In first trying to understand what exactly is the Waves Platform, I think it makes sense to break things up into bite sized pieces.
I won’t go into a boring history lesson on Waves, because you can easily do that, by opening your Brave browser and searching “Waves Platform.”
There are many components (pieces) to comprehend when it comes to the Waves Platform. I want to first alleviate any uncertainty about the word “platform” because that in and of itself can begin to cause the proverbial “deer in the headlights” look even for some that have experience in this crypto space.
Just think of “platform” as a house. And just like a house, there are different rooms (the living room, the dining room, kitchen, etc.) in that house, the Waves Platform also has its own “rooms”.
For the purposes of this article, the Waves Platform or Waves House is what I will discuss today and explain some of the rooms inside of the house. There are seven main parts that I want to briefly discuss in this article:
1. The Waves Lite Client
2. Waves Mobile Application
3. Custom Application Tokens (CATs)
4. Tokens Flexibility
5. Waves Decentralized Exchange
6. Fiat and Digital Currencies on Waves
7. Proof of Stake Rewards
The Waves Lite Client
The Waves Lite Client, is the program that allow you to use the additional features within Waves. The Waves Lite Client is simple to use, therein lies the reasoning behind its use of the word “Lite” in its name. Lite mean, simple, easy to use, and takes up relatively no space on your computer. This is possibly because, unlike for regular crypto wallets, the blockchains does not have to be downloaded.
You might have heard of a term being thrown around in the blockchain/crypto sector, that being, wallet.
Just think of a wallet as you would a traditional physical wallet, but only one slight difference it is now digital and you can have a digital wallet loaded on your computer.
The Waves Lite Client is available as a Google Chrome plug-in (https://wavesplatform.com/downloads.html) or as stand-alone client on GitHub (https://github.com/wavesplatform/WavesGUI/releases)
Or you can go here for downloads of the Waves Lite Client:
(https://wavesplatform.com/downloads.html)
Here is a print screen shot of the Waves Lite Client:
Waves Mobile Application
The Waves Lite Client has been ported into a mobile application for Android and IOS too. It is available in the Google Play and Apple stores. It has several thousand downloads already. The mobile client allows users to make payments, check their balance and, also to trade on the go for Android versions, IOS is on the way using the built in decentralized exchange, DEX for short..
Custom Application Tokens (CATs)
To truly understand what a “custom application token” is we might want to first take a step back, and understand what exactly is a “token”?
A “token” is a store of value.
This is a super over-simplistic definition. A token can represent the following:
• Coins
• Points
• Certificates
• In-game items
• Shares in a company
• Voting rights
Within the Waves Platform, you can create a custom token (Custom Application Token) and apply that token to whatever you wish with whatever terms and conditions you desire.
To create your own token, you just need to pay 1 Waves at current market value.
Tokens Flexibility
If we stick with the token creation from the previous section, and imagine that you now created your own token, with “Token Flexibility” you can effectively “pay transaction fees not in the native WAVES token but any other token existing on the blockchain.”
In simple terms, every time you want to buy and/or sell your token(s) there is a commission fee aka transaction fee. With Token Flexibility, everybody can create his or her own token within seconds and it will immediately be tradable on the market and not just in Waves tokens but others that exist such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc.
Waves Decentralized Exchange (No Middle Men)
Up to this point, I have discussed a lot of interesting and useful features that exist in the Waves Platform. If we were to continue with the analogy of thinking of the Waves Platform as a “house” than the Waves Decentralized Exchange (DEX for short) is the main living room for sure. I don’t want you to get discouraged with those two words, “decentralized” and “exchange”.
At this point, you might be turning your head sideways like Scooby Doo, and saying to yourself, “Huh”.
Let’s break down those two words to better understand what the heck is a decentralized exchange?
Decentralized is a bit self-explanatory, and in the world of cryptocurrency it has paramount importance aside from the algorithms and technology, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Decentralized is just anything that has no one controlling force or entity, according to our folks at Wikipedia:
Decentralization is the process of redistributing or dispersing functions, powers, people or things away from a central location or authority
An “Exchange” is a marketplace.
An Exchange is where things are bought and sold.
When we put those two words together, Decentralized Exchange, we have a distributed marketplace.
In other words, a marketplace where no single entity has control and or power or authority.
The Waves Decentralized Exchange is just that, a distributed marketplace where power/control is dispersed. You can exchange tokens on the DEX that is peer-to-peer without a middleman
How it is dispersed is for future articles.
Why the Waves Decentralized Exchange matters?
The advantages are: high speed, outages, security and costs (no middle men).
High Speed
In a centralized peer to peer exchange, the network could be affected by congestion as more and more users go to one central focal point, however in a decentralized exchange, the servers and environments are spread globally thus ensuring more access points and increasing speed.
Photo of Waves Decentralized Exchange:
Outages
Disaster recovery is important in any endeavor and especially in technology. With a centralized exchange, sure many will have redundant coverage but nothing compared to a decentralized exchange with server nodes spread globally.
Security
In a centralized exchange, they are susceptible to hacks and thefts, however with a decentralized exchange the network is spread across a larger area thereby making it more difficult to hack.
Costs
With the Waves DEX there are no middlemen. Costs can be significantly different from a centralized versus a decentralized exchange as the brunt of the workload is shared in a decentralized environment versus a privatized controlling business. It is like comparing paid versus open source technology in terms of thinking about costs and the savings incurred as a result.
Fiat and Digital Currencies on Waves
Fiat currencies, have no intrinsic value other than being a medium of exchange, such as the US Dollar, Chinese Yen or Europe’s Euro.
Inside the Waves Platform, you can buy and sell cryptocurrencies using fiat currencies.
This is achieved in collaboration with compliant payment providers which are to issue a fully backed fiat token on the blockchain. In combination with the decentralized exchange, this allows users to do forex as well as crypto against fiat trading, eliminating the bothersome process of going through Bitcoin and paying a double conversion. Furthermore, future crowdfunding on Waves could potentially accept fiat tokens as a method of funding.
The really benefit of this feature is that you do not have to buy Bitcoin first before buying the token you really want, thereby eliminating double conversions.
Moreover, “future crowdfunding on Waves could potentially accept fiat tokens as a method of funding.”
Proof of Stake Rewards
Waves offers Proof of Stake Rewards. What that means to you is for FREE and for doing nothing you can get FREE rewards / dividends (FREE money) by leasing your Waves coins. And most importantly, you can lease any quantity of waves by going here: (http://www.bluemagicwaves.info/)
Conclusion
In conclusion, the Waves Platform is truly an innovation that will transform the way we interact with both traditional fiat currencies and cryptocurrencies. As I mentioned, we covered the five main areas that are the hallmark of the platform:
- The Waves Lite Client
- Waves Mobile Application
- Custom Application Tokens (CATs)
- Tokens Flexibility
- Waves Decentralized Exchange
- Fiat and Digital Currencies on Waves
- Proof of Stake Rewards
It’s easy to see why the Waves Platform is quickly separating itself from the pack and becoming the one stop shop all platform, by incorporating all of the very best features into one platform.
In the next upcoming exclusive articles, we will discuss what is leasing, what is PoS (Proof of Stake), why it's better than PoW (Proof of Work). Also, we will discuss the electricity usage issues as it pertains to PoS versus PoW. In addition, we will discuss how you can lease the coins that stay in your wallet and how you can't lose them. All of this and more to come.