Vuong Quang Long, Tomochain CEO: The messenger of blockchain

Vuong Quang Long, the founder and CEO of Tomochain

A belated startup carrier

Long was a bit late in embracing startups. Earlier, he spent most of his time on economic studies. Long had finished a two-year Master’s degree in the Netherlands, then spent another eight years doing research, working, and acquiring a doctorate degree in the US.

In 2014, while completing his graduation thesis, Long and some foreign friends conceived the idea and initiated a project on creating the NEM blockchain platform which has carved out a spot among the world’s top 20 blockchain platforms with a market cap surpassing $500 million.

In Long’s mind, blockchain is ‘the engine of trust’ and it is an ideal platform for doing transactions between the parties who are unknown to each other as the technology ensures transparency and makes forgery impossible.

In early 2015, leaving behind his successes in foreign markets, Long decided on returning to his home country. His first project in e-commerce did not yield the expected results after nearly one and a half years.

Then, being aware of fresh opportunities from blockchain and algorithm, Long has built up Tomochain to exploit the potential. Tomochain was oriented as a technology platform to write unfocused applications and smart contracts developed based on Ethereum virtual currency, allowing faster transaction speeds at lower transaction fees.

While working on Ethereum, he got to know that this platform could not handle transactions related to several dozen thousand people. That was why Long and his colleagues at Tomochain began building a new blockchain infrastructure which allows users to reach dual targets: issuing tokens (digital currency) and building decentralised applications for businesses.

“Distributed tokens may carry stable value. The value of a token might be set to be equal to a gram of gold, one US dollar or a barrel of oil. When tokens are circulated on the Tomochain platform, they will have high liquidity and could be transacted and become asset-secured tokens,” Long explained.

Tomochain’s founder and CEO assumed that the use of blockchain and decentralised applications Tomochain has developed for enterprises could help firms ensure information privacy for users and the whole system.

The platform suits the fields that require a high level of transparency, such as tracing agricultural product origin, finance, and healthcare.

In addition, it can help build up payment portals that are better and more competitive compared to AliPay for Vietnam and the whole Southeast Asian region.

Tomochain provides blockchain infrastructure to diverse business partners operating in different fields. The projects running trials on the Tomochain platform include Triip Protocol – a scoring and payment platform to serve tourists; BigBorn – a decentralised advertising platform in Southeast Asia; and TE-Food – a firm providing solutions to trace food origin.

Businesses can use the Tomochain platform for bond issuances in the form of tokens. Investors can later transact the bonds in the secondary market to create bond liquidity. This will help firms to raise money more easily.

In the past year, Tomochain signed co-operation contracts on platform provision with numerous businesses, including Binkabi which is a fintech firm using blockchain technology to tackle impediments in the agricultural value chain in developing countries.

“Binkabi joined hands with Tomochain to integrate blockchain technology into agricultural product exchanges. With the advantages as a pioneering business in blockchain solutions for businesses, Tomochain is in a position to usher in faster transactions on the exchange with lower costs and higher safety and privacy,” said CEO Quan Le of Binkabi.

Rising to a global platform

In parallel to installing applications for businesses, early last year Tomochain issued 50 million Tomo tokens worldwide, drawing in $8.5 million from 50 domestic and international organisations.

Last May, the total value of these 50 million Tomo tokens touched $100 million. Later, in the wake of a plummeting cryptocurrency market, the tokens’ current value fetched about $15 million, still relatively high compared to the initial $8.5 million value.

Long shared that the proceeds from their initial coin offering (ICO) met the startup’s expectations and went to serve their future development plans, including expansion into the Japanese market.

According to Long, Japan is quite a particular market, as Japanese blockchain investors have limited connections with the outside community. Tomochain sees Japan as a strategic market with huge potential.

Tomochain currently has partnership relations with Vnext, a renowned software firm in Vietnam that has a good grip of the Japanese market and its 200 engineers are working in Japan.

In last November, Tomochain inaugurated its Japan office, getting one step closer to its target of growing into a global provider of blockchain solutions.

“We want to bring Japanese users a compelling financial system built on the blockchain platform. Besides, we aim to support firms to avail of the advantages of blockchain such as asset digitalisation and other financial services,” Long said.

Besides Japan, Vietnam is one of Tomochain’s key markets as the company’s leaders are working in Hanoi. Tomochain aims to serve global users.

“Tomochain’s regular users fetch around 10-20,000 people. Our target is augmenting user volumes on the global scale and to be listed among Coinmarketcap’s top 100 cryptocurrencies by the end of this year,” he added.