This is a short technical document aimed at developers who are interested to learn more about DPoW and/or want to add it to their a cryptocoin to protect against consensus (51%) attacks. These attacks are becoming very common against coins from large to small.
This book assumes basic knowledge of the Bitcoin protocol, Bitcoin source code, C++ and basic compiler knowledge. No prior knowledge of Komodo is assumed, this work contains a basic introduction of Komodo features.
DPoW sends blockhash data from your coin, to potentially another coin like HUSH, which is then sent to Bitcoin, providing a small coin with a small hashrate the security of BTC hashrate. This data is embedded in OP_RETURN metadata which Komodo Notary Nodes continuosly send. Notary nodes run full nodes of Bitcoin, Komodo, and all Komodo Asset chains and coins protected by KMD DPoW, and are the way data from one chain makes it onto another chain.
Note that the DPoW algorithm is abstract, and you could choose other coins than KMD or BTC to send your data! If another network was better than KMD, that could be used and if a different coin had higher hashrate, data could be sent to that instead of Bitcoin. No part of DPoW depends on KMD or BTC in particular.
In more detail, there exist a network of 64 notary nodes spread around the globe. They are not in any one physical location, which makes the system resilient against a datacenter outage or natural disaster in one geographical location. The algorithm NNs use require 13 notary nodes to come together and agree on what the latest Merkle root and other metadata that will be embedded into the Komodo and Bitcoin blockchains inside the OP_RETURN data of a multisig transaction. This means that to take down the notarization process, to stop the data flow, one must attack and knock offline 52 different servers in diverse locations, simultaneously. In this case, notarization data would stop flowing, but no "fake" or "incorrect" notarization data can be created, because the source code of Komodo has the public keys of notary nodes embedded inside.
Only notary nodes have the corresponding private keys to make transactions that the network will trust as valid notarizations. So DDoS attacks can only stop notarization data from flowing temporarily, they can not be used to knock actual notaries off-line and then impersonate or man-in-middle the process.
To be clear, DPoW are consensus-level changes to a cryptocoin source code, they require a coordinated effort of all exchanges/mining pools/users upgrading, since it is a hard fork. Take this into consideration when planning upgrade timelines.
Every year Komodo does a hard fork, which coincides with electing new notaries, which usually happens in early May. Electing new notaries means changing the KMD source code to list these new pubkeys and removing old ones. This means that any coin using DPoW will also need to hardfork at a coordinated time, i.e. coins using DPoW will also fork in May each year, after new KMD notaries have been elected and the new notarization season begins.
Coins can turn this yearly hard-fork into an opportunity to make any other non-emergency changes that would be consensus-level hard-forks. It allows a yearly upgrade window for each coin, where a hardfork is going to happen anyway. For instance, the size of the maximum OP_RETURN might be changed, or a different difficulty algorithm used (test it thoroughly first!).
Additionally, there is a preferred time of year where it makes the most sense to integrate DPoW, essentially directly after the yearly KMD notary election and hard-fork. That prevents a situation where adding DPoW integration in March requires a hard-fork and then the KMD notary election requires another hard-fork just a short-time later. Exchanges are not excited to update full nodes and some exchanges attempt to charge for full node updates (which the author finds scammy), so timing the integration of DPoW services can be very strategic.
It is the authors recommendation that exchanges pause any transactions for which data has not yet been notarized to the appropriate chain. For a game allowing in-game purchases with digital currencies, it might allow transactions up to $10 if the data has been notarized to Komodo, or no limit on transactions that have been notarized to Bitcoin. This allows small-value transactions to proceed very quickly (Komodo has a 1 minute blocktime) while ensuring protection against double-spend attacks for large value transactions. This protection comes at the cost of waiting longer, as Bitcoin has 10 minute blocktime.
It is important to understand that one half of the process is notarization data, which must go from COIN -> KMD -> BTC, and the other half of Double Spend Protection is actually looking at this notarization data and deciding if it's safe to proceed with some action. Komodo is working on an API to see if a txid of a certain dpow-enabled coin has been notarized to KMD and BTC, so that exchanges and other parties wanting to protect against double spends can make informed decisions, in much shorter time periods than waiting until 120 confirmations.
