ABR’s monthly spotlight is on TomoChain, one of the few DeFi projects in Asia. CEO and Founder Long Vuong aims to create one of the most decentralized, scalable, and privacy-preserving public blockchain networks. As a blockchain guru and economic expert, Mr.Long has advised for a number of blockchain projects all around the world and contributed to affirming the value of this technology by developing practical products. In this interview, he discusses how TomoChain will bring value on Defi sphere by introducing the latest development of TomoZ and TomoX.

Asia Blockchain Review:  TomoChain has just rolled out TomoZ protocol – one of the 2 core products supporting the TomoChain DeFi ecosystem. Can you elaborate on it?

Long Vuong: TomoZ —or  Zero Friction Protocol — is the first on-chain protocol that offers the ability for any user to pay transaction fees with the same token that the user is holding. 

TomoZ removes the friction of having to hold native blockchain coins/tokens to send to other wallets or to interact with dapps. Users/customers of all businesses using our solution will have a smooth experience without even knowing that they are using the blockchain and cryptocurrency technology.

Tokens issued with the TomoZ protocol follow a new standard called TRC-21 (TRC is the abbreviation of TomoChain Request for Comments). For DeFi apps, TomoZ can be tailored for issuing stablecoins. Digital wallets and payment systems can be set up via TomoZ protocol very quickly and cost-effectively. 

ABR: How would TomoZ work with TomoX, the DEX protocol being developed by TomoChain? How would the combination of these two core products impact the current crypto exchange landscape?

LV: TRC21 tokens (supported by TomoZ protocol) can be listed for trading in one of several relayers built on top of TomoX. I think TomoX is the first decentralized exchange protocol that can support non-custodial exchange and a very good user experience. The combination of TomoZ and TomoX can help new crypto projects with an easy, inexpensive and transparent process of doing crypto fundraising. They will lower the cost of creating an efficient market for token liquidity as well. 

ABR: What sets TomoX apart from other DEX protocols?

LV: TomoX Protocol is our relayer-masternode decentralized cryptocurrency exchange protocol. Compared to the current state of the art DEX architecture, TomoX Protocol has quite a lot of advantages, which have been described in detail in our paper , the most notable are as follows:

1. Performance: TomoX Protocol is integrated into the core TomoChain blockchain consensus layer, which can potentially handle many thousands of transactions per second. Furthermore, with the Relayer-Masternode architecture, the heavy computational load of the matching engine in masternodes can be substantially moved to Relayers’ local matching engine. Performance of the TomoX Protocol can therefore potentially be an improvement when compared to most of the existing DEXs.
2. Liquidity: This is a chicken and egg problem. Traders do not join most of the existing DEXs because there are not enough orders on these DEXs to match. With the Relayer-Masternode architecture, each relayer can focus on understanding their relevant markets and trading pairs – thus the potential for better and targeted marketing strategies to attract more traders to participate in the ecosystem.
3. Full decentralization: Most of the existing DEXs are semi-decentralized. TomoX Protocol, on the other hand, is fully decentralized because the order book database, matching engine and trade execution mechanism is decentralized to all masternodes. This decentralization power in TomoX can significantly reduce front-running risks that currently appear in some centralized exchanges or semi-decentralized exchanges. 
4. Security: Centralized exchanges can have significant security issues as they centrally manage a large of amount of assets, and traders on centralized exchanges do not have control of their private keys.  TomoX and non-custodial exchanges solve this problem because the users have complete control of their assets. In practice, some DEXs require traders to deposit their assets, while TomoX does not impose this requirement, and is completely non-custodial regarding user assets.
5. Cost: TomoChain provides near-zero transaction fees, which significantly reduces trading fees compared to most existing DEXs.

ABR: What challenges still remain?

LV: DeFi currently limits to the early adopter group because the perceived risks are still very high. There are issues with identities and privacy on chain that hinder the capacity to lend to people based on credit history. So the industry still has a long way to go to educate users and solve technical problems such as scalability and usabilities. 

ABR: Do you envision DeFi becoming the new standard for the financial sector?

LV: In the next few years, I hope that DeFi would become a credible alternative to the traditional financial sector.

ABR:  Should the concept of “decentralization” be celebrated unconditionally when considering the impact it can have?

LV: To me, the real benefit of “decentralization” is the chain security and “censorship resistance” property it brings to the table. The safety of money and the freedom to move financial assets against any artificial restrictions are real goals. 

ABR: Could DeFi deliver a cure-all for the pain points of the traditional financial sphere in terms of transaction fees, security and cross border remittances?

LV: At a mass scale, DeFi will be cheaper and more secure than a traditional finance alternative.

ABR: What vision do you hope to contribute to the Defi future, alongside your roadmap?

We want to build a safe and credible DeFi system that everyone globally can benefit from. We just released TomoZ, fees by token protocol, and are working on TomoX, decentralized exchange protocol to realize that vision.

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