Blockchain interoperability: what is it for?
At Sorare we believe that public blockchains empower individuals. That’s the reason why we want to bring crypto-assets to the hands of millions of people.
Sorare allows you to collect and play with officially licensed football Player Cards (represented by Non Fungible Tokens).
We also know that decentralization comes at the cost of complexity and performance.
We must do the right technology choices, which means choosing the right blockchain. It is a difficult choice since every blockchain has its own benefits and drawbacks.
This is where interoperability comes into play. Basically interoperability allows you to transfer tokens between blockchains with the constraint that a token can only be used on one blockchain at a time.
Why we started with Loom PlasmaChain?
Loom PlasmaChain started off as an Ethereum sidechain allowing to offload some transactions from Ethereum. Loom PlasmaChain relies on Delegate Proof-of-Stake for its consensus delivering high throughput and gas-less transactions.
Those are highly desirable properties when driving mainstream adoption. Users who are not familiar with the cryptocurrency ecosystem are not prepared to wait dozens of seconds and pay each time they interact with a web or mobile app.
Thanks to Loom PlasmaChain we’ve been able to develop decentralized English auctions with one second bid confirmation times.
Of course there is a trade-off as Loom PlasmaChain is arguably less decentralized than its mainchain Ethereum which relies on Proof-of-Work and for which anyone willing to run a full-node could verify and monitor transactions.
Do we still need Ethereum and interoperability?
Besides its fully decentralized consensus mechanism, Ethereum has one of the most active community and flourishing ecosystem.
I think a very good example is wallets. Users that want to collect and play with our football player cards will need a wallet. Building a secure and user friendly wallet is not our core business. But thanks to the Ethereum ecosystem there are plenty out there that do a very good job.
We are also planning a special sale on OpenSea which is one of the largest NFT marketplace. So interoperability allows us to reach a wider audience and benefit from network effects.
We believe that blockchain interoperability reinforces true ownership. By offering interoperability we allow our users to decide where they want their tokens to be stored. Since Loom PlasmaChain was launched it progressively evolved from an Ethereum sidechain to a standalone blockchain inter-operable with many public blockchains such as Tron, EOS or Cosmos.
How does interoperability work?
Loom PlasmaChain and Ethereum both have an escrow account in the form of a smart contract.
When a card is produced on Loom PlasmaChain and transferred to a user the exact same card is produced on Ethereum and transferred to the escrow account. Only the card living on the Loom PlasmaChain can freely circulate.
If the user wants to transfer the card to Ethereum, he transfers his Loom PlasmaChain card into the Loom PlasmaChain escrow account in exchange of which he receives a deposit receipt. The user provides the deposit receipt to the Ethereum escrow account which releases the Ethereum card. Now the PlasmaChain card is locked in the escrow account and the Ethereum card can freely circulate.
In a nutshell, blockchain interoperability gives additional freedom to our users and allows us to fully benefit from the overall blockchain ecosystem.
