Luxury Meets Crypto

by Selby | @SelbyFox

Lukso is the Esperanto word for luxury. Is luxury coming to the blockchain? Lets take a stroll down Lifestyle Lane and discuss a new project that will change the way we track our most valuable possessions.

A Rare Project

Gems in crypto don’t usually remain hidden. So why has Lukso flown under the radar for so long? Because it’s not what you think it is. The team behind Lukso has been furiously building a massive project dubbed the “lifestyle blockchain.”

If it sounds a bit vague, join the club… there’s a fair amount of confusion about what exactly Lukso is and does. When the team releases promotional materials they tend to highlight digital garments, reputation-based universal identities and royalty-earning NFT tokens. Mmkay…

Looking deeper, we realize these are teasers designed to pique our interest, without overwhelming us with the technical ambitions of this project. By all appearances Lukso is going to change the paradigm of how we keep track of (and interact with) every single thing of value in our lives.

Let that sink in for a minute and then we’ll continue our stroll.

Lukso’s Big Secret

So what exactly is Lukso? It’s been called a fashion project, an NFT platform and even a test network. But, people are missing the forest for the trees, because it’s bigger than any one specialty. This is the secret that the Lukso team has been humbly keeping quiet;

When Lukso launches it will be the most advanced blockchain to date (Casper Consensus)… and it won’t be limited to fashion, art or luxury. These “lifestyle” industries are simply the early-adopters of the technology, because Lukso’s new features allow a much richer experience than has been possible on any blockchain, so far. The last project of this size, to tackle really big problems, and gain widespread adoption, was Ethereum… and even it didn’t really make a splash until the erc20 standard was understood and adopted. I wonder who was responsible for that?

While Lukso will be more advanced than Ethereum, it will NOT be an “Ethereum Killer” (we’ll get into that later). Through the introduction of advanced new NFT standards, digital certificates and user-friendly wallets that also serve as public profiles, Lukso is bringing new capabilities and features to the decentralized world. That may seem like a bit much to wrap your head around, but the important thing to understand is that all things evolve… and Lukso is the next logical evolution in blockchain technology.

We’ll be getting into more of the specifics, but the easiest way to understand Lukso is that it’s a universal, ownership-tracking blockchain tied to public identities, with incredibly rich new functionality. If you can own something of value (really anything), Lukso can keep track of it. We’re talking about anything, both in the digital world AND the real world. This includes your own identity.

The control of this ownership resides with you, of course, not a centralized authority. So if you were getting a dystopian vibe for a second, rest assured, this technology puts the brakes on Big Brother. Power to the people! ✊

Why No Marketing?

So why is the team so quiet, then? Well, it’s called diligence. It’s clear that they understand the importance of delivering something of high quality and value, without the hype that is customary in crypto. That’s also why the message from the team is usually something like: be patient, you will see.

The other thing is that the sheer size of the project, coupled with the technology not being that easy to understand makes it hard to grasp what Lukso actually does. For this reason Lukso has been building partnerships, projects and apps that will launch with the Lukso mainnet, so that everyone can see exactly what is possible, starting from day one.

This is also intended to spark the imaginations of people who will build their own use-case projects on Lukso’s blockchain. In other words, there are people in the Lukso community right now that will be the early-adopter entrepreneurs, similar to how Stani Kulichov (Aave) and Sergey Nazarov (Chainlink) were on Ethereum.

Once Pandora’s Box is opened, mass adoption will follow and Lukso could be the first blockchain that the masses interact with, but in a way so seamless they won’t even know it… thanks primarily to the strong partnerships that Lukso is forming to make this adoption as smooth as possible. This will be done with consumer-facing apps that do all the technical work for the customers. Storing seed-phrases will be a by-gone legacy soon.

If your mind isn’t blown yet, don’t worry, it will be. Next, why don’t we wander through the forest of possible use-cases.

The Forest And The Trees

Here’s the thing; there are billion-dollar ideas that will exist within the Lukso Ecosystem that haven’t been imagined yet… and not just a few. Each project that deploys on the blockchain is like a new tree in the Lukso Forest. How big can the forest get? Well, there’s a lot of ground to cover, so let’s keep moving.

Lukso has added new functionality to Ethereum-based technology, but let’s start with the real-world, where items can have sophisticated NFC/RFID tags attached to them and registered on the blockchain.

For example, if someone steals your one-of-a-kind Nike sneakers with a Lukso tag embedded in them, the thief is going to have a difficult time selling them in a legitimate way. You’ll have a digital wallet, with a virtual receipt, proving you’re the rightful owner. And if the thief tries to remove the tag, this invalidates the authenticity (and value) and they become just another pair of sneakers. They can also be flagged as stolen and anyone who wants to verify the authenticity will be able to scan them with their phone.

