Earlier this year I spoke with Long exclusively on The Daily Chain about Tomochain’s achievements in 2018 and the challenges and goals for 2019. In the interview we delved into Long’s background and experience in the industry, so if you are new to Tomochain it’s well worth the read.
Around the time of the first interview, Long was optimistic around the development of key Tomochain products and the expansion the company was going through. Since then they have released multiple products such as TomoZ and the Tomoissuer, speaker and sponsor at Singapore Consensus and were listed on Binance.
I sat down with Long to speak about these products and more.
Alex: Firstly, I wanted to say a huge congratulations to you, the team and the community on the Binance listing. Being listed on Binance is currently one of the highest accolades a project can receive in terms of recognition and respect in the space. What does this listing mean to you and the team at Tomochain?
Long: Thank you very much for your kind words. Indeed, being listed on Binance is such an exciting news for both our team and the community. This is a celebration for all the hard work that our team has put in for TomoChain since Day 1. Thus, we also want to send our deepest gratitude to all Tomo supporters out there as your votes won us a listing spot on Binance via its community voting program. This opportunity opens up more choices for traders, expands TomoChain’s reputation as well as lead us to future potential partnerships/collaborations with other blockchain projects.
Alex: A couple of weeks ago TomoZ was launched, allowing users to pay on-chain fees with the actual token they are sending, rather than TOMO itself. You were quoted as saying that ease of use was vital in working towards mass adoption. Can you discuss the success of the TomoZ launch and secondly your view on how a good user experience is essential for this technology to be adopted by the masses?
Long: Our team is very proud of TomoZ as its potential is great towards a convenient user experience.
Blockchain is still a very new topic, and just like the Internet in the 90s, the world needs time to be educated about this technology. Thus, the easier the learning curve, the faster the adaption. When users try something new, they tend to wish for a smooth and easy ride. With TomoZ eliminating all the complicated process of having to hold a native token to pay fees, the experience becomes faster and easier for users. This will encourage users to try out this new technology, and take away their fear of a problematic system.
Alex: Since we last spoke you’ve also released the TomoIssuer allowing users without any programming knowledge to create their own TRC21 Token. Can you comment on the amount of interest with individuals/businesses you’re seeing in this product?
Long: When we first launched the idea of TomoZ and its testnet, we received many positive feedback and useful suggestions to improve the product. We kept on developing the protocol and released its mainnet by 20th Aug. As till now, we have a total number of 74 issued tokens, with many of them being community based tokens such as Coin68, TomoCash.
We and our partners are planning to launch TomoUSD, which promises to be a very important project that can gain mainstream adoption. The experience will just be like when you use Paypal. Comparing to TETHER, which is the biggest stable coin now, most of their uses are for trading on exchange, while normal users do not tend to use everyday because you need to own BTC or ETH to send TETHER. With TomoUSD, you can make transactions and pay fees at 1/10 of one cent, even more convenient than for users. TomoUSD can perhaps be the first stablecoin to penetrate the mass use cases such as remittances, local payments etc.
Alex: Tomochain is currently the top public blockchain Vietnam according to your recent article on the Staking event in Ho Chi Minh City. As Vietnam is now the largest Crypto market in SEA, do you feel you have a responsibility and duty to lead the way in terms of innovation and driving mass adoption in this region?
Long: I am proud of our team as we continue to build and grow our products globally, with our roots are still in Vietnam. It is a bit challenging for now as Vietnam and South-East Asia are not generally recognized as technology powerhouses. However the perception can change overtime in the crypto industry. Not only TomoChain but also and other notable teams with significant presence in the region like CoinGecko, Kyber Network, EtherScan etc. are proving that we can build world-class products. We will also continue to be one of the leaders in the crypto adoption regionally and play our part in building our nascent industry.
Alex: Since our last interview the initial Tomochain Roadmap saw a couple of changes. Do you see this as a necessity in this industry that you have to be able to be so versatile and flexible?
Long: We have changed the roadmap reported standard since Jan, 2019. There wouldn’t be a quarterly roadmap but a yearly goal and monthly product development updates. Realtime updates can be followed over Github.
Changes to adapt to the environment is necessary and inevitable to keep TomoChain remain competitive. For example, earlier this year, we decided not to prioritize the sharding research and wrote an article about potential issues with sharding in our blog.
Until now, all of our concerns become true as sharding breaks the composability of smart contracts and creates friction for end users. Instead, we switched to focus on TomoX (our decentralized exchange protocol) and privacy, which is based on zero knowledge proof technique. The industry is still very new and the most valuable projects tend to focus heavily on research, and TomoChain certainly has one of them.
Alex: Tomochain continuously adds partners to its already impressive roster. How do you see this burgeoning ecosystem you are creating evolving over the next few years?
Long: I believe there will be a dozen of successful public blockchain ecosystem eventually, which offer differentiating features at the layer one such as blocktime, consensus, the ease to build Dapps and smart contracts; or based on differentiating ecosystem such as regions, market -rolling out, or user target etc.
TomoChain public chain focuses on fast transaction speed, decentralized governance, growing out of SEA. Our team is also really good at writing smart-contracts and can help other projects build effective dapps on TomoChain.
We will continue to work with partners who want to build on top of TomoChain or integrate with TomoChain to serve their clients. At the end of the day, I believe TomoChain ecosystem will offer a lot of value to be an independent and successfully decentralized network in the industry.
Alex: Finally has your view changed on where we are with the industry? In our last interview you predicted that 2019 would see a prolonged bear market and that we were only at the starting point in this industry. We are now seeing long standing, well established projects struggling with their capital and valuations. Can you comment on your views on the industry in general?
Long: I think the crypto industry is still at a very early stage but the vision of building an alternative financial system and decentralized web is strong and viable. Bitcoin is leading the way as a digital gold and store of value. Then Ethereum is leading in terms of the smart-contract platform with Defi on Ethereum gaining traction.
However there are still a lot of gaps to be filled and we should learn from the traditional finance in their history of 300 plus years of infrastructure building. If we continue building and improving, crypto finance will continue growing the market share.
I sincerely thank Long for his time.
Alex Libertas
More Tomochain content on The Daily Chain:
BlockFyre Coin Reviews: Tomochain
Malone’s UX Reviews: TomoChain Wallet
2019: A Look at the Year Ahead – Episode 6: TomoChain
TomoChain Interview on Community
If you would like to learn more, you can find TomoChain’s relevant information below:
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