Wanchain is building a global financial platform that integrates the world’s digital assets into a single, distributed blockchain.

What we like about the project:

• Vision?—?Wanchain has grandiose but achievable plans to reinvent the global financial system.
• Team?—?An all-star team with blockchain, mathematics, financial, and cryptographic expertise and led by the co-founder of Factom.
• Roadmap?—?Wanchain has a functional main net in addition to significant development plans for 2018.
• Technology?—?Wanchain delivers a cutting-edge solution that builds on and enhances technology from Ethereum, Ripple, and Monero, among others.
• Partnerships?—?Wanchain formed the Blockchain Interoperability Alliance (IOA) with ICON and Aion and has close ties with Factom.
• Public interest?—?The ICO sold out in record time despite excluding China, South Korea, and the U.S from the sale. Demand for Wanchain has only increased as they have strategically delayed the release of Wancoin.

Why is this needed?

Although technology has helped improve the standard of living around the world, it is estimated that 2.5 billion people are locked out of a multi-trillion dollar financial system that favors the wealthy (World Bank, 2014). Without access to basic financial services such as bank accounts, loans, and low-cost remittance services, the opportunity for many to benefit from global prosperity is lost.

The advent of blockchain technology offers hope of a more inclusive financial system. Citizens in countries such as Venezuela have benefited from cryptocurrencies as a shelter from currency devaluations. Rapid and low-cost cryptocurrency transfers have aided families that depend on remittances by enabling the purchase of medical supplies when local currency is rendered ineffective.

For the first time in recent history, equal access to financial services appears within the reach of most everyone.

“New technologies hold promise for expanding financial inclusion.” (World Bank, 2014)

Yet despite all the promise, the nascent blockchain industry has yet to realize its potential. Blockchains are walled-off, isolated islands of information that cannot easily be shared. Assets are managed with multiple wallets and accessed through centralized exchanges that increase security risk and lead to a loss of asset control. In general, blockchains have been a maze of competing technologies and standards that have hampered wide-spread adoption and prevented the development of a comprehensive alternative to the existing financial system.

What’s the solution?

Much as protocols like HTTP have enabled disparate technologies to come together to form the Internet, a protocol is needed to link blockchains into a single, global distributed ledger that unlocks value and helps fully realize the promise of blockchain technology.

Borderless blockchains would allow for the free flow and exchange of digital assets in a decentralized market where any entity can offer or consume low-cost financial services with complete privacy and security.

Wanchain wants to empower financial inclusion and reinvent the global financial system by connecting the world’s digital assets into a single, interconnected blockchain infrastructure.

How does Wanchain work?

Wanchain is both a protocol and a blockchain. The Wanchain protocol defines the specifications for cross-chain transactions between Wanchain and public, private, and consortium chains. The Wanchain blockchain is built on the Ethereum codebase and enables smart contracts and DApps.

The Wanchain protocol consists of three components: (1) a registration model that registers the blockchain and its assets; (2) a data transmission model that manages transactions; and (3) a query module that monitors the status of transactions.

At the center of Wanchain’s platform is its blockchain. It includes a multi-currency wallet for users to create transactions and WAN, their native coin. Wanchain uses a Proof of Stake consensus algorithm and is supported by nodes performing various activities such as receiving deposits (vouchers), validating transactions (validators) and storing parts of keys for escrow accounts (storemen).

The jewel in Wanchain’s approach is their use of advanced privacy protecting cryptographic techniques including:

• One-time accounts?—?Wanchain uses elliptic curve cryptography to generate a one-time address so that transactions can’t be traced back to the main address.
• Ring signatures?—?Created by Ron Rivest, a famous cryptographer behind RSA, RC4, and MD5 algorithms, it allows a person to digitally sign on behalf of a group while remaining anonymous. Used in Wanchain to provide anonymity in a smart contract-based token transfers, it essentially turns any cryptocurrency into a Monero-like privacy token.
• Secure multi-party computing?—?A method in cryptography which allows distrustful parties to perform a joint computation without revealing their inputs. Used in Wanchain to enable “locked” or escrow-like accounts.
• Threshold secret-sharing?—?A scheme created by Adi Shamir, a famous Israeli cryptographer, that divides a key into multiple parts and shares it across multiple participants. Used to protect the keys that secure Wanchain locked accounts.