This can work for cars, electronics, jewelry, really anything we put value on. Once people get used to the idea of being able to verify anything, they will become reluctant to do business with anyone who doesn’t.

And as the technology advances these tags will become more and more tamper-resistant. Imagine a painting with a complex tag woven into the canvas itself. Removing the tag destroys the painting. Lukso is launching the 1st generation tags, but new use-case businesses will likely emerge based around building better tags… using the Lukso standard, of course.

And as the tags get better, the use-cases will multiply;

• Imagine farmers using tags to keep track of their flock of sheep on their phone. The sheep-herders would have an NFT “version” of each sheep in their wallet. Transferring ownership is as easy as sending a text message. And clothing manufacturers would have a way of tracking the origins of the wool, even.
• Imagine tags woven into important documents like a car title. The original document could sit in a safe, while the NFT version could be used for official purposes. Since the NFT is one of a kind, any copies of it would not be valid… so it would be useless for a criminal to copy.
• Imagine if SpaceX raised capital by selling virtual representations of real parts of a rocket to collectors and enthusiasts. The NFT part would sit in the fan’s wallet where they could track the lifecycle of their part and if the rocket was ever decommissioned, they might even be able to own the original part.

None of this tracking-technology is necessarily new, but, it’s new to the blockchain. And if sneakers can be tracked on the blockchain, anything can be tracked. The other point is Lukso doesn’t have to be strictly “lifestyle” based… although some people might consider sheep a lifestyle choice. Who am I to judge. Baahahah [Sheep Laugh]😊

It’s Culture, Baby!

Let’s move on and talk about another one of Lukso’s tricks: the programmable token. Also known as the community or culture token.

Lukso coins have programmable characteristics built in, similar to NFTs. The coins themselves can be rebranded in any way someone wants. By keeping the underlying token standard the same across all platforms, coins will retain their value and transfer-ability.

This is where people are initially going to go nuts coming up with use-cases, because of how easy it will be to make their own tokens. So, who will be able to do this? Anyone. Influencers, music artists, big companies, mom-and-pop stores… even ten-year-old gamers with a few dozen followers. Anyone.

Let’s explore this concept and come up with some examples ourselves:

• Your favorite coffee shop can give you a branded token each time you buy a cup of coffee. This token lives in your digital wallet and when you have 10 tokens you turn them in for a free cup of coffee.
• Every time you watch your favorite YouTuber you can earn a token that represents your loyalty and rank, so when they live-stream and answer questions, they go to the most loyal fans first.
• Building on that last example, you could also build reputation tokens in online communities to eliminate trolls and the endless number of “wen moon” bois.
• Buy a ticket to a baseball game, the ticket is a token that is also a souvenir that represents that you were at a particular historical game.
• Limited-edition commemorative Elvis Presley coins for your dad 😂
• Coins in a video game that you collect when you defeat an opponent (shout-out to my gunter fam!). And these coins have real-world value, as well as being recognized across gaming platforms… Whaaa?!
• A song that pays the artist a small royalty every time it’s played.
• Or how about a song that is programmed to delete itself after being played 100 times. You’d treat it like fine wine and only play it on special occasions.

The use-cases will be endless… tokens will become as normal in our lives as coupons in your grandparent’s house. Oh, that’s another one; grocery stores could turn tokens into coupons. Boom!

Are you starting to see the sheer scale of this project yet? If not, that’s okay. Take a break, grab a beverage, because there’s more.

A Few Nerdy Men

If you’re a nerdy guy, you’re already in crypto. There aren’t any programmers saying “what’s this Bitcoin thing all about?” So, if the revolution was going to be led by nerds, it would have happened by now. Unfortunately, superiority complexes tend to alienate normal folks (not going to… say… it… okay, normies. Kek!)

Mass adoption will happen when visionaries who understand the technology can show the rest of the world how it can be used, without boring them to death.

Allow me to introduce Marjorie Hernandez

Marjorie is co-founder of Lukso and by all indications she’s leading the vanguard of mass-adoption (I think the other co-founder is in charge of making coffee 😉 You can learn more about him here).

Marjorie has an impressive network of friends and acquaintances, which means she’s not awkward at social gatherings. That’s a good box to check in crypto. But, she grasps the importance of the technology and the impact it’s going to have, as she’s also a co-founder of The Dematerialised.

Dmat (powered by Lukso) is a start-up that’s quietly making waves in the fashion industry, and is a use-case on Lukso right now. Dmat is a digital garments marketplace, and in partnership with The Fabricant and RTFKT, are taking NFTs to the next level of richness and complexity… far beyond crypto punks.

