What You Should Know About Waves Platform
Digital Asset Platforms Series (5 part series — Part 2)
Blockchain and use of cryptocurrencies are progressively becoming mainstream. However, as more and more users join the crypto space, scaling has become a significant challenge for many cryptocurrency platforms. For instance, while Bitcoin’s value has hit record highs, keeping up with the ever-increasing transaction volumes is a tall order for the Bitcoin network.
The Waves platform seems to be the network that will fix it all. The Waves team is taking proactive steps to ensure that their network can scale to meet user demands. In this article, we shall explore everything you need to know about Waves. So, let’s delve in and explore:
What is Waves platform?
Waves Platform is an independent and open-source Blockchain platform that allows its users to build applications, create and distribute new cryptocurrencies. The platform can also be used to crowdfund.
The platform is decentralized. Crypto enthusiasts can use it to create customized tokens and transfer digital assets on the Blockchain. Traders can also exchange tokens for fiat currency.
Who is behind Waves?
Waves was founded by a Russian Physicist, Alexander Ivanov back in the year 2016. And by April 2016, Waves had raised $22 million in two rounds of crowdfunding. Prior to launching Waves, Alexander co-founded other startups such as NXT cryptocurrency platform and Coinomat. So, why did he create wave?
Alexander and his team had one goal in mind: solving scalability issues, unfriendly user interface, among other problems they had envisioned in Blockchain. The platform also seeks to advance how the Bitcoin Blockchain functions along with its features.
Today, Waves is believed to be the fastest Blockchain and continues to serve as a transparent, fully decentralized and auditable platform for value transfer. Now, let’s have a closer look at how it works.
How it Works
The Waves Platform enables any user to create their own tokens, and exchange them for other cryptocurrencies or fiat money. Usually, the process takes a few minutes and requires little understanding of the underlying technology. But why create your own tokens? The good thing about having your customized tokens is that it gives your business more freedom to make payments for goods and services or even crowdfund for a project.
To facilitate your tokens creation and issuance process, you will need Waves. You can buy them on Tidex, Bittrex among other exchange platforms out there.
The Waves Platform heavily relies on fiat gateways administered by independent operators. These operators enable users to exchange fiat currencies for digital coins. However, the coins here are different from the usual ones you know, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. Fiat currencies like USD or EUR are converted to fiat tokens (wUSD or wEUR) and can now be transferred through Blockchain.
The main reason why people tokenize fiat currencies is to speed up the transfer process. Transferring tokens is faster and cheaper than bank transfers. Once you receive your tokens, you can go ahead and exchange them back to fiat currencies at a ratio 1:1.
Waves’ Blockchain has the capabilities of tokenizing any other cryptocurrencies. You can even get a wETH.
All of these services can be accessed through your Waves Wallet. You can easily download the wallet onto your mobile phone both in IOS and Android. The wallet is also available as a Chrome Extension.
Waves Tokens and Architecture
To manage scaling problems, the platform relies on two-tier architecture and a leased proof-of-stake. Let’s briefly discuss these concepts:
Two-tier architecture
The Waves Platform functions on two-tier architecture in a network maintained by both full and light-weight nodes. As you may have noted, this is approach is different from the strictly full node method used by Bitcoin.
Instead of full nodes downloading the Blockchain, the light-weight nodes use the current network state to confirm transactions and facilitate interactions on the entire network. Waves uses the Scorex platform to guarantee trust between full nodes and lightweight nodes.
Leased Proof-of-Stake (LPoS)
There are exactly 100 million Waves in circulation. To maintain the integrity, Waves Platform uses a Proof-of-Stake consensus algorithm which varies slightly from the traditional one. For you to stake tokens through this system, you have to ‘lease’ them to full nodes that are controlling the network. The process costs 10,000 waves.
If you don’t have that amount of waves, you will have to participate in a public mining pool by leasing your waves. There are several mining pools you can choose from, but most recommended ones are Wavenodes.NET and WavesGo.
Waves Platform Features
The outstanding features of the platform include:
Affordability — Tokens can be used to pay transaction fees, and each transaction is as cheap as 0.001 Waves.
Speed — Block time for waves is under one minute. This basically translates to 6000 txs per second. Under a minute, you’ll be having your token.
Decentralized Exchange (DEX) — DEX enables every user to sell or buy tokens using a centralized matcher. Meaning there are no possibilities of freezing of funds or being hacked. How? Once you make an order, you will be served centrally and the trading process will be performed on a peer-to-peer channel.
Fiat transfer — Waves Platform has licensed and fully compliant gateway in and out of Blockchain. The platform currently supports fiat currencies such as EUR, and plans for USD Blockchain and other fiat is underway.
Accessibility — Waves Platform has a friendly and easily accessible user interface (UI). There are quite some options; a browser version, mobile version and a stand-alone version of Waves Client. Also, it saves on your hardware storage space since Blockchain download is not necessary.
Best for crowdfunding projects — Waves Platform is currently turning into the most sort-after tool by most startups, thanks to its ability to raise funds. Startups are using Waves Platform to plan, create and distribute tokens safely. So far, there are 7000+ tokens issued through Waves Platform that collective add way over $1 Billion.
Smart contracts — Recently, Waves TestNet released non-Turing smart contracts which are way easier to utilize compared to Ethereum’s smart contracts.
Final word
Waves has a quite promising future. They recently entered into a partnership with Deloite to net ICO service clients. Waves is also extending their reach into government entities. They are now working with Russian National Settlement Depository (Moscow Stock Exchange) to establish a Blockchain platform that will facilitate distribution of digital assets.
All said and done the value of Waves lies in its simplicity. Users can create their own customized token to run a crowdfunding campaign or create a loyalty coin for their business. To date, many startups have benefitted from Waves’ services; helping these startups get funding in faster and in a cheaper way. Some of the success stories here include Upcoin and Tokenomica.
Without a doubt, Waves is the platform to watch, as more and more startups launch their tokens to the crypto sphere.
Additional Waves resources:
Blog | Twitter | Facebook | Reddit | Telegram
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