The blockchain network now has PlasmaChain, GameChain, and SocialChain in production.
Known for its "truly scalable" blockchain trading card game Zombie Battleground[1], the Loom Network has been making headway in the Ethereum scaling space. Loom's software development kit[2] apparently enables developers to build scalable blockchain games and social networks. Most recently, though, the team announced[3] it is running three sidechains – PlasmaChain, GameChain, and SocialChain – to further make its scaling vision a reality.
To provide some history on Loom's progress, the crew announced[4] its ZombieChain earlier this year. The shared sidechain employs a delegated proof-of-stake[5] (DPoS) consensus algorithm like EOS[6]. DPoS is similar to conventional proof-of-stake in that it requires validators to vote on blocks, but as the name suggests, DPoS relies upon community members to "elect" super representatives who ultimately validate the network (think of a representative democracy).
Because ZombieChain is a shared sidechain, anyone can run a Dapp on it if they pay the fixed monthly hosting fee. This model sidesteps gas payments so that, for instance, a game's players would not be charged microtransactions for every action they make in the game. Loom likens this setup to traditional web hosting.
PlasmaChain, on the other hand, represents the new and improved ZombieChain. As the Loom team began developing its Zombie Battleground marketplace on top of ZombieChain, it realized the sidechain "had potential to become something much larger than originally intended," noted Loom co-founder James Martin Duffy.
This realization led the crew to make the chain a central hub for token transactions to be connected to the Ethereum mainnet through Plasma Cash. Duffy describes PlasmaChain as an Ethereum bridge with its own decentralized exchange[7]. He maintains that
