Loom Network SDK Alpha Release — First 5 DAppChains Announced + SDK Roadmap
Updates:
- We publicly released the Loom SDK beta in June, 2018. Check out the announcement and the docs site.
- We now also have 3 shared DAppChains running in production: PlasmaChain, GameChain, and SocialChain.
In mid-March, Loom Network officially went live, with the launch of DelegateCall — the first DApp running 100% on a Loom Network DAppChain.
This is big news for the Ethereum community: It’s one of the first examples of a highly scalable and performant DApp running on a sidechain backed by Ethereum, and even Vitalik took notice. (We’re now in very early exploratory talks with the Plasma team about the possibility of incorporating Plasma into Loom DAppChains).
We announced a beta application for developers to test the Loom SDK, and have been amazed by the response — we’ve received a wave of applications from developers working on really interesting DApps that simply aren’t possible with the current infrastructure due to scaling limitations.
Today with the Alpha release of the Loom SDK, we’re starting to give the very first of these developers access to start building on Loom Network.
Update for developers who have applied
For those who have applied and haven’t heard from us yet, take a deep breath, we are just starting to open up the beta now.
Currently we have 5 internal projects at Loom (see below for details). We also have allowed 4 external parties to join our beta.
Over the next 2 weeks we plan to open up to more projects, with an initial focus on projects focused around games and social apps, and we will continue to slowly trickle in more teams over time.
Timeline
- Apr: 0.5 release, adding more users to the Golang SDK
- May: 0.8 release of Solidity support, and opening beta up to more people
- June: 1.0 public beta release — the SDK will be opened up for all developers to use
Cost to developers
There are no ongoing fees — developers simply need to own enough Loom tokens to cover their usage tier. Buy once, use forever.
We have explained in more detail how the Loom Token will work for developers in this post:
Internal Projects
1. CryptoZombies.io — Interactive Solidity Code School
The famous CryptoZombies code school that has had over 150k users is being converted to a DAppChain. We are super excited as it means on day 1, it will be one of the largest sidechains in the blockchain world.
2. The Adventures of EtherBoy in Blockchain World
A side-scrolling action game that stores its state on a DAppChain. It allows items, achievements, and other rewards to be transferred off the DAppChain onto Ethereum mainnet.
3. DelegateCall.com
Needs no introduction, but the first Question-and-Answer site on the blockchain. Learn more about it how DelegateCall uses DAppChains.
Delegatecall was the first proving ground for DAppChains. It has now processed over 18,000 blocks and is still running strong.
We’ll be continuing to make further improvements over the coming weeks, stay tuned for updates.
4. CryptoZombies Battlegrounds
Hearthstone-style Collectible card game, with purchasable decks. Should be fun to see a PvP game on a blockchain.
Cards are provably rare and can be traded freely on the blockchain as non-fungible tokens. Lots of interesting challenges in building this, we will post in upcoming blog posts.
5. CryptoZombies Rancher
Pokemon style battle game, where you can grow, clone and mutate your zombies to give them powers to beat other players. With all battles on DAppChains, and cross chain transfers with Ethereum, this is an exciting project.
Features of the Loom SDK
We’ll be slowly releasing more and more details and documentation around the SDK in the coming months, but here is a top-level overview:
Blockchain Features
- Tokens — ERC20 compatible
- Tokens — ERC721 Non-fungible compatible (Think CryptoKitties)
- pBFT Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance
- DPoS Delegated Proof of Stake
- Transactional DataStore
- Protobuf support
- Migration Framework
- Hard Fork Manager
- Golang Smart Contract support (Solidity coming soon, see below)
- Unity client SDK (.NET)
- Javascript client SDK
- InterBlockchain Communication, see below
Cross-Blockchain Features
- Ethereum Connectivity
- Coin copying and transfering between chains
- Allow assets like ERC721 tokens to be mirrored into the DAppChain
- Pegging (this is in future releases)
Gaming Features
- Matchmaking
- Online Presence (Messaging in later releases)
Conclusion
This was a whirlwind update on all the progress from the Loom SDK Beta. We have gotten a sampling of all the 5 internal DAppChains at Loom, which should give you a good idea of the types of apps that will be supported by the SDK.
Stay tuned — we will be breaking down each part in technical detail in upcoming blog posts!
All this look good? Sign the beta application to get it early!
Loom Network is the multichain interop platform for scaling high-performance dapps — already live in production, audited, and battle-tested.
Deploy your dapp to Loom’s Basechain once and reach the widest possible user base across all major blockchains today.
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