Lition Roadmap 2020
2019 was a year of growth for the Lition project. We came of age, and launched the first iteration of our Mainnet. Lition Energy became one of the fastest-growing independent energy sellers in Germany. We also achieved many partnerships that have put us in a great position to take on the New Year. We want to thank the Lition community for their support throughout 2019 and are pleased to share our plans and vision for 2020 with you.
Q1 2020
Fix the IBFT Consensus Issue on the Blockchain
The Lition Mainnet suffered a significant setback when it stopped mining blocks due to an issue with the IBFT Consensus that was used for it. With nodes unable to reach consensus, we had to downgrade the mainnet to beta status. As at the end of the year, we have succeeded in maintaining significant uptime on the blockchain, and even more importantly, we have been able to add more nodes to the mainnet for further stress testing. The critical goal in Q1 is to find a lasting solution to the Consensus issue and achieve production-ready uptime. We will address this more in detail in an upcoming update.
New Web Presence
The project has grown since the crowdfunding stage, and the website needs to reflect this evolution. Therefore, we are developing a new website, and are in the final stages of releasing it to the community. The new website will be more indicative of where we are now as a project and oriented to acquire new business customers for our technology. This will form a significant part of an intensive marketing campaign this year.
Industry-Specific toolkit (SDK) for the energy market
Our energy sidechain has been flourishing, and seeing growth in transactions and adoption as Lition Energy continues to expand. Releasing an SDK in Q1 will help to provide new customers with the tools, libraries, documentation, and code required to create new sidechains and join the Lition ecosystem. Our energy use case has been very successful, and this is a step further to make it easier for the other businesses in the energy market to use our solution and/or our implementation service. This will ultimately create more demand for the Lition token as well as help to increase cash flow for Lition’s continued growth and expansion.
Integration of Gas as Product into the Energy Use Case
Lition Energy is already one of the highly-rated green electricity platforms in Germany. We’re pleased to announce that we are in the final stages of becoming a licensed gas provider as well. We are already in the process of setting up the sales funnel and infrastructure to be market ready so we can begin onboarding the first customers.We expect to be serving gas customers by the end of Q1 2020. This new development benefits our community as it will lead to a significant increase in the volume of transactions that the Energy sidechain processes.
Q2 2020
Launch of the Syndicated Loans dApp Sidechain
We released the MVP of our Syndicated Loan dApp in April last year. The loan sidechain will serve customers of Volks- und Raiffeisenbank (VR-Bank) and handle all the live data for a real estate project. Initial trials have shown encouraging results, and we plan to build on this and launch it from testnet to a full sidechain.
We expect to see significant transaction volumes on the Loans sidechain, including lending data, mortgage records, and other backend processes of loan syndication that will now be replaced by the Lition Loan dApp. The sidechain is expected to support the creation, transfer, and trading of syndicated loans on the blockchain with deletability baked in from launch. We will share more details about this in an upcoming update.
Launch of the Blockchain Certificates dApp Sidechain
Our partnership with Lawpilots began in May 2019. Further to that, the use case has been completed and launched. The next step is to start the use-case on the sidechain so that the e-learning provider can put certificates and other vital documents on the blockchain and make them available for immutable verification. The dApp currently allows participants to upload certificates and prove ownership through a unique identifier called a hash. The launch of the sidechain will see significant improvement in the use case, an upgrade of the software dApp, and more marketing efforts to boost usage and adoption.
Launching the sidechain will also be followed up with engaging more companies in the industry that we have identified towards as likely collaborators and drive more usage of the use case and sidechain.
We understand that launching two more use cases as sidechains will see the blockchain get more active and require more nodes to be operational. We are prepared for this and ensure that we are ready to implement these milestones according to schedule.
Industry-specific toolkit (SDK) for blockchain certificates
Releasing an industry-specific SDK will help to provide new businesses with tools, libraries, documentation, and code required to implement their own document verification solutions using a Lition sidechain. The intention here is to provide as much support as possible for organizations joining the Lition ecosystem, and thus creating more usage and demand for the token.
Extension of Lition Energy Use Case with Solar Panels
Germany already has one of the highest solar power outputs in the world, and the country is primed for a new wave in solar expansion. Lition will be diving further into the solar power industry by offering solar power installations to consumers and businesses. Customers who purchase or lease an installation will be set up to sell their excess electricity directly to other households through the Lition Energy dApp, resulting in better ROI for the customer and even more transactions taking place on the Lition Energy sidechain.
