i used to like komodo, but after j1777's attack on safecoin, made on purpose, i think it's a shame for a coin with good tech to have such a shitty character leading it
The full story of what happened will eventually be released on a Bitcoin or altcoin news site.
And it is quite a story.
A fork that claims to make improvements but in fact was just a halfway copy and paste fork. It did not even have all the height based features (bug fixes) activated.
When notary mining was done it combined with the long ago fixed bug that didnt limit the number of blocks a notary can get. So the diff started going up. Mining was stopped when the diff was at 100 million, which is far less than the 10 billion (or trillions) the diff would have gone to. It was a high level, but nothing life threatening.
The chain was never forked. No coins were lost. Mining was proceeding, just at a higher diff so slower. When it became clear that changes were being proposed that would create a fork, when no fork was even there in the first place, I spent hours trying to help by giving detailed instructions on how to fix it. Even after I was booted from their discord.
However, it seems they ignored my detailed instructions on how to get their codebase to activate all the height based features/bug fixes and it seems they pushed forward with an ineffective fix to the high diff. They claim they improved dPoW, but they dont have any notarization active, so it isnt protected by notarizations. That means the longest chain rule is in effect and if they did in fact push forward with the forking change, it will likely create a pretty big mess.
So, they claim to be a komodo fork, but really at this point it is half a fork as they dont have the fundamental dPoW implemented. I was willing to help and did spent hours trying to help, but it seems their community is all hostile at me. Now implied threats are being made at me.
I do hope they will stop misrepresenting what they are adding, like they are claiming to be working on a DEX. I dont mind an honest fork, but when the claimed improvement to dPoW is to have cut and pasted all the KMD notaries, there is a clear disconnect between the claims and reality.
Also there is past history here where safecoin initially didnt even acknowledge it used forked komodo code. I had to complain to them about that. Now they claimed they improved on dPoW and are working on a DEX, when so far it is just a copy paste with string changes.
You mean that story?
Dont do a halfway fork (literally) and claim to have made improvements. SAFE has a lot of vulnerabilities as it is basically very early KMD during the testnet days as dPoW was being debugged. All the KMD height specific triggers for activations were just copied.
So in the current state SAFE is not a full KMD fork and if you dont do it properly, it is not a good thing. This was demonstrated in a way that didnt create a fork, didnt lose any coins and would have self-repaired. I do admit the prior history and the misrepresentations made did not make me feel keen to help them at first, but when they start to propose breaking a chain that isnt broken I stepped in.
Then I am pushed out because all the miners are mad at losing several hours of mining. While there are pretty severe vulnerabilities active and exposed. Including the attack vectors that the blackhat hit KMD with early last year that are also height triggered. But the day's mining rewards are more important to the miners.
Anyway, it was a long day, I squeezed in all that in between and after my normal busy day. If you are buying SAFE thinking it is a KMD fork, I think it is important to know the technical facts. I will let you decide what a 4 million coin premine (of 36 million) and a 128 block reward means. As far as their claims to be working on a DEX, i didnt see any code but maybe they are writing something totally from scratch. They did fork agama also, at least it looked like it.
My problem is not with their forking, but with the misrepresentation of what they have added, along with the halfway-ness that makes it vulnerable.
If anybody else wants to fork KMD, that is fine. You can ask for help and if you are an honest fork, I will help. If you are not, then I will call you out. I might even demonstrate that you are making false claims. If there is past history that makes me a bit upset at the second "violation", then I might push a bit more than otherwise.
That's the story. I seem to have acted a bit more emotionally than I would normally as this is a very personal issue for me. As it is now the SAFE chain can likely be killed (by many different people, even those not so skilled, as the past issues are well documented) and likely I am one of the few that can help them to fix things properly. However I do not like being made out to be some bad actor by short sighted miners and SAFE team members. SAFE chain right now is not traded anywhere, only being mined. When exactly is the right time to assess a chain's safety? All this is very complex and you cant just look at the code and know precisely what would happen, that's why they are called bugs.
At this point I am not sure what to do and I am open to community suggestions. On the one hand it is sad that the first KMD fork is in the state it is in and I would like to have it use code and bugfixes over the last 1.5 years. On the other hand I am pretty busy and considering their past behavior and the constant attacks on me for the tough love approach I took, well it is not easy to stay in the helping mood while the majority of interactions are personal attacks on my character.
