According to the info obtained by us, the Bulgarian based startup LockTrip is about to announce the launch of their own POS blockchain, which promises to solve many of the problems current major blockchains are suffering from. And we are amazed.
What makes current Blockchain designs less than ideal?
We asked Nikola Alexandrov, the CEO and Co-Founder of LockTrip, to share with us the main reasons, why current blockchain designs were slowly failing the market:
“We see most blockchain developers focused on achieving hard metrics such as transactions per second (TPS), while at the same time continuously working on architecture that was drafted as early as 2016 and 2017, without paying attention to painful problems that actually are hindering mass adoption of the technology. Based on the gathered data, we have drafted a new-generation blockchain for the purpose of solving these specific problems for ourselves, as well as for any other potential decentralized application, that wishes to be part of a more sustainable blockchain economy.”
We have summarized the most important problems LockTrip wants to solve with its new blockchain:
- Currently, the economy of every blockchain (consisting of the fees) is in the hands of miners only, leaving investors, and more importantly the project developers rewardless. There is no way for them to profit from the transactional economy they are creating.
- Available blockchains have a very limited capacity available for distributed databases
- Communication between DAPPs is poor or non-existent
- Transaction fees are unpredictable, putting businesses at high risk
- Users have to store some amount of the underlying cryptocurrency in their wallets to pay for Gas, if they want to send tokens (making the process more complex and less user friendly)
What is LockTrip doing differently?
“While some projects try to revolutionize from scratch, we tend to lean towards the strategy to continuously evolve based on the present opportunities, challenges and technical specifics of the environment in which we are growing.” – said CEO and Co-founder of LockTrip Nikola Alexandrov. “Evolving as a strategy, technically means to be resourceful in using everything that is existing and validated as being of value, while at the same time to embrace opportunities to upgrade the design and overall technical and business related model of the project, without compromising much of what has previously been achieved.”
The LockTrip blockchain in its core is based on the open-source production level Qtum blockchain, which on its own is a fork of Bitcoin Core with an Account Abstraction Layer that enables support for the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). This hybrid blockchain utilizes the well-established UTXO transaction model and employs a true Proof-of-Stake consensus, which has been evolved from the BlackCoin project. “We are undertaking the evolutionary strategy of combining the best of Bitcoin and Ethereum and building on top of it a proprietary blockchain that is capable of preserving decentralization, supporting Ethereum applications and at the same time reaching notable TPS performance.”
This means, that the new POS blockchain of LockTrip is built on proven and 100% decentralized blockchain infrastructure, which focuses on improving the overall capacity to approximately 120-200+ TPS, without sacrificing decentralization (their initial target is approximately 10.4 – 15 Million transactions per day, which is approximately 10 times the current capacity of the Ethereum network).
But, more importantly…
LockTrip is aware of the (non-TPS related) issues described above and they have spent the last 6 months working on designing and building a blockchain, that would evolve around current technology and solve key problems that could unlock significant economic potential, while offering maximum investor protection by implementing the following solutions:
- A true Proof-of-Stake consensus that will enable every single user to stake without any requirement for a minimum amount of LOC
- Total output of 120 – 200+ TPS / 10.4M – 15M transactions per day (approximately 10 times the capacity of the current Ethereum network, with a functioning prototype being in the 200+ TPS)
- One-click installers for running a node on an average household computer (after you install the node, you will be able to stake your coins)
- Ethereum VM support in order to have full compatibility and easy migration of Ethereum DAPPS and Ethereum smart contracts →
- Projects can easily switch to LockTrip at no cost
- According to LockTrip, they received a letter of intent from 6 high quality companies to build on top of LockTrip and they claim to be in communication with multiple other companies to engage and build on their blockchain
- LOC owners will be able to stake their LOC to get a piece of the transactional economy from the LockTrip booking app as well as from all other DAPPS and tokens
- Unlike current blockchains, revenue from the transactional economy is specifically shared with the projects building on top of the LockTrip blockchain. Such projects will be accredited LOC on a protocol level with 50% of the fees they are able to generate through their transactions (from their own tokens that are using the LockTrip blockchain).
This technically means, that LockTrip is building the first blockchain, which utilizes a true shared economy. The people who contribute to its adoption will benefit from the transactions they generate, regardless of their business model. This would also serve as a tool to attract existing Ethereum DAPPs to their new blockchain, as it would give a strong and sustainable boost to their long-term economy without any costs or risks.
