Gate to 2.0
Facing the challenges of mass adoption, Waves, as an ecosystem, must step it up a notch, working on liquidity, scalability and post-blockchain DLT vision. The road to Waves 2.0 will take us a while, but the path is clearly defined.
There will be 3 stages on the road to Waves 2.0.
Tannhauser gate: a gate to liquidity.
Goal: $10 billion TVL on Waves.
Timeline: April-September/October 2021.
Waves is a fast blockchain with transactions settled within 2–3 seconds and transaction fees in just cents. It has an integrated DEX and a gasless (fix transaction cost) smart contract language, enabling on-chain liquidity transfer. With a high throughput and transaction costs being a fraction of those in other networks, Waves is a convenient and fast platform for various DeFi applications. Liquidity from other platforms has to be imported to Waves, and Waves DeFi instruments will be exported to other chains.
Several key directions and milestones will be pursued with the goal of locking at least $10 billion in different DeFi products on Waves until September 2021.
- Ethereum interoperability
The Ethereum network has the most liquidity now but, at the same time, is the most congested one. By redirecting part of ETH liquidity to Waves, we help Ethereum and boost Waves’ usability.
We will achieve the maximum possible ETH integration at this stage. It will become possible to use Ethereum private keys and Metamask on Waves, including Waves.Exchange and swop.fi. Within the Gravity framework, we will also interact with other major chains, including Binance Smart Chain.
2. Order book-based liquidity pools
Waves.Exchange is one of the oldest DEXs around. It supports regular order books. We will enhance it with on-chain and off-chain liquidity pools, combining the best of the two worlds — a traditional market structure with user liquidity pools. You will be able to add liquidity to any pair on Waves.Exchange and reap yield farming rewards. You will also be able to launch a token and provide liquidity for it in just a couple clicks.
3. Volatile assets
We will launch all possible volatile synthetic assets on Waves, from Tesla to any crypto or real world asset our community votes for, based on a novel protocol that does not require over-collateralization. It will allow us to lock even more value in Waves DeFi products and will create dozens of new trading products.
4. A lending protocol on Waves
On-chain lending is an essential part of any DeFi ecosystem. It is complementary to on-chain asset swaps, effectively creating on-chain marginal trading dynamics, and locks tons of funds in lending pools. A lending protocol is under development on Waves.
5. External liquidity: Gravity
You can bring liquidity over from other chains but you can also export your DeFi products onto other networks, tapping into their on-chain liquidity. Interchain DeFi apps, based on
the Gravity protocol, will export Waves DeFi tokens, such as USDN, to other chains, effectively locking more value into them. USDN already exists on ETH and Binance Smart Chain, but it is only the beginning.
6. Node release.
Last but not least, and actually probably the most important — the Waves node release this spring will enhance smart contracts’ functionally, finally enabling interacting smart contracts and flash loans on Waves. This is crucial for smoother on-chain value transfer since it allows for interaction between different lending and swap pools.
Also, the new release will greatly enhance NSBT (the Neutrino protocol’s governance token) utility, since it will allow for decentralized voting for the nodes where WAVES tokens, backing USDN, are staked.
There’s also a secret sauce to the Tannhauser gate phase of the roadmap, an application that is long overdue and can become a game-changer.
Wormholes: scaling up.
Goal: 10 million TX on average daily.
September 2021 — January/Feb 2022
Liquidity needs scaling. After we have achieved enough liquidity, we will need to move on to scaling the Waves network to account for the increased transaction volume. Our approach will be based on a novel sidechain model, which is under development now. Fast sidechains will be launched through Waves network governance, with the majority of stakers guaranteeing sidechain and main chain consistency.
Initially Waves-based sidechains will be launched, which will allow us to support app chains, networks meant to support a certain application (for example, Waves.Exchange or a data chain). Parallel to that, EVM chains will be launched, enabling full Ethereum compatibility. Interchain contract calls will enable cross-chain flash loans.
Starships: going beyond
Currently all blockchain projects realize the ideas that first emerged around 2014–2016. It is high time to try and come up with something genuinely new, going beyond the concept of fully synchronized consensus approaches. Real breakthroughs in scalability will be achieved only with new concepts. We plan to implement new approaches to distributed ledgers within the
Waves 2.0 framework, to be launched in 2022.
Waves 2.0 will be realized first as a sidechain, eventually becoming the main chain of the full network.
Waves is moving forward, and we will watch C-beams glitter in the dark! Ride on with us.
