TomoChain — Lition AMA Recap

On 30 Oct, 2020, TomoChain was thrilled to be hosting an AMA with Lition Blockchain on TomoChain’s official Youtube channel.

This AMA remarked a new milestone towards the future of both projects as TomoChain officially acquires the enterprise blockchain unit of Lition, turning the relationship into a new leaf. Mr. Long Vuong — CEO of TomoChain and Dr. Richard Lohwasser revealed the key information about the unprecedented M&A and the business plan for both projects, with host Kyn Chaturvedi connecting the two speakers to both communities.

Below is a summary of the AMA.

Segment 1: Greetings and Projects’ introduction

Long: My name is Long Vuong — the founder and CEO of TomoChain.

TomoChain is one of the scalable, low-fee public chain and we have been working on the project since 2017. We launched the mainnet in December 2018 and we have been continually building the ecosystem on TomoChain since then. One of the key themes I believe in is cryptocurrency and blockchain technology is going to change finance and create a new infrastructure for financial products and services. We focus on that and actually, now we have not only our own public chain but also some applications such as TomoX, TomoZ and TomoDEX.

We will continue our path of building relevant products and services for our end-users to be adopted in the next 5–10 years.

Richard: Actually, Lition is a blockchain technology infrastructure and we started it off with the use case in energy which is now running and serving real electricity to over 10,000 customers household in Germany. But then we realized that we need a blockchain infrastructure that is capable of this and that’s why we developed the Lition blockchain which is a scalable and data privacy savvy blockchain to meet requirements from the European data protection rules that mainly require users to delete data. Literally, it is a deletable blockchain which might sound a little bit weird but our engineers were able to make it. We successfully launched a testnet in 2018 and launched the mainnet about one month ago. Lition has these two parts including the scalable deletable blockchain and the use cases but now we have separated the two parts as we blocked the infrastructure part being acquired by TomoChain.

Segment 2: Acquisition discussion

Q: What was the core reason behind the decision where do you guys both see the synergies between Lition and TomoChain and what do you see as the future for the combined entities?

Long: I think the Lition is a very valuable addition to our team as it adds the dimension of product technology and business development to TomoChain. There are elements that I’m very excited like the fact that Lition is a deletable blockchain that is suitable for some enterprise use cases.

We want to incorporate that point in the TomoChain’s technology stack and bring it to the bigger use cases in Asia and around the world as well. Actually, we want to focus on the financial sector in which security is paramount and in fact, Lition puts a lot of emphasis on data control for end-users. I think if we want to bring blockchain technology to serve big financial institutions such as banks or governments, we want to bring the best technology we can to the table. So that’s what I think the sum of Lition technology and TomoChain technology is even bigger than each part and that’s what made me very excited about the merge between two teams.

Richard: Actually, we’ve been knowing each other for one and a half years now and both companies come from a technology mindset, not from a marketing mindset. Both companies started relatively early, have a deep down in the technology trenches and understand that we need the business component to succeed. From a personality and from a skill point of view, this is a very matching area where we are very similar. Actually, we are not very similar in geography as Lition is a European project and TomoChain is an Asian project but this is great because blockchain doesn’t have boundaries or borders, it is international. If we want to tackle the really big use cases and that’s what it’s all about in the end, then we need to have an entity that is very powerful, not European, not Asian but global. We need to have an entity that doesn’t just have a mainnet like TomoChain or doesn’t just have a side chain like Lition but both. It doesn’t have a couple of engineers on one side or on the other side but it will have many engineers. Therefore, only with a strong company like this, there is a viable chance that we can really transform and disrupt the finance industry and therefore, make a very lasting and sustainable blockchain solution, not just for a few technical people that love blockchain but for the mass market.

Q: So how do you see these two entities operating and will there be any kind of an overlap between the two entities moving forward?

Richard: For the last one and a half years, the entity has been operating independently already anyway. There are two legal entities, including Lition technology AG incorporated in Liechtenstein for the infrastructure business and Lition energy GmbH incorporated in Germany. The team is either dedicated to one area or dedicated to the other area with me and Kyung as an exception so I think it won’t really change too much. However, in the long term, the focus of the company or also a person like me on two projects is always a little bit difficult to tackle, and I personally will now focus more on the energy side which, in turn, will lead to more transactions because we will likely get more energy customers, and therefore, the more fees and Lition tokens are generated

I think, in the end, it’s actually something good, in order to scale largely which we’re currently doing in the energy business. The blockchain infrastructure needs to be rock solid and I think we are very good engineers but our whole company isn’t just exclusively dedicated to technology. This is very different from TomoChain which has a lots resources, power and experience in developing blockchains. Therefore, I think, in the end, the energy business will benefit and also the blockchain business will benefit, to create the larger bigger entity where in the end i think they’re actually even no losers. That is the beauty of this well-prepared acquisition

Q: Since Lition sidechain solution is staying on ethereum, does this signal a shift of strategy for TomoChain’s blockchain development away from TomoChain itself?

