What is Waves？Veteran crypto protocol leads the charts

22 March 15:09

What is Waves? Founded in 2016, Waves is a decentralized, natively-built blockchain platform that allows any person to create its own project and own token fast and seamlessly, without the need for advanced knowledge in programming and software engineering. It is also an Automated Market Maker platform with its own Decentralized Exchange for tokens from other ecosystems and within the Waves blockchain.

Waves Lite App: The Waves Lite App is a browser extension plug-in that functions as a central hub for creation and storage within the native blockchain. In the Waves Lite App, users have access to their funds and can also start off with the process of creating their own crypto tokens.

Waves Exchange: The actual trading occurs in the Waves Exchange platform, where users can trade the most used cryptocurrencies and others from the Waves ecosystem without the need for legal verification. Today, the Waves exchange accounts for over 32 thousand users across 600 million dollars invested, plus several fixed investment strategies according to different investment profiles.

Why did WAVES price soar recently? 1. Foundation moving away from Russia and into the United States through Miami-based Waves Labs 2. Integration announcement with the Ethereum Virtual Machine, allowing for cross-chain development of both Waves and Ethereum dApps.

If you have kept up with the crypto markets lately, you have certainly noticed that the ecosystem is extremely volatile at the moment; with high inflation across the globe, looming fears of the pandemic over the past two years and of course the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in the top 100 by market cap have taken quite the beating with losses that go up to 20-40% on a weekly basis.

Waves, however, has beaten the odds and grown back drastically against the trend, scaling upwards to 100% in a single week in February. The project is also not a novel name to crypto, being around for more than half a decade and providing several innovations that can still be considered a novelty for many investors in the market.

So what exactly is Waves? In this article, we’ll go through the details behind this crypto project and what makes it so valuable to the crypto markets.

What is Waves (WAVES)?

Source: BusinessWire

Waves is a decentralized, natively-built blockchain platform that allows any person to create its own project and own token fast and seamlessly, without the need for advanced knowledge in programming and software engineering. Creators can also publicly finance their projects, create a rewards system and quickly set up a token within the Waves blockchain.

With Waves, it’s possible to create your own crypto in just a few minutes. But the project is also quite the all-rounder, being an Automated Market Maker platform with its own Decentralized Exchange for tokens from other ecosystems and within the Waves blockchain.

It was founded in 2016 by programmer Sasha Ivanov with the intention of reinventing entrepreneurship in the crypto business. At that time, it was extremely difficult for people to dive into crypto investing - let alone create their own businesses around it. With that in mind, Ivanov and the waves team create an infrastructure that is simple and easy to use, allowing organizations and individuals to have quick access to the blockchain without the need for a background in the computing sciences.

This is why Waves initial motto was “Blockchain for the people,” offering several benefits for all layers of the crypto world; from investors and entrepreneurs to developers and even full-fledged organizations.

How does Waves work?

When new crypto tokens are created by users in the Waves blockchain, they function as a sort of plug-in to the network, as an extension of the baseline software of the platform. This plug-in structure is part of what makes crypto tokens so easy to develop.

Waves also innovated six years ago by utilizing a blockchain structure that is now extremely common, but at the time almost unheard of. Unlike Bitcoin and Ethereum’s blockchains that use only full node contributors to run the network, Waves’ nodes are split into two layers of the platform, with light and full nodes running the network by accessing different areas of the blockchain. In order to become a node contributor, you need to invest 1.000 Waves into the network. This method ensures a safer and faster system. As an example for traditional software, it’s like the first blockchains utilized the same employees for both backend and frontend development of the “business,” while Waves decided to split these sections to improve workflow and productivity. That might seem like a no-brainer for crypto today, but at the time it was rare and also extremely hard to accomplish.

Waves is also pretty fast, offering a high capacity of network transfers at low latency and very low fees. It also possesses two main apps; the Waves Lite App and the Waves Dex platform, which serve different purposes.

Waves Lite App

Logo of the Waves x Burger King partnership back in 2017. Source: Medium

The Waves Lite App is a browser extension plug-in that functions as a central hub for creation and storage within the native blockchain. In the Waves Lite App, users have access to their funds and can also start off with the process of creating their own crypto tokens.

Speaking of which, Waves is arguably the first example of a major partnership between a crypto project and a corporation. In 2017, to promote the Whopper burger in Russia, Burger King created the Whopper Coin using Waves’ blockchain. It allowed users to retrieve rewards in the fast-food chain using the tokens, which could only be purchased through the Waves Lite App, at the time called Waves Lite Client.

Waves Exchange

Although funds are stored in Waves Lite App, the actual trading occurs in the Waves Exchange platform. Although DEXs are very common nowadays, with platforms like UniSwap and PancakeSwap, Waves was leading in innovation several years ago by creating their own decentralized hub where users can trade the most used cryptocurrencies and others from the Waves ecosystem without the need for legal verification. Today, the Waves exchange accounts for over 32 thousand users across 600 million dollars invested, plus several fixed investment strategies according to different investment profiles. It’s important to note that education is key before venturing into decentralized investment products, as they do come with significant risks.

Why did WAVES price soar recently?

Source: Google

Over the past few weeks, while crypto prices all over the markets dropped significantly, Waves pressed on and grew its market cap by over 250%. According to analysts in the business and recent news on the project, it occurred for two main reasons.

Firstly, although Waves had its headquarters in Russia for the past few years since the project was initiated, the group and its Ukrainian founder Sasha Ivanov announced that Waves had been moving its activity to the United States - more specifically, to the Miami-based Waves Labs.

Secondly, and the most important update, Waves announced that it was transforming its entire blockchain into Waves 2.0. Among the several updates, the Waves foundation and Sasha announced that the project is now integrating itself with the Ethereum Virtual Machine - the hub for developers to create dApps in the Ethereum blockchain. Such news is massive, and brings forth a new era for the Waves project - cross-chain development. As a continuous source for crypto pioneering over the past six years, this integration opens the door for many more opportunities to grow Waves towards unforeseen new levels.

Author: Gate.io Researcher: Victor Bastos
* This article represents only the views of the researcher and does not constitute any investment suggestions.
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