Loom Network — One Basechain to rule them all?

DappRadar Research

Scalability is one of the hottest topics in the world of blockchain and dapps.

This is especially the case for Ethereum. It remains the most popular blockchain for deploying dapps, but from CryptoKitties in late 2017 to more recent issues with gambling dapps such as FairWin, it’s suffered from serious network congestion.

Of course, there are different ways to solve such issues.

The move away from a Proof of Work consensus as part of Ethereum 2.0 is one, but in the meantime, we’ve seen an explosion in the number of Layer 2 solutions such as Loom Network’s Basechain (previously called PlasmaChain).

These allow developers to overcome scalability issues on a base layer by offloading operations to their own connected chains. In the case of Loom Network, its Basechain is a delegated Proof of Stake chain secured by more than 21 delegators.

Loom Network’s goal

When it comes to Loom Network’s approach, it’s not just about solving problems for developers. It makes the entire experience for users considerably more fluid too.

For one thing, there’s only a 1–3 second (average is 1.4 seconds) wait for transactions to be closed. Nor are there any gas fees. Developers will eventually pay a flat monthly fee to have their dapps run on the Basechain, although at this early state, developers can deploy their dapp by paying a promotional yearly fee of 1,400 LOOM tokens (currently around $30).

Users can be onboarded to dapps without needing a crypto wallet too, thanks to the inbuilt Loom Wallet. This means the process of using dapps becomes much more like using apps.

In this way, Loom promises the ease of using centralized services with all the advantages of a more decentralized infrastructure.

It’s also important to note that Loom has moved on from its initial goal of solving Ethereum’s scalability issues, attempting to become truly cross-platform, or what it calls the “universal Layer 2”.

The Basechain supports Ethereum, TRON, Binance Chain and Bitcoin, with EOS and Cosmos on its roadmap.

In this way, developers building their dapps using Loom’s Basechain will be able to deploy their dapps (or assets) across multiple chains, if they so desire.

Loom Network’s performance: token volumes

Performance can be measured in many different ways but in this report, we’re going to look at token volumes, active wallets, the number of dapps deployed, LOOM token pricing, and Loom’s future roadmap.

According to DappRadar data, the majority of token volumes during 2019 were generated by three dapps; Sorare ($210,000), Axie Infinity ($140,000-worth of tokens), and the Loom Marketplace ($15,000).

Many of the dapps currently deployed on Loom’s Basechain are games, although this is changing.

Axie Infinity is a collectible game using Ethereum for characters NFTs and Loom for ownership of its Land NFT, which is still in development.

Sorare is a collectible soccer game (also still in development and pre-sale) based around the ownership of real world players, while Loom Marketplace is a marketplace for Loom’s internally-developed game Relentless.

It is hard to draw any conclusions from the volatility of token volumes over the period, however, due to the fact that few of the dapps running on the Basechain are formally launched.

Loom Network’s performance: daily active wallets

The raw data tracking the number of daily unique wallets interacting with the Loom Basechain shows a patchy but definitely upward trend.

This isn’t surprising given the nascent state of most of its dapps. Another factor to consider is one of the most popular daps CryptoWars is only available in time-limited competitions — mainly over the weekends.

This gives rise to strong user peaks during these times; notably over 650 users on 31 August, which generated an all-time high for overall users on the Basechain.