Introduction

What is LACNet?

LACNet is a non-profit and neutral blockchain infrastructure orchestrator for Latin America and the Caribbean. It was founded in 2021 by RedCLARA and LACNIC in collaboration with IDB Lab as a spin-off of the LACChain Global Alliance that allowed to take the LACChain Networks to Mainnet by enabling the establishment of a contractual legal framework between all node operators to ensure a reliable and regulatory compliance infrastructure.

By assuming contractual commitments between participants, the networks orchestrated by LACNet assure decentralized governance and operation while guaranteeing reliability and accountability. Based on the origin and governance of the Internet, LACNet blockchain infrastructures are guided by neutrality principles, where all traffic must be treated equally, without differentiation of prices according to the content, platform, or application.

What is LACChain?

LACChain is a Global Alliance integrated by different actors in the blockchain environment and led by IDB Lab for the development of the blockchain ecosystem in Latin America and the Caribbean. Born in 2019, its goal is to accelerate the enablement and adoption of blockchain technology in the LAC region to foster innovation, reduce economic, social, gender and all inequalities, to promote job quality and security, promote financial inclusion, consumer protection and market integrity. The expected outcomes are the empowerment of people, the improvement of digital security, and the generation of trust on the economy and digital society.

Why LACChain?

The initial funders of the LACChain Alliance led by the IDB Lab identified a fragmentation and dispersion of the communities and blockchain networks that limit the efforts being made to adopt blockchain technology. Some of these included many silos in the ecosystem, scarcity of information, regulatory uncertaintly, very expensive costs related to the use of the technology, a very concerning carbon footprint, and thousands of blockchain networks that were not suitable for the scalability of government and enterprise use cases, the absence of international standards and protocols and the lack of collaboration and coordination among public, private, and academic entities. In this context, the rapid manifestation of the benefits that blockchain can contribute to our society and generate impact, especially in vulnerable populations, could be difficult to achieve.

In order to address this, the LACChain Alliance is focused on two big pillars: community and infrastructure. In terms of community, the LACChain Alliance supports national ecosystems and governments in LAC, has established regional and by-industry working groups, supports the organization of hackathons and challenges, and participates in standardization working groups, among many other tasks. In terms of infrastructure, the LACChain Alliance has built the largest permissioned public blockchain infrastructure in the world, with more than 100 entities from Latin America, the Caribbean, the United States, and Europe sharing a common network for their blockchain-based projects. This infrastructure is complemented with several tools for digital identity, digital credentials, tokenization, and digital money.

Why LACNet?

LACNet is the neutral and non-profit vehicle that has allowed LACChain Networks to move into production. In a permissioned environment, even in a public one as LACChain where all the information is public and everyone can join as long as it complies with the rules, there must be some actor assuming an orchestration role. In the case of LACNet, the orchestration tasks include serving as the legal counterpart to sign the adscription contracts with the new entities, providing technical support, and coordinating the working groups that implement a decentralized governance. LACNet ensures reliability and accountability in LACChain Networks, while guaranteeing descentralization and transparency.

What LACChain Networks are Available?

There are two types of LACChain Networks, all orchestrated by LACNet: the Mainnets and the ProTestnets. At present, we have three LACChain Networks:

  • Mainnet Omega
  • Open Protestnet
  • Legacy Protestnet (DEPRECATED) 

Read more about them and how to use them here.

How can I Start?

You can start by deploying a LACChain testnet isolated in your local machine so you can deploy your first smart contract and interact with it by sending a transaction. In order to deploy a node either in the LACChain Open ProTestnet or in the Mainnet Omega, you can follow our install guides using Ansible, using Dockers, or using Kubernetes.

Once you have a node deployed, you can use it for your different projects. We also have some guides that you can follow to deploy smart contracts, deploy private channels (using Ansibleusing Dockers, or using Kubernetes), deploy an IPFS node (using Ansible, using Dockers, or using Kubernetes), and deploy the Hyperledger Firefly stack.

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