Ecosystem V: Evolution of LTO Network. Updated roadmap.
Thank you for coming to our Blockchain AfterParty! Last year, at a similar event held at our office, we were still a small project, trying to grow the community. 12 months after that, we presented as an established blockchain company with an amazing community and an astonishing run in Q1 and Q2 – with multiple partners building on LTO Network – and more joining every month.
But let’s not stop here. It’s time for a change…
Here is a little guide to help you with the logic flow:
- Q1-Q2 have been great. Why? Distributed Workforce – the community has the power to make changes and see the impact of their work
- How does that affect adoption? We work with integrators, and not with the end users – much easier to speed everything up
- We changed the way incentives work within a company – now we will change it among companies.
- Presenting Ecosystem V: the marketplace will be the first one to shine.
- Roadmap vision: elaborating on major milestones
What you are looking at is a product-market fit. It’s hard to get there, we had our fair share of tries. But LTO Network has been growing at a staggering 15% per week! And the thing is, we didn’t do this ourselves. So how did this happen?
Distributed Workforce
Traction wasn’t the result of hard work of only the LTO team, because the work that has been done is actually impossible to do with 25 people. A decentralized workforce existing of 4 core groups was formed by LTO supporters over time. These communities around LTO Network grew across different countries, languages, and specialties.
We have 4 core groups:
- Tech supporters helping with setting up nodes, setting up deployment guides to run a node in every thinkable cloud platform;
- Marketing crew running Twitter campaigns, making memes, youtube videos and blog posts to spread the word about LTO solutions;
- Community managers fuelling the traction in Turkey, Spain, China, Korea, and other countries in native languages;
- Business banders bringing new prospects and warm introductions for potential new clients.
Working with end clients through integrators
This brought in the prospects, however, handling so many leads and educating every single one of them is really labor-intensive. Traction slows down if your organization does not scale at the same pace. So we changed the strategy of how we approach clients. We went from a direct client approach to an indirect client approach. With this strategy, we have to spend less time on education. We provide tooling, training programs and API’s so that they are able to make money by implementing our solution.
We distinguish 2 groups:
- Independent software vendors → Software applications which can anchor data on LTO Layer 1 public permissionless blockchain to secure the integrity of digital data. Here is a detailed business pitch.
- System integrators → Companies and providers utilizing LTO Layer 2 decentralized workflow engine to automate processes and solve the issues of data silos. Here is a detailed business pitch.
This approach is paying off as we are adding new partners, integrators, ISV’s, research collaborations – faster than ever before. We are all doing business with these organizations on an individual basis, however, they don’t benefit from each other.
Over 7 years of developing within the software and the legal tech world, we have established a vast network of companies, software providers, venture capital, policymakers, and so on. But right now it’s scattered. There is nothing to really unite them. You can refer to it as the “silos of incentives” in a way. There is no reason for companies to work together or somehow benefit from each other.
Why? It’s because of misaligned incentives.
Change the way incentives work
We have already changed it with the community, by showing that a Distributed Workforce holds a very strong value proposition – and now we want to spread these effects among companies, software providers, integrators.
Think about it this way. In traditional equity models, there is a pyramid of how the incentives are structured within the company. A few shareholders are reaping all the benefits of the hard work the rest of the employees put into it. You work hard as a small guy, but you barely see the impact of your work, neither the benefits. That’s the wrong way of structuring incentives. Eventually, talent leaves such structures.
A small guy can also be applied to companies and software providers. Imagine you are a company or service providers within an Amazon-style ecosystem or marketplace. Your hard work and success do not benefit others, and you are essentially being undercut. That is because of the pyramid structure, the same way as with employees.
Currently, with software ecosystems, you simply increase the number of little pyramids (each company with its own incentive structure and shareholders). SaaS ecosystems are not new, but they are set up in the wrong way. The key here is to align incentives.
Make sure that whatever work anyone performs which is related to LTO Network – will bring benefits to the network value.
Flock like birds
When birds fly in flocks, they often arrange themselves in specific shapes or formations. Those formations take advantage of the changing wind patterns based on the number of birds in the flock and how each bird’s wings create different currents. This allows flying birds to use the surrounding air in the most energy-efficient way.
In order to amplify the growth, we need to connect everyone through an ecosystem that benefits everyone who’s in it, because together we can accomplish blockchain adoption at a global scale much faster. The LTO Network ecosystem is functioning somewhat as an API of the EU blockchain ecosystem bringing everyone in the landscape together.
Presenting: Ecosystem V
We did not force the ecosystem, we evolved into one. Remember the picture above? A big network, but little to tie it together. With the improved incentive structure, we piece it all together.
The Ecosystem will focus on 5 core pillars – areas, to start with:
- Research: universities, educational material
- Funding: VC, incubation
- Products: end-user applications
- People: HR, talent
- Marketplace: integrators, ISVs. Let’s get into this part:
The marketplace will be the first element of the ecosystem. We can focus on the expansion of LTO Network on a global scale and while having the ecosystem partners reaping the benefits by serving the clients.
Imagine V-ID, Capptions, SignRequest, or any other integrator, both new or existing, increasing their product usage. The direct effect of that is more usage of anchoring on LTO Network and more transaction activity.
Therefore, we will also be focusing more on supporting our partners with content, technology, and making sure everyone is able to grow thanks to the aligned incentive structure.
Roadmap Vision
How does the roadmap look to get this ecosystem to the next level? Today we are still working on the developer docs and providing training and custom integrations. The other milestones are very liquid as with ecosystem growth you don’t do something according to one strict timeline – it’s a continuous development from multiple angles.
So, we start by amplifying adoption success. Transactions and B2B traction have been our strongest point so far, so we will push that even further. For that, our vision is as follows:
- Technical specifications: documentation release and integrator videos
- Launch of LTO Marketplace
- Release of Proofi
- Release of the new staking economy, Leased Proof of Importance
When this part of the puzzle is completed, we will focus more on other parts. However, it does not mean that we abandon the ideas in the area of research before now – we have been already doing it. 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.
The possibilities in ecosystems are really endless! Same goes for our network spreading within the venture capital and incubation. As always, we will make sure to be extremely agile and adapt to the market changes in order to extract all the possible benefits at any given point in time.
We kick off the marketplace with one important showcase product. A new team – a new location – a new collaboration to make this product happen. The Product is called Proofi. We will delve into it soon! Stay tuned: