While Vitalik Buterin is the most well-known name in the Ethereum space, the birth of Ethereum was a collaborative effort, as were later developments like ERC-20. Fabian Vogelsteller is one-such early Ethereum developer and thought leader on blockchain technology. He has built many Ethereum user and developer-facing projects including the Ethereum Mist browser, the Ethereum Wallet and web3.js - the Ethereum’s space most used JavaScript library. Together with Vitalik Buterin, he proposed the ERC20 token standard, which initiated the world ICO wave and redefined investment and crowd ownership as we know it. Today Fabian is leading the concept, design, and development of the LUKSO Blockchain. LUKSO is a dedicated Blockchain, built specifically for the lifestyle ecosystem. It is an EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) based blockchain, this means that any Ethereum smart contract will run on it. Yet due to its dPoS BFT consensus it has instant finality. This means interactions on the Blockchain are final within 5 seconds, and throughput can be more than 10x of the current Ethereum Mainnet. In an interview with Fabian Vogelsteller, he discusses the LUKSO project: "We are building the LUKSO Blockchain as a dedicated network for the 'new creative economies' as we call it in our blueprint. This lifestyle community is the biggest market of consumers today. Lifestyle today is everything that defines who we are and what we like." The focus of LUKSO is on facilitating blockchain use-cases, particularly in areas like lifestyle. "Everybody is talking about bringing Blockchain to the masses, but nobody is building use cases for them. The LUKSO blockchain will be the space to create synergies and standards that will power the future mainstream blockchain applications." Fabian also speaks of his interest in the WOM Protocol and the synergetic potential with LUKSO (disclaimer: The author of this post is an advisor to WOM). "I know Melanie and their team for over a year, and I really like the idea of the WOM protocol. Incentivising authentic content using a token based system makes sense, and it will play a huge role in the future LUKSO ecosystem. We need protocols that thrive people towards useful synergies. Many protocols that charge a custom token as fee will fail, as their token can be replaced with nothing. But incentivising human behaviour to do the right thing, while rewarding good behaviour in useful ways, works. The Blockchain itself is one of those working systems. I see especially tokens around communities and purposes thriving on LUKSO, with clever token economics as described in the WOM token economics paper, this can very well work to replace ads as a means to spread information. We are happy to see WOM on LUKSO when the Blockchain launches." Ultimately, partnerships like these will help the blockchain industry add more value, therefore attracting more users to the space, and benefiting the ecosystem as a whole.