It’s actually the river because with the merge with Lition, we can bring the sidechain technology from Ethereum to TomoChain and adds more strength and resiliency on TomoChain’s public chain.

That’s great because our proposition to end-users and to clients is much stronger now. We don’t just have a public chain but we have a sidechain business that can serve different use cases. I think the combination of Lition into the TomoChain’s public chain will have an immediate effect thus we can enter the market and wait for the project upward to 10–20- 30 bil dollars instead of 5000–1 million dollars projects before. Now, we can do a lot more, starting from 10 million, 20 million and maybe even more. When we grow and we can do more things, I think we will strengthen our brand and our case of being a premier enterprise blockchain provider in the space. As a founder of TomoChain, I believe we have a strong plan to grow TomoChain further in the future. Ethereum has its strength but now they are still working on their own improvement meanwhile TomoChain has its own track and with this acquisition, we can bring Lition into the TomoChain’s ecosystem and make its way more stronger.

Segment 3: Community questions

Q1: What this acquisition means for the Lition tokens itself and the purpose of the Lition’s side chain post-acquisition?

Long: The immediate plan after the acquisition is we still have the two entities Lition and TomoChain operating quite independently, so Lition staking is still staying on Ethereum and collecting the reward like before. We bring Lition from Ethereum to TomoChain so Lition token holders can enjoy the low-fee and fast transaction on TomoChain and the different experiences as well, compared with Ethereum.

The main goal of Lition is to be the enterprise division of the TomoChain ecosystem and the Lition token holders will enjoy the benefit of the technology serving the enterprise clients. Here is the point that we come from the end-users’ standpoint. They’re going to choose the technology that benefits them most, and they can choose between the public chain of TomoChain or the side chain of Lition.

When we have all the technology, we can meet the client’s needs and they can choose the technology product that fits their needs. The token value coming from building the right products that are serving end-users and enterprises.

Richard:

This question is something I can understand very well. I hold my LIT tokens and now Lition is being bought by another company, so what happens with my tokens? A lot of uncertainty. Both TomoChain and Lition discussed this topic extensively in the preparation. We want to have a solution where the future of the LIT token is better than it was before, and we have also developed incentive systems and everything surrounding to make sure that the future of the Lition token definitely comes from a technological point of view.

As Long mentioned earlier, the LIT tokens will be the benefits for enterprise clients as it’s a lot better to sell this token to enterprises, so I think this is actually a very strong signal for anyone holding LIT

Q2: Are there plans to migrate the Lition token staking and node operations to TomoChain? How will the TRC21 LIT tokens be utilized besides for trading?

Long: The staking operation ‘ll still stay on Ethereum, like before. We moved some of the Lition token to TomoChain for listing and for the future use case as people need to use the Lition token, but you can expect most of the staking and token operation stay the same.

Q3: About the potential that the project can bring and achieves the set goals, how to attract new users and new investors to join $LIT and $TOMO after the acquisition and maintain long-term investment?

Long: We’re having spending time with Lition team for the last 6 months right and I’m very excited with the acquisition. Many people are still not realizing that the entity after this acquisition will be much stronger, much bigger than the two team used to be. We are very competitive from now on and we can attract new users, even more new investors because we can win a bigger development and make the integration. That’ll be thing we’ll show in the future with our continuous effort on business development and technology development.

Segment 4: Closing Messages from Richard and Long.

Richard: This marks a huge milestone in both teams, in the terms of the Lition world but also in the TomoChain world and I think also it’s relatively unique in the blockchain space. If we draw some analysis from the traditional business world, acquisitions are normal and if you think about the really successful growth stories like Google and Apple, this world’s full of acquisitions. Because companies have realized that one plus one is not two but one plus one is three and that acquisitions create larger bigger entities.

We both Lition and TomoChain are an enterprise blockchain focusing on catering and delivering services to the real world and this is also just natural for us to be among the first in the blockchain space to also venture down this route to create a new future which is prepared a lot better for a digitalized and disruptive world than it is now.

Long: We are long-term investors and operators in this space and we have a longer vision than most of the people in the crypto space have. We are willing to spend the next 5–10 years continuously invest in technology product and business development to bring technology and utility to the world.

With Lition, we’re definitely going to do well, both from the tokens and from the products’ standpoint. I definitely think just 2–3 years from now, what we have will much ten times as what we have now.

About TomoChain

TomoChain exists as a scalable blockchain-powered via the advanced Proof-of-Stake Voting consensus and is used commercially by companies globally. Its mission is to accelerate the worldwide adoption of blockchain technology by empowering today’s applications with technology that masks the friction of blockchain, all while retaining its underlying benefits.

TomoChain’s technology and DeFi-focused flagship products include:

• Fast & Near-Zero Fees: 2000 TPS, 2-second block time, ~$0 gas fees, and EVM compatible
• An array of original features and protocols is designed to support speed, privacy, usability, and liquidity needs all in one platform.