The API for when notarizations have made it to the KMD chain is at https://komodostats.com/api/notary/summary.json .
A recent innovation called "DPoW confs" was invented by jl777, which allows
exchanges to seemlessly protect themselves against double spend attacks, with
no code changes at all! Exchanges can simple continue to look at the
confirmations key of whichever RPCs they use. DPoW confs is enabled by
default, and when enabled, the confirmation count of a transaction will never
go above 1, until it is notarized.
To summarize
- confirmations=0 is unconfirmed (same as before)
- confirmations=1 is confirmed, but not notarized
- confirmations>1 means confirmed + notarized
Since exchanges currently require anything from 10 to 100 or more confirmations, their current code already enforces that transactions are notarized.
The old/original concept of confirmations is now stored in the
rawconfirmations key of any RPC that returns confirmations.
DPoW confs are defaulted to on in the latest versions of KMD, exchanges do not need to change any code, any KMD daemon setting or CLI flags. They are protected by default.
The KMD official docs have more details about dpowconfs.
The raw cost of 64 global notary nodes making transactions roughly once per minute (the Komodo block interval) and continually on other coins has a cost.
Various costs related to DPoW can be broken down into these categories:
- Transaction fees denominated in KMD (paid by notaries making transactions)
- Transaction fees in the coin being notarized (paid by notaries)
- Yearly cost paid to KMD for DPoW services
- One-time integration costs to add DPoW to external coins
Contact KMD Discord for more info about pricing.
Also note, that if you decide to migrate your existing coin to a Komodo Asset Chain, there are no integrations needed or integration development costs. Just the cost for notarization transactions. This can be accomplished by doing an airdrop from your current chain to a new KMD asset chain, where people use their private keys to unlock the funds they owned on the original chain. This can be done by the project itself or Komodo can help with this process.
Let us assume Alice is the lead developer of a cryptocoin based on the Bitcoin source code. For example, since Litecoin and Zcash are Bitcoin forks, any LTC or ZEC forks count as Bitcoin forks, too. The version of Bitcoin internals that the coin forked is important, this determines which header file that will be immediately compatible or at least a close starting point for development work.
For example, if your coin is based on Bitcoin 0.15.x, there already exists a header file that matches that version of Bitcoin internals exactly. The GAME coin was the first external coin to start using dPoW and this commit shows how they integrated. This was first created by the author of Komodo, jl777, and then the author of this document ported that header file to Bitcoin 0.11.x internals, which Zcash and all Zcash forks have as their internals. So if your coin is a Zcash fork, you should use the komodo_validation011.h header file. If your coin has SegWit support, or is 0.14-0.16 internals, the komodo_validation015.h file is most likely the best starting point to integrate.
For coins with older internals, such as BTC 0.10.x and earlier, use the BTC 0.11.x as a starting point, so less changes are required.
If your coin has made various internals changes and selectively added BIPs or other internals changes, you will most likely need to make various changes specific to your coin.
We will use Hush, a Zcash fork, as an example to estimate notarization lag, i.e. the time it takes for notarization data to make it from one chain to another. To estimate the "worst case" time it takes notarization to get to Bitcoin, we can simple add up all the blocktimes involved, so we will be adding blocktimes of
HUSH + KMD + BTC = 150s + 60s + 600s
which is 810s or 13.5 minutes for blockhash data from Hush to be notarized all the way to Bitcoin. This is the time it would take such that an exchange could ask the Bitcoin blockchain if a given txid has been notarized.
Note that the above block-times are "worst case" under normal network conditions, i.e. a transaction is made a millisecond after a block, so it has to wait the entire block interval on HUSH. And then is unlucky enough to have to wait an entire KMD block interval and an entire Bitcoin block interval.
It's possible that a bug or attack or large difficulty change makes one block much longer than the average block interval time, which would increase the time it takes for notarization data to make it to BTC. This is why a specific time cannot be used to decide it's "safe", very often 13.5 minutes would be enough time for Hush block hash data to get to the Bitcoin chain, but there could be times when it is not.
