Waves is a virtual cryptocurrency and blockchain that was developed to facilitate the customization of tokens, allowing entrepreneurs to create their own platforms and coins via a shared infrastructure.
On the Waves platform, users are able to launch their own ICOs in minutes, without the need for the coding requirements to create a cryptocurrency.
The platform was developed to allow users to store, trade, manage and issue customized digital assets securely and easily:
- Projects or companies can issue their own tokens to kick-start their project or company, with crowdfunding, loyalty programs, voting and more.
- Developers benefit from high network throughput capacity, low latency, and low transaction fees.
- Traders can store assets securely in the local lite client, whilst also trading them quickly and safely on the built-in decentralized exchange (DEX).
Waves’ blockchain is a proof-of-stake algorithm that rewards coin holders with a commission from transactions.
For traders, the advantage of trading on the Waves’ DEX is that each and every transaction is recorded on the Waves blockchain.
Waves DEX is ultimately a decentralized exchange that is embedded within the Waves blockchain and facilitates the trading of cryptocurrencies and other tokens issued on the Waves platform. In addition, Waves DEX also caters to fiat currency – cryptocurrency trading.
In addition to trading on Waves DEX, Waves users can lease their wave coins to full mining nodes and receive income from lessees in return for the additional mining power on the proof-of-stake network.
The Waves protocol facilitates the processing of thousands of transactions per minute and was developed to resolve Bitcoin’s scalability issues, with the introduction of Waves-NG in 2017, which is a next-generation consensus algorithm based on Bitcoin-NG proposal that had been designed to increase transaction throughput on the Bitcoin blockchain.
In summary, the Waves platform provides:
- Smart contracts: Unlike on the Ethereum platform, smart contracts are written by built-in plug-ins to simplify the process.
- Tokenization: Create custom tokens or cryptocurrencies.
- Fiat Gateways: Facilitates the exchange of fiat currencies for cryptocurrencies and tokens available on the Waves’ DEX.
- ICOHub: Waves network votes on projects launching ICOs on the Waves platform, with the winners receiving assistance in the entire fundraising process.
Waves was founded by Sasha Ivanov in 2016, with a total of 100 million Waves tokens.
Transactions on the Waves platform blockchain are verified by miners, with miners required to have a minimum of 1,000 Waves to qualify as a full node and verify transactions.
With the Waves platform’s proof-of-stake algorithm, the greater the number of Waves held by a node, the greater the chance of verifying the next transaction.
Within the Waves Platform, there are two additional tokens:
Miners Reward Tokens (MRT):
- A bonus token distributed with each new block creation.
- MRTs are intended to be used as a means to reward nodes for processing their transactions, paying fees in their own tokens.
- MRTs can be transferred and traded freely on Waves DEX.
- Gives MRT holders voting rights on the proof-of-stake blockchain.
- Total supply of 10,000,000.
Waves Community Tokens (WCT):
- Created to provide a tool for community assessment of crowdfunding campaigns launched on the Waves platform.
- Also created to incentivize the long-term holding of Waves by delivering an additional income stream for Waves token holders.
- Distributed to Waves holders on a monthly basis, in proportion to the Waves holders’ average preceding month balance.
- The more Waves held, the greater the share of blockchain transaction fees.
- Total supply of 10,000,000
Some distinct differences and characteristics of Waves Platform and coin include:
- Waves’ proof-of-stake algorithm removes the need for expensive hardware, specialist knowledge, dedication and patience that is needed for mining through proof-of-work algorithms.
- The cost of creating a new token on the Wave platform is 1 Waves in addition to transaction fees.
- There are a finite number of Waves.
- The introduction of Waves-NG has made transactions per second even faster.
