The mainstream media is full of it. The world of Blockchains and Crypto is a cowboy landscape of shadowy companies and gold diggers where everyone is trying to get rich on the backs of someone else. I myself am an avid supporter of both blockchain and cryptos, but mainly because of the many startups that do try to make this world a little nicer.
Lingon is one such startup and I don't come across many of them. One of its co-founders, Christian Listérus, has a clear vision of how his company will contribute to ownership transparency by using only blockchain and staying far away from cryptos for now. In a landscape where anything can be counterfeited and manipulated through AI, their initiative seems no luxury.
The difference between Blockchains, Crypto Coins, and Tokens
For those who don't know, it is important to first understand why a blockchain is very different from crypto. The blockchain is a network of computers that individually know everything that happens within its network. Simply explained, it works as follows.
Suppose 10 people are in a room and 1 person tells something to someone. If those people were a blockchain, everyone would know what one person said to another. Because that information is stored digitally, no one within the group can claim that something different was said, because the agreement has been made that the majority must agree.
In this way, lying or telling untruths is virtually impossible. This is why blockchain is considered a system where fraud is not possible. You can think of a crypto-coin as "the shares" issued by a particular blockchain. Those cryptos are tradable via crypto exchanges and can rise or fall in value sharply and quickly.
There are several blockchains, some of which can work with each other and some of which cannot because of incompatibility in protocols. Now, there are blockchains you can use as a software developer. For instance, if you want to create a transaction system where the transactions are stored on the Blockchain.
As a software company, you can then also issue your own crypto. Because you use a third-party blockchain, your crypto is then not called a coin, but a token. So those tokens are actually also shares and tradable. Because there is an increasing run on coins and tokens without the average 'investor' wanting to know which company is behind it, a lot of money is lost within the crypto market. So that actually says nothing about the cryptos and blockchains themselves but about the reckless investors.
After all, blockchains offer opportunities that were previously seen as impossible and cryptos are just shares. These can become worth more or less, depending on how the company behind them operates.
Lingon's Vision and the Blockchain Back to Lingon.
Christian understands the slur some see on cryptos, but that is not why he is staying away from them for now. After all, Lingon only uses Blockchain. They believe that a growing problem is emerging over ownership rights. By storing this ownership right in the Blockchain, it is clear once and for all to whom something belongs.
According to Christian, in the future, everything will be logged within the blockchain(s). This has the advantage that if an ownership right is transferred, it will be traceable. This is because the blockchain forgets nothing and keeps track of everything. What all this will enable in the future is not yet completely clear to Christian either. But it doesn't have to be, because their solution grows with demand.
Lingon themselves do have some ideas they anticipate, but they are open to what the market needs. For example, you can think of:
Collaborating with insurance companies
Say you store everything you want to insure with photos, videos or serial numbers in the blockchain. Should something be stolen, it can always be traced that the object was originally yours and a transfer never took place.
Collaborating with luxury goods manufacturers
Suppose you buy a Rolex watch. Upon purchase, you register it in the blockchain via Lingon, and after a while, you sell the piece of jewelry. The person you sell it to also sells it again and that person also sells it again, and so on. No matter how many times the watch is sold, every single step in the chain is stored and traceable. This provides exceptional marketing and communication opportunities for Rolex who can communicate with all ex-owners. In addition, it is nice for the ultimate owner to know that the first owner may have been a famous movie star.
Servicing advertising agencies or freelancers
I myself have been working within marketing and communications for more than 30 years, and the number of times an idea or design has been rejected but still 'borrowed for a while' is innumerable. By storing every idea and design in the blockchain before you present it, it is always provable that you are the spiritual father.
What makes Lingon unique?
I love anything simple, useful, and scalable. With Lingon, all you have to do is register and you can immediately start uploading photos or other files and claim ownership of these. After uploading, you will receive a certificate of ownership and basically, you are done by then.
They have tried to let simplicity prevail and they have more than succeeded. The strength of this startup is therefore that they have not looked at what is possible, but have focused on the minimum needed to claim ownership. Here, it does not matter whether you want to claim 1 item or a million items or whether they serve 1,000 users or 1 billion users. That makes them highly scalable.
What appeals most to me personally is that they stay far away from their own crypto coins or tokens. Not that they can't do this one day at a later stage, but right now, for basic functionality, it doesn't add much value.
Lingon's growth potential
Nobody can predict the future, but that there is growth potential in Lingon is almost certain. Not least because they solve a growing equity problem. What's mine is mine and you stay away from it! Of course, you can also sort this out by going to an expensive notary or creating complex purchasing records yourself. But Lingon makes this so simple that you can almost wonder why there are not 1 billion users yet.
Another growth potential, in my view, is that you can communicate with the whole chain of buyers and sellers of a particular product. This is allowed because you don't exchange personal data. You communicate with a unanimous blockchain transaction number through Lingon's app.
Conclusion
Because of their focus on simplicity and scalability, because they stay away from the crypto hype, and because they address a growing issue in society, I believe Lingon has a promising future ahead of it. Although an idea stands or falls with execution, I have a firm belief that the current leaders, including Christian Listérus, will keep steady on course and take this company to great heights.
