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Today marks the fourth anniversary of Komodo Lead Dev jl777's Declaration of Independence. If you've never read it before, take a minute to read it for yourself! 

This week's update will include more information about jl777's declaration as well as some important date changes to the upcoming Notary Node Election. Read below to get all the details!

Four years ago, on February 21, 2016, James ‘jl777’ Lee published the Blockchain Declaration of Independence. The ideas James expressed in this open letter were far ahead of their time and eventually served as the foundational concept upon which the Komodo Platform was born.

Today, the Komodo Team would like to reflect on all of the growth and development that Komodo has accomplished. It’s been four years of non-stop innovation and, every now and then, it’s helpful to take a step back and appreciate the amount of progress that’s been made. 

To learn more about Komodo's history and all the development that's taken place since the project began in the fall of 2016, check out this longform blog post.

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There have been a few minor date changes to the upcoming Notary Node Election. The new dates are as follows:

• March 15 - At 12pm UTC, the notarization stats will be collected and the 30 top-performing nodes will be automatically re-elected.
• March 16 - The deadline for those running in this year's election to announce their candidacy. Candidates must submit a proposal to this GitHub repo.
• March 16 - The Komodo team will airdrop VOTE tokens to all KMD holders. The voting will begin as soon as the community receives the VOTE tokens.
• April 6 - Voting will come to an end.
• April 13 - The Komodo team will make an official announcement to declare the winners and welcome the new operators to the Notary Node network.
• May 31 - An update will be activated and Notary Node Season 4 will officially begin.

If you'd like to learn more, read this blog post on Komodo's Fourth Annual Notary Node Election.

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Meet @Torsten Sándor , a technical marketing manager at Komodo since early 2019, as part of the Komodo Team Introductions here on the Community Portal. You can read Torsten's full intro here and you can also check out this whiteboard video Torsten made to explain the difference between single-chain platforms like Ethereum and multi-chain platforms like Komodo.

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About one month ago, the Cardano project published a white paper describing a method for developing smart contracts on UTXO-based blockhains. The solution is strikingly similar to the UTXO-based smart contract solution that Komodo implemented in the fall of 2018. You can read the original write up about Komodo's solution here.

This week, @Bryan Beus explored Cardano's solution and wrote a post comparing and contrasting it with Komodo's UTXO smart contract solution. Read Bryan's post for more information.

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The Komodo team would like to say congrats to congratulations to Prof. @B. Gültekin Çetiner on opening a new office space at the İstanbul Technopark in Turkey. Prof Çetiner will be helping businesses create end-to-end blockchain solutions using Komodo’s technology. 

Find out more on Prof. Çetiner's Twitter feed.

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The Komodo team would also like to congratulate the RedFOX Labs team for launching the initial alpha test of the KOGS project. KOGS is a non-fungible token game and "the first mobile blockchain game with the ENTIRE backend being programmed on the blockchain." KOGS is built with Komodo technology.

Learn more about KOGS and sign up for future rounds of testing here.

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That's a wrap for this week. Thanks for reading and enjoy your weekend!

Currently a double or nothing betting app is being tested in the #dev-betdapp channel of our Discord server. It uses the DEXP2P messaging layer for communication between nodes. This program communicates with the Komodo daemon through RPC methods to use both the messaging layer that is the plain p2p connections between nodes and also the blockchain layer for Payments.

It serves as a demontration of the capabilities the DEXP2P layer opens up for all Komodo Smart Chains.

Initial testing guide is available at https://docs.komodoplatform.com/basic-docs/smart-chains/smart-chain-tutorials/betdapp.html  

Note that it is still in development and undergoing rapid changes. Ask in the #dev-betdapp channel when in doubt.

Payments using the Channels Antara Module is being tested right now.

We want to thank everyone who participated in the Komodo Community Portal Launch bounty campaign. We had over 500 participants and 9400 entries, with an average of 18.8 lottery tickets per participant!

We value the opinions of our community, and we received a lot of content and helpful feedback. The Community Portal will be much improved as a result of user contributions, which means newcomers will feel comfortable right off the bat. After compiling all of the submissions, here are the winners of the 50 KMD prizes from the bounty campaign.
 

Winner of the 777 KMD Grand Prize

- Risnawati
 

Congratulations to everyone who has earned a bounty! We will reach out to you directly via an email to request your KMD address. Reply to the message with your KMD address, and we will send you the KMD. The payments will be made in batches. Every Sunday, we will send the KMD to the addresses we have received from your email address.

Thanks again for all the support. Stay tuned for our next bounty campaign, which is coming soon! 

IMPORTANT

You have one month to claim your reward. Rewards that are not claimed within one month will be added for the next month’s community awards.

Transparency Notice:

The winners were drawn by Gleam.io. Gleam automatically uses Random.org to draw winners. For more information, please read their documentation. https://gleam.io/docs/competitions/drawing-winners

The Prices Module Offers User-backed Assets for Trading

Recently, the Komodo team added the Antara Prices Module to the Komodo product offerings.

The Prices Module specifically addresses the need for a blockchain-based leveraged betting service.

The leveraged-betting service is the foundation for having a fiat-paired stable coin on a Smart Chain.

When does a User Use the Prices Module

Assume that a user believes that the value of one currency, such as AAA coin, is going to increase relative to another currency, BBB coin.

The user needs a way to send BBB to a betting "House" and receive in return an asset that is tied "one-to-one" with the value of AAA.

When (and if) the price of AAA increases relative to BBB, the user makes a profit. 

Of course, if the price of AAA decreases relative to BBB, the user takes a loss.

A Brief Summary of How the Technology Works

In this technology, the "House," that is, the issuer and manager of the bets, is the Prices Module itself. 

In the example above, a user sends their BBB to a BBB address that is controlled by Komodo's Antara Module technology (this part of the technology coordinates with an Antara Gateways Module).

The Prices Module then issues to the user an equivalent amount of a currency that is one-to-one tied to the market value of AAA.

As the prices between AAA and BBB fluctuate, the Prices Module manages the user's account. 

If the value of the user's BBB account increases relative to AAA, the user can withdraw more AAA from the Prices Module.

On the other hand, if the value of BBB decreases relative to AAA, the Prices Module allows other users on the network to liquidate the user's BBB holdings. (The user still keeps the AAA coins they withdrew.)

This allows users on a network to work together to maintain one-to-one coin pairings in a leveraged betting environment.

This Technology Allows for Stable Coins in the Komodo Ecosystem

In the example above, the AAA coin could be a USD-equivalent coin, called USDK.

While many users would be betting together to maintain the BBB and USDK coins, from a trading perspective, other users on the network could simply use USDK coins for common economic purposes.

For example, the user that placed BBB coin and received USDK could spend some of these funds to a business that operates on the Smart Chain, and desires to maintain its business using more familiar and stable pricing models. 

This creates a currency flow on the Smart Chain, as the USDK is now transferring hands between non-gambling users.

Full Documentation Available Here

For more information, check out the full documentation below. 

There are more detailed explanations about Leveraged Trading and the specific technology behind the Prices Module. 

Have any questions? Leave them below and I am happy to answer.

http://developers.komodoplatform.com/basic-docs/antara/antara-api/prices.html#introduction

On Sunday, Feb 16, at 18:00 UTC, several members of the Komodo Dev Team held a livestream for developers that covered updates on the AtomicDEX end-user products. The stream will discuss the general architecture and design of AtomicDEX, the incredible level of security it offers, and the progress that's being made on the Desktop GUI. The stream will feature three devs: 

- Kadan Stadelmann (@ca333 ) - CTO
- Tolga Ay (@Tolga Ay ) - GUI Project Lead and Software Developer
- Roman Sztergbaum (@Roman Sztergbaum ) - Software Developer

As an added bonus, the livestream will include a cryptopuzzle. If you're the first to spot it and solve it, you'll win free KMD!

It was another big week for Komodo! Forbes published a full-length piece covering Komodo's upcoming DeFi solutions, the marketing team did an AMA with a Binance China Telegram group with over 58K members, and an old team member rejoined our ranks. 

Read the update below to get all the details.

This week, Justin O'Connel, a contributor at Forbes, published a feature article on the DeFi solutions that will be coming to Komodo's Antara Framework later this year. Komodo CTO Kadan Stadelmann did an interview with Justin and provided valuable insights on this upcoming stablecoin technology.

“Anyone can spin up and use a smart chain and stablecoin,” said Stadelmann, who has specialized in programming language C++  and today is a proponent of Rust, a programming language created by Mozilla. The process behind creating your own stablecoin on a Komodo smart chain will be blockchain-based and decentralized. 

“There is full transparency,” said Stadelmann. “The biggest problem with [certain] stablecoins is the lack of transparency. We believe that our technology, and the way that we implemented the stablecoin module, provides 100% transparency.” 

Read the full article on Forbes.

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In addition to the Forbes article, Komodo published a detailed post covering the mechanics of the new Antara modules. The article, written by @Bryan Beus ,  does an excellent job of explaining how the technology works and the economic model it relies upon. 

Read Bryan's post on Komodo's decentralized stablecoin solution here.

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This Sunday, Feb 16 at 18:00 UTC, several members of the Komodo Dev Team will be holding a livestream for developers that covers updates on the AtomicDEX enduser products. The stream will discuss the general architecture and design of AtomicDEX, the incredible level of security it offers, and the progress that's being made on the Desktop GUI. 

Read Kadan's post for more information on the developer hangout.

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Komodo's Fourth Annual Notary Node Election begins soon! While voting doesn't begin until March 15, everyone who wishes to run in the election must announce their candidacy by February 28. 

