We’ve been seeing quite a few articles getting published about Loom Network recently. It’s great to see the community growing larger and having more active conversations as we onboard more dapps to Basechain. However, we’ve also noticed a few misconceptions that keep popping up. This article aims to set the record straight on a few key points.

Before we get into it, you may be wondering where these misconceptions come from. Well, Loom Network has been evolving A LOT since it started back in October 2017. That’s almost 2 years ago — and in blockchain time, that’s an eternity!

Our approach has always been to continuously ship products, while refining and improving these products based on your feedback.

🏎 We move fast.

And although it’s vital to move fast in the blockchain space, it also means that our news and tutorials (e.g. our Medium articles) get outdated at the same rate. In turn, this makes it more difficult for the community to keep up with our latest developments.

So please allow me to address some of the most common inaccuracies we’ve seen floating around the interwebs. For each one, I’ll state the fact first and follow it with an explanation.

FACT #1: Loom is a platform for scaling all kinds of high-performance dapps.

Misconception: Loom is a platform for scaling games and social apps.

We get this one a lot… and it’s understandable. Our initial focus was indeed on games and social apps, because we saw those as early forces that would help bring more mainstream blockchain adoption. (We even built the first trading card game to run fully on the blockchain.)

Meanwhile, we’ve been doing a ton of work helping developers build and launch their dapps on Basechain, and with the multi-chain infrastructure we’ve been building, developers can scale any kind of dapp on Loom Network. There are already lots of other kinds of projects utilizing Loom tech:

We also have some very interesting enterprise and government applications on the way. Stay tuned for more details on that 😉

FACT #2: Loom Network’s mainnet is now called Basechain.

Misconception: Loom Network’s mainnet is called PlasmaChain.

Over a year ago, we released the first production-ready implementation of Plasma Cash. But as time progressed and we built out more of our platform, we realized that the user experience with Plasma Cash simply wasn’t up to snuff. After all, we focus heavily on the user experience, as usability is critical for mass adoption of blockchain technology.

As we’ve moved beyond Plasma, our main chain was renamed Basechain to more accurately embody Loom’s mission — being the home base for all your dapp’s needs.

Michael Ng from Loom Validator StakeWithUs has a great saying:

Loom is the middleware/Heroku for deploying your dapps across all platforms.

And that’s what we’re about, being the cross-chain interoperable hub on which you deploy your dapp once and have access to all major blockchain communities — whether that’s Bitcoin, Ethereum, Binance Chain, or another major chain.

FACT #3: Developers don’t have to run their own blockchain; they can deploy directly to Basechain.

Misconception: In order to deploy dapps, developers must use the Loom SDK to spin up their own individual DappChains.

Our initial vision was to have developers use the Loom SDK to each code their own dedicated dapp blockchain (DappChain) — which allows them to customize their Loom-based chain for their specific use case.

We quickly found out that most developers weren’t interested in running their own chains. They would much rather have a chain that is ready to deploy to, and instead, focus on building a successful dapp.

Enter Basechain — a stable, secure, gas-free, and high-performance blockchain that developers can quickly and easily deploy to. We’ve already done all the heavy lifting, so that developers don’t have to.

FACT #4: Loom is a multichain interoperability platform.

Misconception: Loom is a sidechain to Ethereum.

You can still most definitely use Loom to scale your Ethereum dapps. In fact, the majority of developers building on Loom are Ethereum-based. They use our Transfer Gateway to do the bulk of their transactions on Basechain (and then move assets back and forth between Basechain and Ethereum mainnet).

Loom Network itself is a production-ready multichain interoperability platform integrated with Ethereum, Binance Chain, and Tron. (Further integrations with Bitcoin and Libra are in progress.)

FACT #5: LOOM is a token that rewards stakers and validators for securing the network.

Misconception: The only value of the LOOM token is the need to hold 1 LOOM in order to transfer assets between chains.

What is the value of the LOOM token?

LOOM is a proof-of-stake token that is used to secure Loom Network’s mainnet, Basechain. You can delegate your tokens on the staking dashboard and earn up to 20% of your staked amount in “block rewards” every year.

Furthermore, developers pay a flat monthly fee in LOOM tokens to host their dapps on Loom. This way, their users don’t have to pay transaction costs (unlike using dapps on Ethereum). These fees go to stakers and validators.

Users do not need to hold any LOOM in order to interact with any dapps running on Basechain. LOOM is not a membership token.

However, in the future, users will be required to pay fees in LOOM in order to move assets back and forth from Basechain to other chains. These fees will go to stakers and validators as well.

So there are the facts 😉

And if you ever have any questions about Loom Network, our technology, or the LOOM token, feel free to drop in to the official Telegram group and ask away. Someone from the Loom team or one of our amazing community members should be able to answer you.

As always, we got more exciting things around the corner.

Stay tuned.