The LOOM token will soon be getting a nice power-up.

It will become a true multichain token, in order to significantly improve usability and accessibility for all Loom Network users.

As we continue to move toward being the universal scalability platform for your high-performance dapps, we’ve been aggressively expanding our support for the most popular blockchains over the past year.

Read more about our integrations in Connecting Ethereum, EOS, and Tron: Making Blockchain Interoperability a Reality.

Blockchain interoperability brings value to each chain that is part of the network — and the hub that connects these chains (i.e. Loom Network) will be able to capture an immense amount of value because of this.

Our vision of the future of dapp development is a pragmatic one:

Building on Loom Network, developers can simply write their code once and easily interact with users across all major blockchains, with any kind of wallet.

Just like how traditional game developers want their games to run on as many platforms as possible (e.g. a mobile game developer can build their game once in Unity, and then export it to Android, iOS, Nintendo Switch, etc.) dapp developers of all kinds — whether they’re DeFi, enterprise, or consumer-facing — also want exposure to the largest number of users at the same time.

At this moment, users from Ethereum, Binance, and Tron (Bitcoin and Cosmos coming soon) can all seamlessly interact with dapps deployed to Loom Network. That means they can use any of the native assets from those supported chains — i.e. ERC20, ERC721, BNB, BEP2, TRX, etc. However, stakers and developers still have to interact with the Ethereum-based LOOM token (an ERC20) in order to manage their accounts on Loom Network.

Thus, the next logical step for us is to make LOOM a true multichain token.

That way…

Users can interact with a native LOOM token on whichever blockchain they’re on — no wallet gymnastics necessary!

What Exactly Is a Multichain Token?

A multichain token is one that is portable across different networks. LOOM started as an ERC20 token on Ethereum and then became a native token on our Basechain — and it is already portable between the two chains.

Moving forward, there will be LOOM tokens on various sister chains, and they will be interchangeable and transferable using our Transfer Gateway.

As a first step, it will be composed of dynamic pools of native Basechain tokens and sister chain tokens — starting with the ERC20 and BEP2 versions. So users will be able to easily transfer tokens between Loom Network and Binance Chain.

Why Does a Multichain LOOM Make Sense?

The biggest reason for having a multichain token is to dramatically improve usability and accessibility for our users. We’ve been preaching this to developers for almost a year now on our developer docs site — and it really is the most elegant solution for reducing friction for new users.

Previously, we thought just about everyone was using Ethereum and ERC20 tokens. However, the industry has exploded with many new options over the past year, and we’ve been seeing first-hand more and more support tickets in which the user is trying to send transactions between wallets of different chains, send transactions to different chains, or even reuse a private key between wallets (under the false assumption that they’ll all be the same).

While it’s certainly good to educate users in this space, it remains a daunting and poor experience when it’s technically possible to just keep it simple for everyone instead.

What Will Happen to My Current LOOM?

Nothing will happen to the LOOM tokens in your wallets. You will simply have an additional option to withdraw your LOOM onto Binance Chain, which will automatically convert them to the native BEP2 asset.

If you already have LOOM on the Binance exchange, you can simply transfer those tokens to Binance Chain directly without needing to deal with any Ethereum wallets.

And if you are currently staking LOOM to help secure the network, you don’t need to do anything, as your tokens will remain staked as they currently are. If you choose to withdraw your stake or rewards, you will have the option to send them to a supported blockchain of your choice (Ethereum and Binance for now — with more to come).

What Next?

Once we introduce the BEP2 version of LOOM, we will be watching it closely to see how people use this multichain token, figure out what kinds of pain points arise, and make the necessary improvements.

In the blockchain space, there seems to be a terrible tendency to build towards the most technically interesting solution, regardless of whether or not it potentially sacrifices the user experience.

So once we’re able to make multichain token swapping, transfers, and interactions as seamless as we can, we’ll start rolling out support for the other major blockchains we’re integrating with — Tron, Bitcoin, Cosmos, etc.

In the long term, this type of technology is really built with tokenized financial instruments in mind: tokenized commodities, real estate, stocks, etc.

With the launch of Libra and the recently-announced Venus project from Binance, there’s a real trend towards fiat-backed tokens of value — and it makes good sense for tokens to be multichain capable when that future arrives.

After all, if you had a piece of gold represented digitally, you’d probably want it to be the same gold no matter where it was stored.

Scale Your Dapp Today with Multichain Support

Basechain will be the number one chain for developers to launch multichain tokens, and the best platform to scale their high-performance dapps on.

As a developer, you can continue to have ETH and BNB, scale your dapp on Loom Network, and help onboard the next million users to the crypto scene.

You can get started today and have your dapp live on our EVM-compatible Basechain in no time — with minimal effort.

Go ahead and…

Of course, if you have any questions, you can ask in our Telegram developer chat, and either someone from our team or one of our awesome community members will be able to answer you.