- Easy installation of nodes for average users – their goal is to get as many people on-board as possible. That would ensure a viable network and a strong POS consensus that would have high censorship resistance. Desktop wallets will be nodes too.
- Easy staking of LOC for average users – the “mining” (minting) process will be democratized and available to everyone.
- 2 Level Nodes system – Full nodes and standard nodes – The standard nodes will process all on-chain data. The full nodes will additionally support the secondary layer containing a distributed database and a message bridge. These two will enable businesses to launch e.g. a web based application completely in the distributed storage without the need to look for third party providers. It will also enable communication at a new scale between DAPPS, enabling new business models that were not possible before.
- Fixed and predictable Gas price and dynamic calculation according to fiat equivalent, which allows businesses to calculate and predict the price of network fees.
- Ability to change the GAS price through a democratic voting system in a transparent manner.
- 32 seconds average block time, 2 MB block size, 8 seconds granularity and full interchangeability of nodes
Why LOC Owners will be profiting the most
According to LockTrip, the deployment of the proprietary blockchain will significantly boost the LOC economy in the following ways:
- New potential DAPPS and tokens will grow awareness and adoption of the LOC blockchain
- Proof-of-Stake unlocks a powerful incentive for LOC owners to buy, hold and stake their tokens, which on its end results in significantly lowered financial velocity and circulating supply
- Gas fees generated by travel bookings will no longer be paid to Ethereum miners, but will be redistributed back to the LOC stakers. With relatively complex smart contracts, that can cost between $1 and $3 per booking, this network fee can result in a significant economic boost on its own, even if any other potential economies from third party DAPPS and tokens are disregarded.
- With its unique shared economic model and full support for the Ethereum VM, LOC poses a strong marketing incentive for DAPPS to migrate from their current blockchain to the new one of LockTrip
- LOC can position itself as an advanced ecosystem, that welcomes travel projects as well as just about any application in any other vertical
- Travel projects can be further incentivized to migrate by offering them access to technology specifically designed for travel-businesses
- Possibility to provide “Locktrip as a service” to new potential travel businesses, which are interested to tokenize their travel services.
All of those above, will most likely transform the company from a niche travel company to a tech company with limitless potential.
You can check the full Manifest here: https://locktrip.com/blockchain
6 High-Quality Companies Are Already Interested
According to LockTrip, they will will be aiming to grow both sides of its blockchain ecosystem – on one side are the stakers and the underlying infrastructure of nodes that facilitate the POS consensus, and on the other side, the applications that build on top of the LockTrip blockchain and thus help it grow in popularity and adoption.
As of this moment, 6 projects have expressed strong intentions of building their tokens/ICOs and decentralized economies on top of the LockTrip blockchain. We have put together all of them for you:
- Evedo – https://www.evedo.co
- Conor Capital – http://www.conorcapital.io
- Garanti Koza – http://www.garantikoza.com
- SoftUni – https://softuni.bg
- FFQuest – https://ffquest.com
- Horsepitality – http://www.horsepitality.com.sg
LockTrip Is a Growing Success
LockTrip isn’t just a startup anymore. Right from the beginning, their idea caught up great traction, as LockTrip was able to raise around 10,500 Ether from more than 4,000 backers. Today, the platform has got more than 100,000 hotels to sign up for LockTrip and there is an ever-increasing community of more than 40,000 travelers, who are choosing LockTrip over conventional booking sites.
Our verdict: LockTrip is a hidden gem, that has remained relatively unnoticed so far due to extremely reasonably sized tokensale that was held in Oct for 2017.
About LockTrip
The concept of LockTrip is straightforward and seeks to build a shared economy model around a native (LOC) token. They utilize a variety of smart contracts in order to eliminate commissions on the bookings you place on their marketplace. In contrast, sites such as Booking.com, Agoda.com and AirBNB.com ask for commissions that range from 15% to 30% on every booking, which in the end are paid by the travelers.
Hotels hate that, since it erases a great deal of their profits. Travelers, who are aware of the scale of those commissions also hate it, simply because from their perspective it just means paying excessive fees to a middleman who adds little value to their actual travel stay. In the end you still stay in that same hotel, regardless of whether you book it through site A, B, C or through the hotel itself, right? So why pay 20% on top, just for a server that connects you with the hotel?
LockTrip has been launched in September 2017, and they now have a live product with 100,000+ hotels and 1500+ vacation rentals. Those can all be booked through https://beta.locktrip.com, in addition to which, there is an Android App and an iOS App, both available for download.