added #132 to pass checks, the red X irked me

Not sure it matters any, but posting for posterity and/or discussion if nothing else.
With the current diff ranges it would be about 400-600ksol/s to supply the external 15 block minimum.

This encourages running a pool... how do you tie your found blocks to your NN? How would you leverage the reduced difficulty without the Iguana tx being locked and sent? 600+ kh/s would require a pool... mining to your NN pubkey. or will there be a komodod update to recognize NN pubkey mining outside of Iguana?

The externally mined blocks do not leverage reduced diff. The idea is that the cost of mining the blocks offsets the difference.
Yes, it requires a stratum or "pool" to do so.
Pools mine to whatever address they like, there's no protocol requirement that you, or anyone, own the address in the coinbase (just that it be a valid one).
There is a difference in how most pools create the coinbase tx and how the daemon creates it (specifically the payment type). This difference could likely be changed by changing the pool, but there's no real point as the address associated with the pubkey is what gets the score.

edit:

to recognize NN pubkey mining outside of Iguana

iguana doesn't mine or have anything to do with mining, the komodo daemon does and the keys are hard coded (see src/komodo_defs.h)