But getting back to Marjorie; recently she created a “digital twin” as a Universal Profile on the Lukso Network. This is a fascinating topic because it deals with the one thing every person on Earth is obsessed with: their own identity (or if you live in Ready Player One, your avatar’s identity).

Identity is a central theme in Lukso’s bag of tricks, because of the introduction of Ethereum-type wallets that can be identified with a user-name, instead of a long string of numbers and letters. Universal Profiles, or UPs, are wallets that add visually rich elements, including profile pictures, links to your social accounts, as well as visual representations of the NFTs and crypto coins you hold. These profiles (wallets) can represent you, or they can be anonymous… or somewhere in between, such as a pseudonymous twin.

As more people make a living online, the trend towards using pseudonymous avatars will become common place. Not as a way to hide, rather as a way to build a personal brand that helps you stand out, be recognized and grow your online business model and reputation. This is obvious to the younger generation, but will become obvious to everyone else soon. DON’T BE LATE TO THE PARTY!

Universal Profiles will also serve as a type of login verification that carries across social media platforms and gets rid of the friction of operating in many different ecosystems… all the while wrapped up in an incredibly user-friendly interface. It’s also going to mean a major pay-cut for identity thieves and scammers… that’s because the greatest value will come in the form of verification and reputation-building.

This is how mass adoption begins;

One Last Secret… and this is Checkmate

As our stroll comes to an end, there’s one final secret. It’s going to seem obvious in a minute, but it’s absolutely genius (and every project out there should take note). Here it is;

Lukso is not competing with Ethereum. They are perfectly compatible with each other.

They are like different neighborhoods in the same city. Ethereum could be viewed as Wall Street and Lukso as Madison Avenue. 80% of all blockchain developers use Ethereum’s solidity coding language. Guess what language Lukso uses? You got it. Same language, lots of friendships, tons of collaborations. The Solidity Family just keeps getting bigger!

(Quick side note: if your project is not Solidity compatible, you’re going to face a lot of friction… not saying you won’t succeed, but good lukso.)

Once Eth2.0 launches, Ethereum will likely be crowned the DeFi King and that chapter will be closed… similar to how Bitcoin has been reluctantly pigeon-holed into being the Digital Gold. DeFi projects will have very little incentive to move away from Ethereum.

Lukso, on the other hand, is targeting a more consumer-oriented, creative market that couldn’t exist on Ethereum, even if it wanted to. That’s because of the advanced functionality and new tricks that we’ve already talked about. But, the brilliance of compatibility is that Lukso users won’t have any friction when accessing the decentralized financial markets on Ethereum. Imagine a valuable NFT painting that exists on Lukso, taking it to a lending protocol on Ethereum and getting a collatoralized loan in a few minutes, without any need for a banker to approve you.

The cross-compatibility is going to create a massive ecosystem. This also means projects like Chainlink may find more customers in the Lukso space.

OK;Lukso

Final Thoughts

That brings us to the end of our journey. Allow me to leave you with a few thoughts;

1. Lukso is a really big project, with too many possibilities to cover in one article, such as the role Lukso will play as the authentication and currency layer in the metaverse (that idea alone is enormous). Or how domain extensions and identity are going to be the key that unites all this technology. Or how new NFT standards have been built that allow for extremely complex and rich NFTs, such as clothing that flows naturally and can be worn online. Watch for more articles! They’re being written right now :)
2. There will come a day in the future when things won’t be easily stolen, because it just won’t be worth it. That’s a real “mind-fuck” because it simply doesn’t exist in our current paradigm. But, it will. It is written.
3. There are a lot of projects doing various things that Lukso does, but so far they are all proprietary, centralized or have a hyper-narrow focus.
4. Many of the up-coming “Lukso Killers” will actually be able to move their protocols to the Lukso Network. Much of the “competition” will disappear when they understand the benefits the Lukso Blockchain provides and they realize they don’t have to build their own blockchains from scratch.
5. Esperanto is a cool language. Check it out.
6. The founders of Lukso are already rich. By all appearances, they are building Lukso because of a deep altruistic drive to improve the world. Show a little appreciation.

Thanks to @LuksoCat @ETHalorian @Criegle @LuksoMike @CADcrypto @Alts_Anonymous & @LuksoBull for your feedback!!! Thanks to The Crypto Capitalist @luksogood for this great write-up on Fabian and a special thanks to Rox @iconoclasticoon for the awesome graphics! Follow them on twitter, they’re great folks!

Disclaimers: I purposely did not dive into tokenomics, technical details or Fabian’s incredible track record (this article is long enough 😅).

I do own LYX coins and plan to hold them long term. Opinions are my own. Do your own research. Follow me on Twitter @selbydafox to get sneak peeks if you like this kind of content. Cheers!