LTO Network:Q&A
Ivan Golovko — CMO
1. So many blockchains projects focused on business, why LTO is the answer?
As a business, you don’t want to see or feel the change when using a blockchain solution. You want to keep working with the same systems without having to change everything around. LTO Network’s solution works exactly like that. Instead of making proprietary products, we focus on businesses in an indirect approach, through integrators. They make sure our software works for the clients. For example, we don’t need to build a workflow application and try to push it for companies to use — we integrate with existing workflow tools and immediately get all that usage companies and integrators already have, onto the network, transactions, staking.
End users are not confronted with our tokens, since the integrators or independent software providers buy and manage these tokens for them. Next to that, they can keep using their existing systems without the need to change their entire infrastructure.
2. Why LTO is unique, better than the other projects and why it will thrive?
There is no lack of great blockchain projects. But all of them seem to suffer from the same problem; little to no adoption. Or on the other hand, no token usage yet a great produce. We found a niche in-between decentralization ideals and smooth adoption thanks to LTO hybrid architecture.
LTO Network is unique in its simplicity. What we do is technically simple, but that’s where the beauty and ease of adoption comes from. We have multiple working use cases, and since we work with integrators that integrate the technology for us, we can completely dedicate our time to realizing adoption. While end clients don’t need to worry about tokens, all that usage transposes onto the network in the form of transactions, increasing the value of the network.
3. How will LTO simplify the usage of crypto for mass adoption?
By focusing on training Independent Software Vendors and Integrators on how to make use of LTO Network’s solutions, end users or businesses don’t need to know what cryptocurrencies are, nor will they have to touch them. Businesses will always be able to keep working with the systems they’re already working with. We as the back-end toolkit increase efficiency and security, by cutting costs and automating processes.
4. Who is behind LTO? Backgrounds?
Arnold Daniels, Co-Founder and Tech Lead: lead engineer at Cloud9 (acquired by Amazon in 2017), launched a few software products in the Netherlands. https://www.linkedin.com/in/arnolddaniels/
https://twitter.com/ArnoldDaniels
Rick Schmitz, CEO: previously tax lawyer at Deloitte and private equity at PwC. Previous experience in co-founding Firm24 and driving it to 10% market share. https://www.linkedin.com/in/rschmitz/
Martijn Migchelsen, CFO: manager corporate finance at PwC and private financial consulting. https://www.linkedin.com/in/migchelsen
5. How is/was LTO funded?
We had a seed investment round in December 2017, private sale in December 2018 and our public sale was just in January this year. We raised a total of 4 million dollars and approach this as a proper traditional startup: try an idea, build, achieve some product-market fit, move further.
6. Plans for exchanges?
We can’t comment on this too much, but we don’t ignore volatility as blockchain is not just tech, but also value exchange and community. We’re always looking for what is best for our integrators and the community, but we don’t just waste the runway money if we don’t see the impact for either of the groups. For example, when you want to add yet another exchange, ask yourself “is it better to spend this money on something else, or will I actually get new community members or buying power by listing here?” Quite often the answer is “no”.
7. What is/will be LTO marketing plan?
Without a good community, a cryptocurrency can’t survive. Because of that, we’re always trying to retain and grow our community by keeping everyone engaged and entertained. We have different groups where they help us out with business development, technology and marketing in exchange for rewards. We don’t just make updates, community members can literally influence the trajectory of LTO Network.
Apart from that ,we’re always approaching new integrators and ISV’s to integrate LTO Network with their clients. To improve this, we keep updating and improving our demo’s, guides and tutorials to make it as comprehensible as possible for everyone involved.
8. What the governance of LTO will be like by 2020?
The governance of our blockchain is and will always be completely permissionless in order to keep a level playing field for all parties involved.
9. What current partnerships LTO has and what will be its purpose?
Some of our biggest partnerships are currently with Capptions and SignRequest.
SignRequest revolutionizes the way we sign. They anchor all digital signatures on the LTO Network for proof-of-existence. The possibility of implementing decentralized workflows for SignRequest is definitely there. With their integration, it adds over 1M users to our network.
Capptions are dealing with environmental inspections carried out by the Dutch government, Oil terminal inspections for parties like Fujairah Oil and safeguarding re-fueling of thousands of aircraft's at Schiphol airport. The inspection app handles sensitive and vital data so immutability is critical. They’re integrating anchoring for their workflow applications. Every step in the workflow application is hashed and anchored on the LTO Network public blockchain. This provides time-stamping and ensures the integrity of digital data. An immutable audit trail can be shared with regulators, clients or value-chain partners in a secure way.
https://docs.lto.network/project/company-area/adoption
There are a lot more, we have over 20,000 daily transactions by making us a top-20 most used blockchain according to Blocktivity, and more so we have over 11% of total supply staked, in our non-inflationary Proof of Stake model, and it’s growing every week!
10. Please explain LTO products
LTO Network basically consists of two engines, thanks to the hybrid architecture. They both work in unison, always utilizing the token: anchoring and decentralized workflows.
Anchoring on a blockchain is a simple and cheap way to notarize documents and timestamp data. You can provide indisputable proof of existence by securing a hash on the LTO Network public blockchain: https://anchor-demo.lto.network/demo. The engine is able to facilitate multiple products: security of digital data, time-stamping workflow steps for audits, digital signatures, etc.
LTO Network also enables organizations to run B2B-workflows in a decentralized way, where parties participate via their own node. Just as in the real world, when parties conclude an agreement, the execution of this agreement needs to be take place in the correct way. LTO Network uses decentralized workflows called Live Contracts to automate these procedures. Live Contracts contain instructions for both humans and systems on the actions that need to be executed. All parties involved in the Live Contract validate each others’ actions and secure data submissions.
11. What’s the ballpark figure of a heavy implementation on a large enterprise?
We don’t charge businesses directly. Every integrator that uses our software is free to charge their clients whatever they want to. Some projects focus on tenders, but we shifted away from it, because tenders are very lengthy, time-consuming, and don’t utilize the network too much.
We focus on creating value for clients and the network here and today!
12. A token is ultimately needed, why not go tokenless?
In the future, our goal is to make the platform completely self-sustainable, which addressed the need for a good token economy. To ensure the security of our private layer, we needed a big public layer. So it had to be with a token.
Private blockchains do not use tokens. Instead, the network value is represented in the authority of the selected group of companies. In other words, access to the network is exclusive, and is based on some criteria of the governing parties.With the governing structure established and industry adoption reached, the authori-tative parties have little to no economic incentive to redistribute power by adding new members. With the ability to accept or reject newcomers, such setups are likely to lead to cartels.On public permissionless blockchains, especially in the case of PoS, the network has an economic value that is represented in the underlying tokens. If tokens are publicly available, anyone is able to join the network and become a validator.
The beauty of the blockchain is its censorship-resistance and trust-less execution, which are only possible due to decentralization of validators. The hybrid approach basically takes the best out of the two worlds. You can check out our product design history in the Token Paper:
https://docs.lto.network/project/official-sources
What’s next?
Our narrative of Adoption is going well? Yes. Then it’s time for new horizons and new achievements. Expanding the scope and the solutions — read about how we started evolving and what to expect: https://blog.lto.network/ecosystem-v-evolution-of-lto-network-updated-roadmap/
So what can this relate to? In research, joint collaborations with media and universities. In funding, incubation of projects and access to the new capital. Next to that: talent acquisition, community growth, and so on. But let’s start with marketplace and how we will build the blockchain ecosystem of Europe.
LTO Network Resources
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