Growing Our Island

This concept is the driving force behind our vision for 2022 and beyond.

If you're a regular member of our online communities, you may have seen this expression, but what does this mean?

To help answer this, we need to wind the clock back a little bit and add some context by having a look at how LTO Network started and how the business and the project have since evolved.

Our mainnet has been functional since early 2019. Not long before then, the differences between blockchain, Bitcoin, and cryptocurrency were mostly known to dedicated enthusiasts and technical people. But businesses started realizing that there was more to crypto than transactions or being a centralized currency replacement.

Once organizations started to see that there's new ways of working with data to protect its integrity and distribution, an excited sector decided to explore and play with blockchain, with curiosity as the main motivator.

Serious Business

Fast forward a little bit - throw a global pandemic and increasing inflation into the global economy.

LTO Network's primary focus up to this point had been the development of in-house solutions to be used with our blockchain network.

The curiosity that many businesses had has started to mature into a sense of "oh we now understand how blockchains work".

This has shifted the goals of blockchain projects to be less of an R&D function and we are seeing that businesses want to use blockchain technology where it's beneficial to their workflows and bottom line, not just because it's new and interesting.

At this time we started looking at how we can work to increase the adoption of our network outside of our immediate sphere of influence. We asked "Why are we limiting ourselves to just projects that only we and our integrator partners can deliver? Why not allow others to build on our network?"

Arnold and I spent many days looking at all of the top blockchain projects to get a sense of where we are in the world. After some time it became apparent that we are yet to experience a true Network Effect because we are isolated on our own island.

What is Network Effect?

Network Effect - as something is used more, it becomes more powerful, which then attracts more activity. This cycle repeats and the system experiencing this effect becomes bigger, evolves, and grows, resulting in mass adoption.

One of the key things I noticed is that the majority of projects that do well, provide a key functionality that improves blockchain as a whole. Networks that do more for blockchain as a whole (rather than for individual projects and use cases), are ones that experience this network effect.

I have many theories as to why this is the case, but the main thing is that it became undeniable to us that we need to open up. We need to open up now.

The Future

There will be further articles coming out in due time to go deeper into specific undertakings we are pursuing to achieve this goal. But our vision is loud and clear, we believe in providing a network that becomes the backbone for digital assets, identities and ownership.

The main thing that I would like for everyone to keep in mind as they follow our project and watch our plans unfold is that all of the steps we are taking, including our upcoming partnerships, technical updates and systematic changes, these are all designed to make LTO Network a useful network not just for our own organization, but for the global blockchain ecosystem as a whole.

It's time we started growing our island.