If you're interested in running for a position as Notary Node Operator, you must submit a proposal to this GitHub repo by Feb 28. At a minimum, you must state which region you are running in and post the KMD address where you'd like to collect your VOTE tokens. Of course, it's best to include more information, like your motivations for running and how you plan to contribute to the Komodo ecosystem if elected.

Learn more about becoming a Notary Node operator here.

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The Komodo Marketing team participated in an AMA with the Chinese Binance community. The Binance China Telegram group has over 58,000 members. The community submitted nearly 200 great questions prior to the AMA and dozens more during the AMA itself. 

In case you missed it, you can read Audo's recap of the AMA .

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Today, Komodo distributed 3000 KMD in community bounty awards for the month of January. Over a dozen community members, moderators, and ambassadors received awards for their contributions!

Read Audo's post to find out who received awards and why.

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The Community Portal bounty campaign has come to an end. Thanks to all who participated! 

We had more than 800 participants and 9400 entries. We will evaluate the results in the coming days and announce the winners here on the Community Portal.

Stay tuned for more info!

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The Komodo team is pleased to announce that Charles 'PTYX' Gonzales has re-joined the Komodo team in a Business Development role. Charles is a well-known member of the Komodo community and, for many of you, needs no introduction. Just in case you’re not familiar with him yet or want to learn more, you can check out his introduction post.

Read this post from Kadan to learn more about how Charles will be promoting Komodo.

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That's it for this week! Happy Valentine's Day to all you Komodo lovebirds. Have a great weekend!

Now that it’s 2020, it is time to kick off this year’s first round of community bounty awards.

We are distributing 3000 KMD to handpicked members of the community. We will distribute an additional 3000 KMD through the Community Portal launch campaign. The winners of that campaign will be announced next week.

Without further ado, let’s see who earned an award this time.

Chinese Telegram AMA

Tom and Jake collaborated with the Binance team and organized an AMA in the Binance’s Chinese Telegram group. A number of Komodo team members joined and answered questions in English, that were then translated into Chinese.

With over 260 quality questions submitted, the AMA was a huge success. We answered questions in English, and then Tom and Jake translated the answers into Chinese.

• Tom: 210 KMD
• Jake: 210 KMD

Go to the AMA shoutout post and read the comments to see a few of the questions the Komodo team answered.

Telegram Community Management

Komodo has two Telegram groups, a general group for Komodo and one for AtomicDEX. Both are maintained by Komodo community members. A huge thanks for Regnar, Acura, and others for being active and maintaining the Telegram groups!

• Regnar: 210 KMD
• Acura: 210 KMD

Komodo Ambassadors

We want to show our appreciation for the hard work our ambassadors are doing. Recently, two new people joined the Komodo ambassador team: Paro and Barv. Welcome!

• John: 210 KMD
• Barv: 210 KMD
• Paro: 210 KMD
• Soldat: 210 KMD

Content Creation

CryptoRich has always been a long-time supporter of Komodo and has published a bunch of interviews. Tyke has been working on a detailed Komodo project timeline. You might have noticed a new Komodo focused website called iKomodo.com, and the kudos go to Mylo for that effort.

• CryptoRich: 210 KMD
• Tyke: 210 KMD
• Mylo: 210 KMD

Community Portal Soft-Launch

We want to reward Komodo community moderators Farl and Oszy for being very active on the portal during and after the soft-launch period. Lastly, a shout out to Jimm B., who was the most dedicated bug hunter of the soft-launch period.

• Farl: 210 KMD
• Oszy: 210 KMD
• Jimm B: 210 KMD

Congratulations to all the award winners! Stay tuned for another community award update next month. We will keep an eye for people who help provide detailed answers and comments on the new Community Portal.

If you haven’t joined yet, go ahead and join us on the Community Portal here.

Throughout its history, Komodo has been a very technology-focused project. While technological development has always moved at an incredible pace, the other aspects of the project have started to catch up. 

To increase visibility, we stepped up our marketing efforts and developed an overarching narrative and clear marketing message: Komodo is a multi-chain platform that provides composable blockchain solutions to third-party businesses through independent Smart Chains and the Antara Framework. 

In 2019, we placed great emphasis on improving Komodo’s developer documentation and creating more educational resources. That direction continues in 2020. In addition, we are also increasing focus on our business development efforts. 

The business development team now has two full time members: Charles ‘PTYX’ Gonzales and Jason ‘Polycryptoblog’ Brown. Our team is currently crafting together a business strategy and objectives for 2020.
 

Welcome PTYX!

Charles is a well-known person within the Komodo community and, for many community members, needs no introduction. Just in case you’re not familiar with him yet or want to learn more, you can check out his introduction post. If you have questions for Charles, you can ask him directly on his introduction post. 