Step by step Lition is taking steps to increase traction for the energy sidechain. By providing all the tools for consumers to produce and sell energy to other households, we are pushing decentralization in the energy sector and expanding our energy use case to achieve greater adoption and benefits in 2020 and beyond.
Once these solar installations are rolled out here in germany with real customers, we will expand this concept outside of Germany. Our active partners Nesa Capital would offer an ideal gateway into the sunlight-rich country of South Africa.
Q3 2020
Accepting Lition as Payment for Electricity
Lition Energy customers can already pay their bills using EUR or Bitcoin. In addition to that, we have been working hard since 2019 to complete the necessary regulatory requirements for making $LIT a payment vehicle as well. Based on the status of current processes, we expect to include our token $LIT in Q3 as part of the payment methods for Lition Energy customers.
This is a significant step towards increasing the utility of the token and demand. LIT payments will be launched alongside a marketing drive with discounts and other offers to drive adoption. The long-term goal is to make LIT tokens the preferred payment option for all services on the Lition Protocol. Considering that we expect sidechains to expand to new regions, it is essential to have real utility of the token. It also increases payment flexibility for all our users.
Mainnet 2.0 (one-click deployment, increased scalability, open API layer)
The most significant milestone we hope to achieve by Q3 is to relaunch the Mainnet 2.0. The new version will include the one-click deployment of dApps, sidechains and processes, increased scalability on the sidechains, increased node capacity, and more robust staking to provide support for the Protocol.
Mainnet 2.0 will mark the introduction of an open API layer to the mainnet, which we will invite developers to explore. Our vision for Mainnet 2.0 is to have a platform that enterprises can launch sidechains on, and individuals can utilize to run their dApps and other processes. The API layer will also provide more utility opportunities for the LIT token in line with our vision for 2020.
Business Development: More Use-cases
The Lition Ecosystem signed on a number of partners in 2019. Our goal in 2020 is to expand the Ecosystem even further. The focus will be empowering current partners to establish more use-cases on the Lition Protocol. We expect to continue and deepen our engagement with Asia. Expansion into Asia has been slow as with most European projects, but we have reliable and experienced partners in Tomochain and Fantom. We expect to begin leveraging these partnerships, as well as others that are currently in the pipeline.
Data protection laws in Asia are becoming increasingly popular, with Thailand introducing its first data protection law in May 2019. More and more businesses will be forced to adhere to these new regulations. Asia-Pacific businesses who have European customers are also interested in the effects of GDPR and how it applies to them. This presents a unique opportunity for Lition to fill a need through its private-public blockchain that is fully compliant with European GDPR. The Protocol can also be modified to provide blockchain solutions to enterprises in Asia who want to meet all legal obligations in Europe.
The Lition whitepaper sheds light on a number of industries where Lition Protocol can find use cases and we plan to explore all options and aggressively grow the Ecosystem this year.
Q4 2020
Accepting Lition as Payment for Other Use Cases
We are aiming to integrate a payment for the Lition token for enterprises that utilize our sidechains or dApps. Enabling LIT as the primary means of payment for all use-cases on the Lition Protocol will boost the utility of the Lition token. It will also strengthen the community and staking potential of the token.
Lition Governance
Community has always been an important part of our vision and given that many aspects of Mainnet 2.0 involve the community, on-chain governance is the logical step in our development. On-chain governance solutions for blockchain will introduce some forms of democracy. Right now, the company is fully centralized and gives some leeway via the Lition Foundation. Implementing Lition Governance will bring into consideration, the views of the community; stakers, node runners and token holders.
While there are many different ways on-chain governance can be implemented, we are still in the early days of this. The extent to which we introduce on-chain governance is still undecided at this moment as there are a lot of challenges to decentralizing the governing structure of a blockchain system. While it typically works in small groups, it has sometimes proven worrisome in larger communities.
We are, however, studying many models and projects, considering their different approaches, and looking forward to exploring all the exciting possibilities that this step will bring to the Lition Ecosystem.
Energy use case expansion in other European countries
We aim to acquire licenses for different countries in Europe, where we can become energy providers. Specifically, there is already a lot of progress in expanding to the Netherlands and Austria in particular where there is a lot of interest from independent power producers. Initial talks are promising and we will continue to pursue this actively. Expanding to other European countries will see a significant boost in the Energy use case.
Wrapping Up
Our plans this year are quite ambitious, and we also understand that getting the Mainnet back to full production status is key to these plans. All hands are on deck, and we are not sparing any expense or effort in making sure everything goes to plan. We are excited to start a new year and get to work on making our goals into reality. Of course, we are grateful that we can always count on your support. Thank you for being part of this amazing ride with us.
