The Path Towards A Decentralized Financial System
Wanchain has a clear vision. Since the writing of our whitepaper up until today, we have been tirelessly pursuing our goal of building a new financial system.
The financial ecosystem of tomorrow will be comprised of many assets relying on heterogeneous blockchains, protocols and technologies. Wanchain aims to link all these assets, in a decentralized, trustless and permissionless manner.
We integrated Ethereum last summer, allowing users to transfer ETH to Wanchain. Bitcoin and stablecoin (MakerDAO’s DAI) integration is currently on beta testnet. Many other ERC20s and new blockchains are in the pipeline for the upcoming months.
These integrations are not only about bridging assets, but also about bridging communities. The two biggest communities in the space (BTC and ETH) will soon be connected through the Wanchain ecosystem. We are building the bridges to unify the crypto communities and bring about an environment of collaboration and joint growth between what used to be separate entities.
The previous Ethereum integration already proved that our unique approach to solving the cross-chain transfer of assets works.
We are able to lock assets on native chains and issue their worth in proxy tokens that can be redeemed for the underlying asset at any moment. The entire process is distributed and will be decentralized in the coming months.
Wanchain believes the current industry is relying on too many third parties in order to operate. The whole purpose of blockchain technology was to create a decentralized world where value and data could flow freely without intermediaries, in a fully peer to peer manner.
Today, centralized exchanges are a fundamental part of the crypto ecosystem, and users are forced to use them in order to exchange assets from different chains. These exchanges are a replica of the banks and centralized institutions we are all too familiar with. They are vulnerable to hacking (800 million dollars worth of assets hacked in 2018), some are involved in wash trading and market manipulation, and others face regulatory risks or other downsides.
New centralized solutions are also on the rise in order to solve the interoperability problem. The Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) that was recently announced by BitGo, Kyber Network and Republic Protocol relies on a regulated custodian in order to issue WBTC to Ethereum as an ERC20.
We deem these “solutions” to only be short term events, that are symptomatic of an ever-maturing and developing industry. We strongly believe that decentralization is the way forward, as has been intended all along that cryptocurrencies shouldn’t rely on third parties.
Cryptocurrencies should instead rely on open source technology, community, and on a will to avoid the mistakes and problems that plague the financial system we know today.
There are many projects currently building on Ethereum with the aim of building a new financial system. Unlike the one we have today, their aim is to make this industry decentralized, more transparent and more inclusive. Some key examples of these projects can be seen in those comprising the #DeFi community.
We believe these projects are not currently living to their full potential as they are being restricted to the assets that are solely available on the Ethereum blockchain.
The financial ecosystem that is being created on Ethereum is cut off from the rest of the crypto industry and cannot access the hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of digital assets on BTC, XRP, BCH, LTC, EOS, and others.
DEXs: When you are using a DEX on Ethereum, you are only able to trade ETH and ERC20s.
Loans: When Maker backs the value of its DAI stable coin, the backing assets can only be native to Ethereum. When a loan is issued on a relayer built using Dharma, the underlying assets can only be Ethereum assets.
We could go on and on. Every financial application currently is being restricted by the number of assets they can use.
These projects currently have 3 solutions:
- Accept the restrictions that the technology imposes and stay fully decentralized, but remain limited in the number of assets their smart contract can leverage.
- Use centralized solutions such as WBTC which will be available on Ethereum by January 2019.
In both cases there is a trade-off, between centralization or the number of available assets they can utilize.
3. A third solution will be available by the end of December: Integration with Wanchain in order to leverage a unique cross-chain system which is driving to be fully decentralized by next year.
Wanchain, the Infrastructure for the Future Decentralized Financial Industry
Wanchain’s aim is to complement the financial ecosystem being created on Ethereum. We believe we can help to create a financial ecosystem that doesn’t rely on centralized solutions as crypto was meant to, while still enabling the connection of assets and communities from heterogeneous chains.
Wanchain is breaking the walls that currently exist between chains and building bridges in their place. These bridges are decentralized, they don’t entail any centralized custodian, neither institution nor bank-like system.
We are staying true to the vision of a decentralized financial industry.
Before the end of the year, DEXs built on Wanchain will have the option to list BTC/ETH and BTC/ERC20 trading pairs, allowing for significant more volume and institutional investor interest.
By linking Bitcoin, which is the crypto reserve currency to the Ethereum ecosystem, Wanchain will finally allow DEXs to disrupt the monopoly centralized exchanges hold on the digital asset trading world.
Wanchain will allow the current DEX industry to grow exponentially, as we believe their value proposition to customers will be much stronger with the access to different chains.
In the same manner that Uber disrupted the transportation industry, we expect Wanchain to foster incredible growth in the DEX industry.
Our goal has always been to foster innovation and provide the right tools for projects to succeed.
We are all pioneers in this world-changing industry.
We hope this message resonates with the community so that together we can build this new financial system based on transparency, decentralization and financial inclusion.
About Wanchain
Wanchain is a blockchain platform that enables transfer of value between blockchains. This infrastructure also enables the creation of distributed financial applications. Wanchain currently allows for cross-chain transactions with Ethereum, and the next product launch will enable the same functionalities with Bitcoin. Going forward, we will continue to bridge blockchains and bring cross-chain finance functionality to companies in the industry. Wanchain has approximately 70 employees globally with offices in Beijing (China), Austin (USA), and London (UK).
