to their chain, including oracles, tokens, trustless price feeds, stablecoins, etc.

Apart from enabling projects to create custom, independent smart chains, Komodo also helps businesses and individual users with a bunch of necessary white-label products, including multi-coin wallets, atomic swap DEX, custom block explorers, and hosted infrastructure solutions.

In the next segments, we will have a detailed look into these offerings of Komodo.

Atomic Swap DEX and Multi-Currency Wallet

The AtomicDEX offered by Komodo combines a highly secure wallet with a non-custodial decentralized exchange. Users can leverage this combine to store their holdings and trade on a peer-to-peer basis without having to give up control over their funds.

The multi-currency wallet helps frequent crypto users to get rid of a host of different wallets required to hold each different type of coins. One can conveniently store their BTC, ETH, and a dozen more types of coins in the test version of the wallet in a secure and non-custodial way. Although the current Beta release of the wallet allows a dozen types, the final launch will have the capacity to store more than hundreds of different types of crypto coins.

On the other hand, the biggest facility provided by the Atomic Swap DEX is that it lets the users trade any coin without having to go through an exchange first. Since one does not have to go through an exchange to trade, there is no giving up of control over their funds. Atomic Swap DEX is known as the industry’s most advanced, mobile-first atomic swap protocol so far.

The Benefits of Komodo’s Atomic Swap DEX

The next-generation decentralized exchange or DEX technology introduced by Komodo addresses a lot of legacy issues when it comes to the trading of digital assets.

Although the blockchain technology is pivoted on decentralization, the trading in the blockchain is still largely dependent on the centralized exchange services. But, these CEX services have their limitations and disadvantages.

Centralized exchanges suffer from a lack of security. According to estimates, in 2018 alone, all centralized exchanges combined lost digital assets worth US$1 billion to hackers and cyber attackers. It becomes a matter of grave concern for the users as they need to give up the control of their funds before going to trade through centralized exchanges.

Trading through centralized exchanges proves costlier than average. Not only the user has to pay 0.33% trading fees applied on the value of the trade, but one also needs to pay fees for withdrawal and regaining one’s control over his or her funds.

Centralized exchanges also fail to provide a good range of trading pairs. Most of the CEX services have one or two trading pairs for most of the coins and tokens.

The AtomicDEX offered by Komodo takes care of each of these problems. It offers the highest standard of security protocol to its users who, under any condition, do not have to give up control over their funds by sharing their private key with the exchange. The Komodo DEX services also offer a bouquet of unrestricted trading pairs to its users where any asset is eligible for direct swapping. The fees are also much less on the DEX as compared to any centralized exchange services. In the AtomicSwapDEX, while the market makers do not need to pay any fees, the takers need to pay only 0.15%

Komodo: Tokenomics

The native token of Komodo is the KMD token. The total supply of the KMD token is fixed at an upper limit of 200 million tokens. Out of these 200 million, 100 million were pre-mined and were distributed through an ICO or Initial Coin Offering. Of these 100 million Komodo tokens that went into ICO, 90% were available for the investors who participated in the ICO. The rest of the 10% was set aside for the future development of the platform. Apart from the 100 million KMD tokens, the other 100 million are decomposed by Komodo through its proof-of-work consensus mechanism.

Komodo users with more than 10 KMD tokens held in a single address are eligible for a 5% reward.

To give an idea about the trading potential of Komodo, its price reached an all-time high of USD 12.23 on December 22, 2017, trading at a volume of more than USD 1.2 billion.

Latest Komodo Updates

Komodo platform completed its first successful stress test on 31st October 2020. During this stress test, a total of 2000 traders attempted performing swaps through the AtomicDEX. The test enriched Komodo developers with a host of valuable data for them to test the veracity of Market Maker 2, Komodo’s highly-sophisticated order-matching technology, based in Libtorrent.

This update to Market Maker 2 will make Komodo far more useful than its previous versions. It enables the DEX with the whole package of free battle-tested servers for DHT bootstrap and a significantly large network of DHT peers. It’s also helpful in correcting and upgrading the network address translations and anomalies relating to routing. The use of Libtorrent in Market Maker 2 makes the AtomicDEX eligible to operate while switching IPs. It becomes particularly useful when the user is mobile and might be using different Wi-Fi routers, cellular towers, etc.

As a provider of the next generation of DEX technology, the Komodo platform has established itself as a major driving force in the evolution of blockchain technology. With a strong foundation, comprised of the Antara framework, delayed proof of work mechanism, atomic swaps, and platform synchronization features, Komodo is expected to continue its run as an innovation and thought leader in the world of blockchain in the days to come.

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['Technology', 'Atomic Dex', 'Komodo', 'Blockchain', 'Cryptocurrency']