There are many areas where the original bitcoin codebase could be optimized for performance to extend the reach for development. The bitcoin payment processor company Bitpay, created a boon for the industry. The contribution was indexing of blockchain data structures for high performance.
Komodo lead dev jl777 led the industry in adopting this new capability of performance, porting it into the Komodo source code.
These indexes introduced by the bitcore innovation enabled fast lookups of blockchain data. Similar to boosting the performance in SQL database tables by creating an index, the address index is used extensively to boost the performance of related address information.
Most blockchain projects have explorers that are webapps run from a NoSQL database. The bitcore additions included several RPC calls including getutxoaddress. This network operation is very powerful, returning all UTXOs per address directly from blockchain data.
This architecture of explorer application removes the need for the additional NoSQL database, reducing the operational knowledge and resources required.
The Komodo community as further developed helper tools enabling any developer to install a custom blockchain explorer in a few steps.
A unique RPC call in the Komodo ecosystem is getsnapshot which uses addressindex also. Another RPC call coming from bitcore integration is getchaintxstats.
The high performance of these indexes is a much needed capability for application developers. Game developers require performant backends to their client side applications.
Without addressindex, the performance of the legacy codebase would not enable the innovation that followed - Antara Framework. Antara is a “smart contract” framework but in reality it is much more - it is a network consensus customization framework which extends the underlying bitcoin protocol.
Gaming is a part of the computing industry that has consistently pushed the limits of technology. John Carmack at id software seems to have singlehandedly created the first person shooter genre with Wolfenstein 3d. Ultima Online the genre of massive multiplayer online games. Voodoo graphics company with their high performance 3dfx line of video cards. Oculus with VR tech. The same continues with Komodo into the blockchain space as they are on the cusp of releasing the gaming-sdk. Many facets of this would not be possible with the Antara framework & thus bitcore integration.
In this game dev blockchain article, I wrote about what Komodo offered to game developers in the high performance blockchain space, in 2019. Combine this with recent P2P streaming development, the future of blockchain gaming is bright on the Komodo Platform.
