So 64 notary nodes share majority of mining rewards between them, and non notaries can mine kmd but at a disadvantage.
So consensus is PoW like bitcoin, but the notaries work together and share block reward equally like a cartel.
And notary cartel membership is voted on by coin holders, preventing cartel from misbehaving.
A very interesting combination, not fully decentralized, but much more advantages from structure than other crypto coins.
Trust in the notary cartel will depend on election process, very interested to see more details when available.
non-notary miners are getting ~40% of blocks, here is a recent 65 block sample:
51 13 12 16 -1 -1 -1 38 -1 34 28 -1 -1 -1 50 49 -1 -1 1 -1 5 -1 -1 2 53 -1 -1 14 -1 17 -1 -1 42 20 10 56 -1 -1 55 -1 -1 4 15 60 -1 9 8 23 54 41 0 59 44 19 35 -1 -1 -1 37 47 29 -1 36 -1 -1 <- prev minerids from ht.187826 notary.1 gpucount.28 43.08%
Whether a block goes to a notary node or not is random. In exchange for the ability to mine at easy diff, the notary nodes provide high end servers for network services, like basilisk mode.
Notary nodes dont have the power to create transactions, nor do they ever control anybody's funds. they are elected based on a Proof of Stake election
So while the notary nodes are in a semi-trusted position, this trust is used for getting consensus on what checkpoint to write to the bitcoin blockchain, availability of network services and other things that otherwise would be unavailable or unreliable
The network is at the same time a PoW network and a cartel mining (as you call it) which are coexisting and seamlessly shifting between each other. The added randomness of which group will mine the next block makes it that much harder to conduct attacks as no matter how much hash power you bring, the notaries mining costs dont go up.
From the other side, if any group of notaries start misbehaving, then they are subject to not receiving subsidies or outright replacement and since any notary mined block must be signed by the notary, it is not possible to hide behind a brand new address
Thank you for this detail jl777! I am interested in governance aspects of crypto, what you have designed is very ingenious, a good blend of decentralization but with elements of structure that allow stability and increased reliability. The other governance model of DAO looks promising too, but so far untested to run a sophisticated platform like komodo. I can't see any weakness in the notary setup for possible attacks, only problem might be human element, large number of capable candidates competing at elections, but that is a good problem to have.
It is a practical form of government that blends a pure democracy (external miners) with a republic (elected notaries that represent the KMD holders)
but even the notaries have strictly limited powers and complete transparency, which if only we could implement in the real world would eliminate a lot of issues that arise from non-transparent republics
Problem with real world governance is majority of power rests with the 'deep' state actors underneath elected officials who never stand in elections, they control what happens, and who can do what.
With komodo will the notaries make any strategic decisions collectively like a cabinet government, or board of directors in a company, or will they act more as service providers only? This would be something to clarify before next election.
'deep' state actors underneath is same as "non-transparent republic", we are saying the same thing, just different words.
The komodo ecosystem is designed to avoid most of the politics that can happen in crypto. Technical decisions are made by a benevolent dictator, deployment is suggested, but ultimately if the notary nodes dont deploy then it will split the network. so it is like a veto power in the event the dictator goes insane. Granted the independent miners are a third power in this, and three powers is usually more stable than just two.
As far as the typical disaster recovery scenarios, in komodo each separate project tries to have its own independent chain. So what happens on that chain only directly affects that chain. By using atomic swaps, each chain can interact with other chains. So if a DAO incident happens, the DAO chain dies, but only some temporary effect limited to the then pending atomic swaps.
there's huge potential here I believe,lets see
