Those of you that have been around the crypto space for a while will probably have heard of Waves. Somewhat of an O.G. blockchain, it was launched in 2016 in one of the crypto industries first ‘Initial Coin Offerings’.
Like many new platforms at the time, Waves set out to be faster and more user-friendly than other smart contract and DApp platforms. A key innovation that attracted investors is the ability to easily create your own blockchain token on the Waves network, without the need for programming skills or a huge stack of money. With their own coin, an individual user or a small business owner could create a reward token to give to loyal customers, a fun way to invite friends to a party, and many other potential uses, all for the price of one single Waves token.
Another key idea that attracted investors to Waves was the fact that the team was one of the proponents of the decentralized exchange, which is now known as the Waves. Exchange. The Waves token is also used to pay for transaction fees and can be staked to earn a passive income. Other products available on the Waves ecosystem include: Swop.fi, an automated market maker that ensures there are enough assets out there to complete the exchange.
Gravity, a data protocol that connects blockchain applications with information from the outside world, and seeks to be a one-stop-shop for communication and asset exchange across all blockchains; And finally Neutrino, a platform where you can create your own stable coins, to sidestep all of that messy crypto price volatility. This platform is home to Waves’ very own stable coin, USDN, which is ‘pegged’ to the US dollar.
The main goal here is to create a decentralized foreign exchange, or DeFo, for short. In a Medium article, the founder of Waves, Sasha Ivanov laid out his vision that the next step for the blockchain industry is not just ‘banking for crypto’, but to have the entire suite of traditional banking products. Like forex and options, running on smart contracts - decentralized, transparent, and accessible to everybody. And considering that securities, like Tesla stock, can also be added to the mix, the idea of ‘Inter-chain DeFo’ is an exciting one indeed. Waves Exchange, despite being one of the first DEX solutions in the space, is still only seeing around 6 million dollars of trading volume per day.
Although this may sound like a lot, most established exchanges are trading well into the billions in every 24 hour period. If the exchange volumes are low, it suggests that Waves’ custom token creation is low, along with the use of the platform’s native stable coin, despite its growth. It remains to be seen however if the developers at Waves can make this innovation count, and bring in the one thing that really matters - crypto users like me and you.
Will waves create a tsunami of new dapps? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
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