What is LUKSO?

What is LUKSO?

LUKSO is an EVM blockchain based on Casper PoS that aims to revolutionize the way brands, creators, and users interact with blockchain technology in the New Creative Economies. While the network leverages ETH 2.0’s technology stack, LUKSO is a separate and new layer-1 blockchain, introducing a set of new, innovative blockchain standards.

The initial LUKSO Standards Proposals (LSPs) represent the core building blocks of the LUKSO ecosystem. LSPs are designed to increase functionality and user-friendliness with blockchain technology. According to the LUKSO team, LSPs are set to revolutionize identity, ownership, asset representation, and smart contract interactions. The core LSPs are extensible, allowing for many new use cases, while simplifying the developer and user experience. These standards are ‘unbiased’ - meaning they are generic and flexible enough to enable new use cases that have not yet been explored.

Another core element of the LUKSO Network is Universal Profiles. Universal Profiles are interoperable blockchain based profiles which enable verifiable identities in the digital world. They allow for universal logins that make remembering usernames and passwords a thing of the past, while also giving users full control of all their virtual assets and identity. According to LUKSO, Universal Profiles simplify the onboarding process for Web3 for users, brands, and creators, while also improving accessibility, security, and functionality.

Brief Background

LUKSO was founded by Fabian Vogelsteller and Marjorie Hernandez. According to Crunchbase, the project was founded in 2017, whilst the LUKSO whitepaper was released in 2019. The LUKSO Mainnet launched on May 23, 2023. 

What makes LUKSO (LYX) different?

• LUKSO’s ‘Universal Profiles’ are designed to enable users, brands, and products to securely own their unique and interoperable digital identity. This has particularly strong implications for the lifestyle industry, where a brand or creator’s reputation carries outsized value. Universal Profiles are also designed to simplify the onboarding process to blockchain technology. 
• LUKSO’s founding team and advisors seem well positioned to operate at the intersection of technology and the creative ‘lifestyle’ industries. Vogelsteller was a Lead Developer at the Ethereum Foundation in its early days (2015-2018). He is responsible for writing the ERC-20 standard, which gave way to the ICO movement and DeFi wave. Hernandez’s background is in ‘strategic innovation’ - she led EY’s Innovation Lab in Berlin, and has worked as a brand strategist, and also Co-Founded The Dematerialised, a digital fashion marketspace. The project’s advisors include leaders from a number of high-profile luxury, technology, and lifestyle brands emphasizing the convergence of creative industries and technology in LUKSO’s ecosystem. 

Where LUKSO sees itself going - in their own words

LUKSO was designed to be the ‘digital base layer’ for the modern creative economies. 

The project is founded on three guiding principles:

1. Identification (Universal Profiles)
2. Virtualization - digital identities for ‘phygital’ (physical + digital) products 
3. Tokenization

By allowing brands, creators, and users to use any combination of these three features, the project foresees an infinite number of possible applications and use-cases. 

Read on to see what shape these could take. 

LUKSO’s real life use-cases

It is up to creators and consumers to choose how to best leverage LUKSO’s infrastructure for their real-world applications (LUKSO describes itself as the ‘technological playground for creative professionals to shape emerging trends and unleash their creative force’).

However, the LUKSO whitepaper predicts a few scenarios or issues particular to the future lifestyle economy its blockchain can help solve. 

For example:

1. Designer Token Issuance: Funding reimagined. Designers could offer customized tokens on the LUKSO network to specific crowds of investors, who could then choose to invest in their project. 
2. Smart IP rights: for secure and easily verifiable authentication of digital and physical goods.
3. Phygital Ownership: a unique authentication method achieved through passive NFC (Near Field Communication) chips which are sewn into physical products, and automatically sync to the LUKSO blockchain. Allows users to ‘connect the dots’ between their physical and digital lives, and be sure of the authenticity of their product. 

About the founders

Fabian Vogelsteller - Vogelsteller was a Lead Dapp Developer of Ethereum, author of ERC725 and former -Mist- web3js. He is also known for authoring the ERC-20 standard which was proposed in 2015,  initiating the ICO movement and DeFi wave. 

Marjorie Hernandez -  Marjorie creates innovative solutions for brands, creators, and communities around the world to evolve in the new digital lifestyle arena and is recognised as one of Vogue Business’ Top 100 Innovators. She has co-founded a number of industry-shaping ventures at the intersection of fashion, technology, and design including The Dematerialised, a web3 marketplace for digital goods, and LUKSO, an EVM based Blockchain for the New Creative Economies.

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