Decentralized applications (DApps) hold a great deal of promise, as they don’t require a middleman to function or to manage a user’s information. This places users in control of their own personal data, effectively eliminating the data mismanagement and hacking events associated with more traditional, centralized applications. However, the scale of DApps is currently limited by the blockchain networks they are built on, resulting in costly and relatively inefficient platforms.

There are a number of blockchain projects actively working on building solutions to this scaling problem. One such project is Loom Network, which is a platform as a service built on top of the Ethereum blockchain, enabling developers to create and run large-scale decentralized applications (DApps). Loom Network leverages a system of sidechains that allows each DApp to run on its own blockchain, working to reduce the network load facing these applications to further promote speed and scalability. What’s more, developers can use Loom Network’s software development kit (SDK) to code DApps in common programming languages. Through its platform, Loom Network aims to build a scalable infrastructure for the creation of blockchain-based games and social applications.

Interested in Loom Network? Here’s a quick rundown of the project:

Platform & Development

In short, Loom Network is developing a platform for developers to efficiently create and deploy scalable DApps on Ethereum sidechains, called DAppChains. These full-featured blockchains are designed to run in parallel to Ethereum Smart Contracts and are optimized for scaling data rather than financial transactions.

Loom provides significant flexibility for developers creating Loom DApps through their SDK. This SDK allows them to choose their own Consensus Mechanism, build their own ruleset and release fully-contact node software that runnable on any cloud platform. It’s important to note that this SDK offers programming languages like JavaScript, which lowers the technical barrier. Loom also allows developers to integrate with traditional web APIs, which serves as a bridge between traditional web apps and Ethereum DApps.

What’s more, the Loom team is now in very early exploratory talks with the Plasma team about the possibility of incorporating Plasma into Loom DAppChains, which will provide further scalability to the Loom platform.

Loom has defined two major areas of focus, as described on the Loom website:

Games that truly cannot be built without the blockchain: provably scarce items, tradable tokens, eternal worlds, and multi-game-spanning universes. Loom aims to facilitate the creation of blockchain-based games on the scale of World of Warcraft and Starcraft, which would be near impossible with current network limitations. Social applications that are not driven by advertising, but instead monetizable via karma tokens (which are exchangeable for ERC20 tokens). These DApps are expandable via multiple-client apps, minimization of trust, and more. The Loom team has cited the issues facing DApps like EtherTweet, which cost upwards to a few dollars per tweet, depending on network conditions, as examples of current platforms that they hope to recreate more efficiently.

The Loom token (LOOM) is a membership token to Loom Network. Currently, there’s only one membership tier, the user tier, which requires a balance of 1 token. The user membership tier unlocks the ability to transfer tokens and data between Loom DAppChains and to Ethereum mainnet.

According to an April 2018 update by the Loom team where they announced the launch of their beta testing, the project stated that it currently has 5 internal projects at Loom and have allowed 4 external parties to join the beta.

CryptoZombies.io: Interactive Solidity Code School The Adventures of EtherBoy in Blockchain World: A side-scrolling action game that stores its state on a DAppChain. DelegateCall.com: First Question-and-Answer site on the blockchain. CryptoZombies Battlegrounds: Hearthstone-style Collectible card game, with purchasable decks. CryptoZombies Rancher: Pokemon style battle game, where you can grow, clone and mutate your zombies to give them powers to beat other players.

In that same announcement, Loom outlined the upcoming milestones for the 2nd quarter 2018:

Apr: 0.5 release, adding more users to the Golang SDK

0.5 release, adding more users to the Golang SDK May: 0.8 release of Solidity support, and opening beta up to more people

0.8 release of Solidity support, and opening beta up to more people June: 1.0 public beta release — the SDK will be opened up for all developers to use

Team

The Loom Network team, which is based out of Thailand, is led by James Duffy, Luke Zhang and Matthew Campbell. The team boasts a heavy focus on product delivery over superficial baseless claims. This approach has enabled them to secure a spot in the Winter 2018 Tech Stars New York startup class.

Token Financials

Loom Network (LOOM) currently has a market cap of ~$95 million with a circulating supply of 490,328,320 LOOM and a total supply of 1,000,000,000 LOOM.

Final Take

Loom Network is taking an interesting approach to building out a platform that actively works to solve the scaling issues related to the Ethereum blockchain. The project’s focus on games and social apps provides a path for network adoption, and the toolset they are crafting for developers significantly lowers the technical barrier to entry. Loom Network could increase significantly in value as it continues to expand this platform.

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Disclaimer: The author(s) of this article may have a position in one or more of the cryptocurrencies mentioned above. This article is for informational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice. Always conduct your own due diligence before making investments.