Waves was created as the answer to all of the blockchain’s biggest problems, including speed, scalability, and user experience. Launched in 2016, the open-source blockchain platform has been steadily launching new features on their network ever since.
They are the first blockchain platform that has managed to find an easy way to allow anyone to create their own token. All you need is 1 WAVES token, a name and description of the token you wish to create, and an idea of how you want it to be structured. Presto! You’re all set.
Waves’ slogan used to be “your blockchain token in one minute.” While that’s still true, Waves has evolved into much more than that. In April 2017, the team successfully launched its decentralized exchange on which the created tokens, existing cryptocurrencies, and fiat currencies can be traded.
Recently Waves has made a big splash, claiming they are now the “fastest blockchain network in the world.” A recent stress test on the Waves network revealed that the platform is capable of processing 190 transactions per second. To put that into perspective, Bitcoin can process 3 to 4 transactions per second, while Ethereum processes about 20 per second.
The Waves team are clearly working hard to stand out above the fierce crypto competition, and they have plenty of new and improved features up their sleeves. Let’s take a look at what their roadmap looks like to see what the future holds for this growing platform.
The Waves Roadmap
Now that Waves has a fully functioning ecosystem with gateways, a working decentralized exchange, and a series of user-friendly interfaces for desktop and mobile devices, the team is gearing up to roll out some advanced features that target mass adoption.
What does 2018 have in store for the Waves platform? We can expect to see several new features added throughout the new year.
Smart Contracts
We can expect Waves to implement a form of smart contracts during 2018.
The team has emphasized that their smart contracts will not be the same as Ethereum’s Turning Complete contracts. There have been some issues with Ethereum’s approach — just look at the Parity wallet fiasco. A hacker managed to exploit a critical flaw in the Parity multi-signature wallet on the Ethereum network, which allowed them to steal $31 million worth of Ether in a matter of minutes. The hacker could have made off with hundreds of millions of dollars more, had a group of white-hat hackers not prevented this from happening.
Clearly, Ethereum’s smart contract approach has some serious vulnerability issues, and the Waves team has taken note of this. That’s why they plan on unveiling a more secure version for their platform.
The team explained in a blog post:
“Waves’ smart contracts will be a more direct generalisation of bitcoin scripting that will be able to handle most of the same use cases without the security implications. It’s a better and safer approach for business logic, whilst still comprehensive in its capabilities.”
Tokenomica
Waves has been working with top legal firms to release something called Tokenomica next year. Tokenomica will be a centralized platform built on top of the Waves blockchain. It will provide a 100% compliant legal framework for different types of token crowdsales, including private equity crowdsales. The team expects this to be a big use case for Waves, and one that will bring many new users to their ecosystem.
You can subscribe to their mailing list to get updates on Tokenomica on their web page.
Blockchain OS 2.0
The team is set to release a full overhaul of the user interface of their decentralized exchange, plus some great new features as well, on December 13th. This will be called Blockchain OS 1.0. If you happen to be in Amsterdam then, you can attend the release party!
During a Q&A session in their Slack channel, Founder and CEO Sasha Ivanov posted this screenshot as a little teaser for the upcoming release:
After the release of Blockchain OS 1.0, the team will dive into work on even more updates and features to be released in 2018. This second version will be called Blockchain OS 2.0, and we can expect it to further improve and strengthen Waves’ decentralized exchange more than ever.
Multisignature Transactions
To improve security, multisignature transactions are on track to get released on the Waves blockchain in 2018.
What does that mean? A multisignature (often abbreviated multisig) address is an address that is associated with more than one private key. A multisig transaction is a transaction that sends funds from a multisig address. This essentially provides more security by increasing the difficulty of stealing coins. With different keys on different machines, a hacker would have to compromise both, which is very difficult.
Blockchain Messaging System
Lastly, the Waves team has announced that they are working on releasing a blockchain messaging system next year. This will enable fast, encrypted communication between users on the Waves platform. This feature will make using Waves’ platform even more enjoyable and convenient than it already is.
The Future Looks Bright for Waves
With all of these new features expected next year, 2018 is sure to be a thrilling time for Waves and its users. As the team continues to work hard on improving their platform, we can expect to see Waves continue to grow and gain popularity. The new year looks like it will be a very prosperous one for Waves!
Over at the Waves subreddit, the community is already getting excited for what 2018 has in store.
“Waves is the blockchain revolution. I know Waves is going to the moon,” u/juanenreddit posted. “Waves just keeps getting better!” commented u/biggzi. u/yoyoamigo wrote, “2018 will be so epic for Waves.” And moderator u/Yams_Fordena heartily agrees: “2018 will be Waves’ time to shine!”
