The Silent Progress of Deep Tech

This post addresses the numerous misconceptions that there is no progress, or that we only start new projects but never finish them.

As you may know, Komodo is part of a bigger technology SuperNET is developing. All the main projects have the same lead developer: jl777. Thus for potential Komodo investors it’s also important to understand the state of SuperNET and Iguana development.

SuperNET was born with a mission to help the overall cryptocurrency ecosystem. The idea is to foster collaboration between open source projects and offer a plug-in system for developers to use. SuperNET solves numerous complex problems so other projects could build on top of them and not spend their time resolving them. The ultimate vision is a mainstream adoption for crypto.

This is a challenging task for even a simple C developer. No one can know in advance how long the development would take or what are all the problems lying ahead. In fact, there has been no set launch date for any of the projects. The list of required technologies has been a long one, and there is no way to come up with a release date as long as those major components unfinished.

The lead developer jl777 has been working hard without too much noise, so the progress has been quite invisible too. It has been witnessed primarily by those who spend their time on the SuperNET Slack. The back-end must get finished before there can be any pretty pictures, installers, or a working GUI. So far the only progress there has been is the ever increasing open source code and API list. However, we have now came to a point where the pieces start to fall in their places and the overall picture is coming into focus. For instance, jl777 had the following to say about Iguana development:

It took me 9 months to write Iguana, the first multicoin parallel syncing bitcoin protocol daemon, including RPC, that compiles to 2MB. Is that slow? Not sure, but I know if I tried to find someone to do that, they would ask to fund a full dev team for at least that long. People don’t realize the scale and difficulty of creating working backward compatible improvements to the state of art.

Now we simply have to bring it all together into a working product. However, we must make sure jl777 keeps using his time to solve the deep tech problems. Even though he does an outstanding job of discussing and answering the questions our community asks, he is not a community manager. Even though he has the skills to be a project manager, it would simply be a waste of his talent. Jl777 has explained that he cannot manage a project and at the same time focus on the deep tech side.

We cannot expect one person to be able to do everything. We must recognize that in this case one person indeed has carried this project this far, which truly is an enormous achievement. Now we must bring the project across the finish line as a team. As an allegory, imagine someone hands us a gem covered in mud, and all there is to do is wipe it clean and show it to the world. More or less this is the situation we are in.

Komodo will be built on top of all this hard work. It is something the whole community has been waiting for and now it’s finally here! First and foremost Komodo will give SuperNET the long waited anonymous transactions. Moreover, through dPoW we will help the entire cryptocurrency ecosystem by giving an option for all the altcoins to secure their network with bitcoin’s hashrate.

The following releases are coming:

• Working dPoW in a testnet, during ICO
• Mainnet launch with anonymous transactions two weeks after ICO ends.
• First release of Iguana GUI, which is expected to be released before the ICO starts

We said that the progress so far has been invisible, but it is there for anyone to see if they just choose to.

• github.com/jl777/SuperNET
• docs.supernet.org (a list of iguana API)
• SuperNET Slack channel #Iguana

Right now there are many reason to be confident. Take your time and study what jl777 has been developing during all this time. In case you missed it, this is the first time we have announced a release estimation about anything.