The Waves decentralized financial exchange platform will have the right to a major upgrade of its algorithm, the Waves-NG, has just been deployed and should activate later in the month on the Blockchain Waves. An update of their client is also planned very soon.
Upgrading the Waves protocol
Scalability is a concern for any Blockchain that targets business use, yet few cryptographic platforms have addressed this issue satisfactorily. For example, Bitcoin is currently struggling with a capacity of about 3 transactions per second. Obviously, such a rate is not enough to support the mass adoption for which Waves was designed.
During this year, the Waves team developed a new consensus algorithm based on Bitcoin-NG, a protocol developed for Bitcoin by Emin Gün Sirer, Co-Director of Cornell's Cryptocurrencies and Contracts Initiative. Updated for the Waves proof-of-stake network. Waves-NG is capable of supporting 100 transactions per second, making Waves the fastest decentralized Blockchain system in the world.
"With the help of the community, we have thoroughly tested the new algorithm and are now ready to go out on the mainnet. Activation will be triggered by our new Waves Activation Protocol, which is designed to ensure that activation of functions requiring a hard fork occurs in a safe and predictable manner. ", Official statement from Waves.
A well prepared fork
Once network nodes are updated with the new version, miners will be able to begin placing approval "flags" in their blocks. After 5,000 blocks (about 3.5 days), the protocol will check how many miners have reported acceptance of the new features. If at least 4,000 blocks (80%) have approved the fork, it will automatically activate after 5,000 additional blocks.
"We have set the basic conditions for block 795 000, which should take place on Friday, December 15, 2017 around noon (GMT). Voting will end 3.5 days later, on December 18th, and activation will take place on December 22nd. If all goes as planned, then the Waves-NG will be operational before Christmas, along with another major improvement in the portfolio. We will keep you informed of progress at this very important moment in our history! ", Official statement from Waves.
An event for launching the client update
The event will take place in Amsterdam on December 13th. The Waves team will present the main features of the new client version to the participants. The event will include a large number of speakers and presentations by the Waves team as well as network users.
"We believe this launch marks a point at which the new state-of-the-art Blockchain technologies are truly needed, combining a user-friendly and familiar interface with powerful peer-to-peer functionality. ", Official statement from Waves.
Things are progressing fast at Waves, which is now ranked 22nd in stockmarketcap market capitalizations with more than $ 916 million. This announcement has propelled the price above $ 9 on several trading platforms.