“Decentralized Platform”
Waves was released in 2016 by Alexander (Sasha) Ivanov, a Russian physicist. The system aims to make creating, managing and storing digital assets easy and secure whilst providing a global platform for wider blockchain adoption.
The main hallmark of the system is its ability to allow users to create their own ICO token – designed to help the likes of companies and other asset holders to unlock the potential in their systems through the ever-expanding use of decentralization technology.
Several ICO’s have already taken place on its network, with the following having successfully raised funds with it:
– Co-working project which successfully raised 3000BTC.
– e-Sports smart contracts successfully raised $53m worth of Bitcoin in its ICO.
One of the more promising avenues for the system lies in the idea of “gateways” – ways through which fiat & crypto assets can be interchanged. To this end, the Waves team announced a successful partnership with Deloitte to provide the ability to interact with a large number of banks / financial institutions.
Waves apparently aims to open a decentralized asset management system – allowing for the free trade of Bitcoin, Euros, Dollars and other currencies seamlessly.
The platform is trying to push cryptocurrencies into the mainstream with minimal barriers for those with no coding and technical experience. Partnerships with payment services (such as Deloitte) allow for the standardization of this process.
What is Waves Cryptocurrency?
Ultimately, the system is trying to be a central way to manage all the crypto assets you may have. Whilst this is not new, the team are working towards being able to integrate the system with various payment providers – essentially allowing people to pay with whichever currency they have (including crypto)…
The system has been built around the idea that it needs to pull back all the data for the various tokens stored within its platform. Whilst this works well, the problem is that all this data has to be ratified and also the fiat currencies have to be maintained within central systems.
The gateway providers who have made it possible to accept fiat currencies have allowed the system to work with these tools, meaning that if you’re using the system to pay for products in USD, EUR or even the likes of Bitcoin – it should be able to work.
Who created it?
The team behind the project all hail from Russia, with a number of highly skilled & experienced members providing extremely specific expertise…
- Sasha Ivanov (CEO)
Involved in Internet payment systems software development and neural network prediction software for financial markets.
After the emergence of blockchain, launched the first instant cryptocurrency exchange coinomat.com, the first fiat blockchain token coinoUSD, and the first tradable cryptocurrency index coinoindex.com.
Why does it exists?
Almost every aspect of Waves has been provided by other – more popular – systems, and the added risk of working with an unknown company is avoided when using the likes of Ripple or Ethereum.
Nonetheless, there has been a Whitepaper published, explaining that the system basically wants to do the job of all the leading platforms:
WAVES is a decentralized blockchain platform focusing on custom blockchain tokens operations. National currencies transfer is maintained on the WAVES blockchain through compliant gateway operators.
Decentralized token exchange facilitates fundraising, crowdfunding, and trading of financial instruments on the blockchain. Lightweight clients provide an easy installation procedure and a flat learning curve for end users.
The full Whitepaper can be read here.
Trajectory
Whilst this system works relatively well, and has been designed to provide users with the ability to create custom blockchain systems of their own.
The problem with this system is exactly the same as with the myriad of Bitcoin clones – it has absolutely no use value on its own. It’s both piggy-backed the Bitcoin rally, and has basically tried to create yet another blockchain system with little practical value.
The main point about Waves is that it has very little practical value in the real world. What little competitive advantage it has, will quickly be swallowed up by the likes of Ethereum if the latter gets the slightest hint that it could benefit in some way.
The reason why we are quite scathing about this is because the crypto world is not only full of scams, but its extremely low barriers-to-entry have made it a hive of activity for startups and ICO’s – most of which have no real reason for existing.
We believe Waves to be such a project – will struggle because it doesn’t really have any major commercial benefit – its scope for growth is low and is already mirroring the likes of Bitcoin quite heavily, despite being a platform.
You can normally tell which crypto system is going to survive in the long-run by how specific its use-case is. Ethereum’s smart contract idea is revolutionary. Bitcoin’s “digital currency” likewise. What’s Waves’ core idea?
