Recap: Acquisition Q&A Session with Lition CEO Richard Lohwasser from October 28th
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Lition and Tomochain made headlines on October 28th with the announcement that TomoChain had acquired the enterprise blockchain unit of Lition. You can read the full acquisition announcement here.
Lition Founder and CEO Richard Lohwasser stopped by the Lition Telegram after the announcement for an impromptu Q&A session.
Introduction
Richard Lohwasser (RL): Dear community members, I see there are many questions about the recent announcement. I will join a video AMA this Friday together with TomoChain’s CEO, Long Vuong, to address the main questions that came up. What I can tell you already now is that the new entity will be a lot more powerful than the old one.
Q: Will you be leaving Lition?
RL: I won’t. The Blockchain is still the core of the energy business (all the trades run on it), and I will also remain active in the new Blockchain infrastructure company.
Q: Why an Acquisition?
RL: More on this on the AMA, but we realized that a new, merged company is a lot more powerful than a sole Lition alone. We needed a partner beyond a partnership.
Lition has a European Sidechain solution — but no mainnet*, no international footprint, and by far not the resource of a TomoChain. But these resources are needed if you want to play in the major league.
That’s exactly what we want to do. and need to, if we really want to make a difference. And that’s what we will do now.
*Lition is a layer 2 solution that functions on top of other blockchains (ie. Ethereum and TomoChain). Our solution is technically referred to as a sidechain rather than a mainnet.
Q: Does this acquisition betray your blockchain community
RL: I think we would betray the community in the long run if we would have just continued as is.
In order to really support the community we cannot just deliver on a working blockchain or one or two use cases. It also wouldn’t be my ambition. To support the community, but also to create a large value of the coin, we need a stronger, more powerful blockchain company. And that’s why we needed a strong partner. To *not* betray the community.
Q: Can you address the issue of incentives? Are the incentives correct to make sure that TOMO does not funnel all value to the TOMO ecosystem rather than the LIT token?
RL: You are fully right. This is a concern we therefore took very seriously, and now have incentives that align TomoChain with LIT holders. This was a go-or-no-go negotiation point for us. Anything else would not be fair to the people that believed in Lition.
Q: Would this partnership effect the staking rewards when energy product comes out? How would Tomo chain effect the stakes of that?
RL: The staking rewards are a result of sidechain transactions. these are the peer to peer trades of our electricity customers, so this is independent of the TomoChain deal.
Q: How much of a role will you play in the merged company? How long will you stay? Also, will your energy business be dependent on LIT infrastructure for the foreseeable future?
RL: I’ll remain active in the Blockchain infrastructure. The Energy Use case remains fully dependent on the LIT infrastructure. We have to anyway, as there is no other GDPR-compliant, scalable public-private blockchain solution out there.
Q: What if they (TomoChain) just adopted the technology and used TOMO instead (of Lition)?
RL: The TomoChain solution is a mainnet. And Lition is a sidechain. From a technological point of view, this makes it a natural fit. And a compelling argument when the new company pitches to new business use cases. Everything from one company — mainnet and sidechain. No one else can deliver this on this scale.
But that’s something that would have not been possible with a mere partnership. But if we want to tackle the real large use cases (see the updated Lition.io site for hints), we need this power.
Q: So, Lition will act as a sidechain for TomoChain?
RL: Yes. We will support both Ethereum and TomoChain as Mainnet solutions.
*Lition will remain as an ERC20 token on the Ethereum network to power the Lition side-chain as always intended. A two way bridge will allow the seamless swap between ERC20 and TRC21.
Q: I’m not sure if you can answer this, but have you received a % ownership of TomoChain the company? If so, I would feel fine about this tbh because your incentives would also be aligned. Tbh, I’m feeling more fine with this as time goes on anyways. Thank you for your replies by the way.
RL: I cannot go into details. But what I can tell you is that the incentive mechanism we agreed with TomoChain is that both I personally, but also TomoChain, have “skin in the game”. Our incentives are aligned with yours.
Q: What do you say to those who think the acquisition may ruin the project?
RL: This is up to everyone’s personal judgement. What I can tell you is that from both a technical point of view and a business point of view the new company can achieve A LOT more than Lition alone.
To become a major, global player you need the global reach, a fully coupled technology, and many real business use cases. Lition alone didn’t have it. Now it has. And only as a global player the blockchain will reach real mass adoption.
That’s the motivation for the deal.
Q: All side chains remain paid in LIT and work under LIT Nodes right? Just another mainnet got added — so only + on value?
RL: Correct
Q: What’s your favourite Lego set Richard?
RL: Star Wars AT-AT ;)
Stay Tuned for More Details
Don’t forget to tune in to the upcoming joint AMA with Lition CEO Richard Lohwasser, TomoChain CEO Long Vuong, and TomoChain CBDO Kyn Chaturvedi. The event will take place on October 30th at 3:00 pm (UTC) on the TomoChain YouTube channel.