We imagine this announcement raises some curiosity and general interest within the community, and we thus decided to conduct a brief interview with him to clear some things up. 

Hey PTYX, we are excited to have you working for Komodo full time again. Can you tell us what you’ve been working on for the past year or two?

Over the past 2 years I've developed several applications, provided business consulting for 5 projects, and built strong relationships with government officials and private companies in Latin America. Additionally, I on-boarded 3 projects to Komodo's AtomicDEX and negotiated marketing agreements with those communities to cross promote Komodo solutions. 

What drove you to join the Komodo team in an official capacity?

The main reason I decided to join Komodo is because I realised that it's better to concentrate our efforts on promoting Komodo-based solutions instead of promoting solutions on multiple platforms. Over the past year, I received an increased level of positive feedback on Komodo’s solutions like Antara and AtomicDEX, which are beyond most other platforms. That is what drove me to focus on Komodo.

What are you looking to accomplish in the Komodo project? What are your personal goals? 

For 2020, I plan on laying out a solid business development strategy to introduce Komodo solutions to schools, universities, and government agencies. Additionally, I'd like to solidify collaboration between Komodo and venture capital firms, as well as consultants that are helping entrepreneurs build new blockchain-based solutions. If we offer them the right educational material and tools, they will use our platform to build. I would also like to see a boost in adoption and recognition of the AtomicDEX. 

What does this mean for Chainzilla? 

Chainzilla, as a company and project, will remain active but its focus will shift to offer Komodo-based solutions exclusively. We will leverage all of our business relationships to raise awareness of Komodo's solutions. 

What are your general thoughts about Komodo business development and how do you think we can drive Komodo technology adoption? 

With enterprise software, the "end user" is the "customer," so Komodo's enterprise solutions are designed around their needs. The software is intuitive, delightful to use and can be easily adapted to an individual’s actual workflow. Our user-focused applications recognise each associate and their roles, channel and preferred language. We plan on guiding companies and their employees in their individual learning, keeping them always engaged in their own development. As Komodo matures, it has focused on delivering software that is tailored to meet any project's expectations. 

What are the main roadblocks or barriers you see that is stopping Komodo from reaching a wider recognition and business adoption? 

The slow rate of blockchain adoption by enterprises can be attributed to the barriers that businesses must overcome to achieve a mainstream adoption of the technology. The main roadblock we're facing is a lack of awareness by major companies and agencies that are using blockchain to build new applications. Komodo is rolling out new educational material that will help us tackle these issues.

The AMA begins February 11th @ 11 PM UTC.

1. Questions get posted in Chinese and are translated to our Team. 
2. We answer questions in English, and the answers are translated into Chinese

Join the Chinese Telegram Group if you like to read our answers live.

We can post a few of the questions in the comments below in case you missed the live AMA.
 

It's been a huge week for Komodo! 

In addition to the public launch of the Community Portal, the Komodo team also released the 2019 Annual Report, published the 2020 Technical Roadmap, and announced the Fourth Annual Notary Node Election. Let's cover each of these topics in a little more detail.

To celebrate the launch of this new Community Portal and to help bring new people onto the platform, the Komodo Team is holding a bounty campaign with a prize pool of over 3000 KMD to give away! 

All you need to do to be eligible for prizes is join the Komodo Community Portal and register here. If you're already on the portal, you still need to register on Gleam to enter the prize pool.

If you want to increase your chances of winning, you can complete additional tasks to get even more tickets into the prize pool lottery. There will be one grand prize winner of 777 KMD and 45 winners of 50 KMD each. 

Join the bounty campaign here to be eligible to win KMD.

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Komodo team also released the 2019 Annual Report this week. The Annual Report summarizes all of the milestones and progress made throughout the past year. 

View the Annual Report in full here.

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Komodo released the Technical Roadmap for 2020 this week. The roadmap outlines Komodo's development priorities along the three primary aspects of the project: Komodo Core, Antara Framework, and AtomicDEX.

Learn more about Komodo's Technical Roadmap for 2020 here.

Download Komodo's Technical Roadmap for 2020 in PDF format here.  

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Last, but certainly not least, Komodo is excited to announce that the Fourth Annual Notary Node Election is coming soon! The election will begin on March 15, when VOTE2020 tokens will be airdropped to all KMD holders, and end on March 31. The winners will then be announced.

There are 30 open Notary Node seats up for grabs in this year's election. If you're interested in running for a position as Notary Node Operator, you must announce your candidacy no later than February 28, 2020. 

Read more about the election and learn how you can become a candidate here.

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The Komodo Development team is looking for a Full-Stack Developer with at least one year of experience working in Rust. Previous experience working with the Bitcoin and/or Zcash protocol(s) is preferred but not mandatory for this role. Learn more here.

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That's all for this week! Thanks again for helping us get the community portal off the ground and have a wonderful weekend.