Loom, the company behind the amazing Ethereum interactive programming lessons CryptoZombies has launched a new application – DelegateCall.

DelegateCall is like Stack Overflow (the popular Q&A site for programmers) but based on blockchain technology. It contextually shares elements of voting and rewards with the popular Steemit platform which uses mined crypto tokens to reward its authors for writing and curating good content.

Picture from the Loom blog

According to the Loom blog, the platform will reward users with ERC20 tokens for all “karma” earned (upvotes). These tokens will be tradeable on exchanges. To prevent scalability problems (too many comments, answers, upvotes), DelegateCall uses the sidechains method of scaling. They utilize secondary blockchains they call Dappchains.

Dappchain

Dappchains deserve their own post, but in a nutshell they're a side-chain next to Ethereum's main chain, like a little brother who stores his data on the main chain in given intervals as checkpoints.

Picture from https://medium.com/loom-network/million-user-dapps-on-ethereum-an-introduction-to-application-specific-sidechains-c0fdc288c5e5

This moves some server strain from the main chain to the nodes running the side chain, keeping the main Ethereum blockchain clear of trivial transactions like upvotes and thereby preventing the flood and crash we witnessed when Cryptokitties launched.

LoomX

LoomX or the Loom Network is a platform the Loom company is building for making new dappchains. Their SDK (Software Development Kit) is due for launch on March 14th 2018, and will allow developers around the world to focus on the logic of their app while their blockchain needs are all taken care of.

These Loom dappchains also come with additional capabilities surpassing traditional blockchains. For example, custom complex transaction types allow developers to define transactions specifically meant to transfer upvotes or create user accounts.

The very first LoomX application is precisely the aforementioned DelegateCall platform.

DelegateCall

DelegateCall lives on its own DelegateCall dappchain. All questions, answers and votes are saved there using Loom's dPoS consensus method.

Because all transactions are saved on the DelegateCall blockchain, it's very easy to build a blockexplorer for it and check the transactions individually. All the information is public, just like with any other real blockchain. Here's a DelegateCall answer saved on the blockchain:

Technical

Skip this part if the technical side of things doesn't interest you.

DelegateCall.com is a Ruby on Rails application which pulls data from MySQL which gets updated whenever a new transaction is saved into the DelegateCall dappchain. The page we see when we open DelegateCall.com is nothing more than a pleasant interface to the dappchain, much like MyEtherWallet is for the Ethereum blockchain – just a UI for interacting with it.

The DelegateCall dappchain can be interacted with even without the DelegateCall.com website – it's just a collection of buttons and input fields for easier usage.

Loom.js is a JavaScript library for communicating with Loom dappchains from the browser. Loom.js is used for building interfaces that let users communicate with a dappchain.

When a user executes an action like writing a question or answer or voting, Loom.js takes control and generates a transaction which is then sent to the dappchain for confirmation. The user is not even aware of this happening.

After the transaction has been confirmed on the dappchain, the aforementioned DelegateCall.com RoR application notices the change on the chain, copies the information into the database, and serves it from there to achieve the illusion of speed and responsiveness of the modern web.

Conclusion

The Loom company is one of the rare and much needed pioneers of new technology in this almost as new field of blocks and chains. The launch of LoomX and the Loom SDK will enable rapid growth in the ecosystem, ushering big changes – especially in the area of usability and dapp and game development.

DelegateCall is the first such app – join the platform today and try out the first generation of the decentralized web.

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