On average, users will only wait half of each coins block time, which means 13.5/2 = 6.75 minutes for Hush blockhash data to be written to Bitcoin.
There are many PoW algorithms to choose from these days and thankfully the DPoW algorithm is blissfully ignorant of all these differences. It does not care if something is SHA256 versus Equihash, all it sees is a 256 bit block hash, i.e. a 256 bit integer. It's just a number. Any coin using a 256 bit blockhash is compatible, which includes most known coins.
For the specific case of adding DPoW to a Zcash fork, the 0.11.x header file, first implemented for Hush, should be used. Zcash forks are characterized by being pre-Segwit and having some differences in how UTXOs are stored in LevelDB compared to post-Segwit coins.
For Litecoin forks, the version of BTC internals inside is what makes the biggest difference. Being pre-Segwit means using the 0.11.x header file as a starting point, and post-Segwit can use 0.15 header file.
There is recent work in this area by BLUR, see this repo for details: https://github.com/blur-network/dpow-blur
It will be most likely be challenging to integrate a coin not derived from Bitcoin source code but we are eager to see if it's possible. The currently available 0.11 and 0.15 header files can be used if the project is in C++ but if the coin is written in another language then those header files must be ported to that language first.
If your coin reimplements Bitcoin protocol from scratch, then it may still be compatible. Please join #developer on Komodo Discord to ask more questions.
This is a high-level procedure of how to integrate an arbitrary coin. It will not describe every single step but it will be applicable to most situations.
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Create a new branch for dpow work
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Copy the correct header file (komodo_validation0XX.h) to the
src/directory of your coin -
Copy the komodo_rpcblockchain.h to your
src/directory. This file will not need many, if any, changes -
If you are already using BTC internals 0.11/0.15, skip the next step
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Make any API changes required to get header files compiling on your specific version of BTC internals
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Make sure your code dynamically generates addresses (0.11 does, 0.15 does not yet)
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Do a fresh sync of 2 new nodes on the branch with dpow code
- One node with have txindex=1
- One node will not have txindex
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If both nodes can sync from scratch with no bad errors, then you are most likely done with integration!
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Contact Komodo for the next round of instructions, which is Notary Nodes testing your code
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List of integrated coins and their header files
Here are the steps for notarizations to begin:
- Consensus changes to full node
- RPC changes to full node
- Regtests for dpow (if applicable)
- Payment of Komodo DPoW yearly service fee
- Notary nodes asked to install/configure new daemon
- Notaries work on any changes to iguana that are needed
- Notaries begin to install full node + sync
- Notaries update iguana changes for new full node
- When 13 notaries have synced+configured the full node, notarization rounds begin
When the full 64 notary nodes have installed, configured and synced the new full node, notarizations will happen with greater frequency and be added to http://notarystats.com .
Iguana is the low-level software which actually does the complex work of notarizing data across chains. Some glue is needed when new coins are added to notarization process:
- Update dpowassets, example: jl777/komodo#887
- 7776 file, example: jl777/SuperNET#890
- Other miscellaneous changes
For instance, Hush was the first coin with 2 bytes of base58 prefix to be notarized by KMD. This caused issues because the internals of the coin assumes a 1 byte prefix in various places. Thankfully one of the amazing notary node operators stepped in and wrote a good chunk of C++ code to enable 2 byte prefixes, which makes many Zcash forks compatible!
This is a non-exhaustive list of things that notary node operator will do to enable the new coin on production:
- Ask decker to add coin to Notary Addresses
- Verify notary addresses match those generated/hardcoded in code
- Install full node software
- Compile on correct branch
- Fully sync full node with txindex=1
- Import their address to the new coin via a WIF generated from pubkey
- Run full node with -pubkey option
- Receive coins funds to be used in notarization UTXOs
- Do a round of testing with enough NNs to do a dpow round (a min of 13) to verify code more
- Set up automated procedures specific to each coin, such as UTXO splitting/etc