What services will be enabled?

Wanchain envisions creating a “super financial market of digital assets” where various financial services can be offered in a distributed manner. By chaining together the world’s public and private blockchains, Wanchain becomes a global clearing house for digital assets; not only for the exchange of digital currencies, but to enable an almost limitless variety of financial services including:

• Crowdfunding and ICOs
• Multi-currency credit cards
• P2P and micro-lending
• Digital currency payment and settlement
• Asset management
• Asset-backed securities
• Commercial financing

Who’s on the Wanchain team?

Founder?—?Jack Lu

Wanchain’s founder is Jack Lu, the co-founder of Factom, a blockchain company with a current market capitalization of over $230M. Lu also founded Wanglu Tech which has developed some of the technology for Wanchain.

President?—?Dustin Byington

President Dustin Byington is founder of Bitcoin College and co-founder of Tendermint and previously worked as an analyst for Goldman Sachs.

Scientific Lead?—?Zane Liang

Dr. Zane Liang has advanced degrees in applied mathematics from the U.S. and China and is an expert in cryptography and high performance computing.

The team as a whole has significant blockchain, mathematics, engineering, and cryptography experience and includes several Ph.Ds.

The website lists 36 team members in addition to a number of open positions.

Who are Wanchain advisors?

Wanchain has 11 advisors, all of whom bring expertise from their respective fields, most notably:

• Feng Han?—?Secretary-General of DACA
• David A. Johnston?—?Chairman of the Board at Factom, Inc.
• Albert Ching?—?Founder of i-Sprint
• Ramble Lan?—?Chairman of North America Blockchain Association(NABA)
• Marvin Zhang?—?Chairman of S-League (Supply Chain Blockchain League)
• Pitinan Kooarmornpatana?—?DIGITALPASS Co., Ltd. Managing
• Rongge Li?—?River Capital Partner
• Gang Wu?—?Founder of Bixin
• Zhong Chen?—?Director of Information Security Lab, Peking University
• Jian Jin?—?Research Fellow, China Information and Communication Research Institute(CAICT)
• Binsheng Wang?—?Professor of CASS,Advisor of the Blockchain Joint Development Organization

What partnerships and alliances do they have?

Wanchain has a number of relationships with blockchain companies including:

• Kyber Network?—?Kyber Network is joining forces with Wanchain to build a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange called KWDEX.
• Quantstamp?—?Quantstamp is expected to participate in the Blockchain Interoperability Alliance.
• ICON?—?Founding member of the Blockchain Interoperability Alliance
• Aion?—?Founding member of the Blockchain Interoperability Alliance
• Factom?—?Co-founder Jack Lu will look to leverage Factom’s industry experience and deep network of partnerships.

How far along is Wanchains’s development?

Throughout its history, Wanchain has consistently delivered on an aggressive roadmap. In 2017 they completed designs for cross-chain transactions and the underlying cryptography for privacy protection and launched alphaand beta networks.

More recently their mainnet was launched to include a wallet and their native coin, Wancoin. Other plans for 2018 include integration with both Ethereum and Bitcoin blockchains and multi-coin wallets.

What are the token metrics and utility?

WAN tokens are used to pay for cross- and intra-chain transactions. Wancoin is also used in security deposits for the cross-chain verification nodes.

• Circulating supply: 107 million
• Total supply: 210 million
• ICO price: $.34 USD
• ICO hard cap: $36 million
• Investor bonuses of 15% and 5%

The tokens were distributed as follows:

• 51%: investors
• 20%: team members
• 19%: fund
• 10%: miners

How Wanchain plans to use the proceeds:

• 60% research and development
• 10% community development
• 10% marketing
• 10% infrastructure
• 10% daily operations

Here’s what we like:

• Unlike many blockchain companies that are based on a promising concept in a white paper, Wanchain has an experienced team, existing mainnet, and an aggressive roadmap for blockchain integration.
• Wanchain envisions nothing less than becoming the financial center of the digital world. If Wanchain achieves even a small portion of their vision, they will have been tremendously successful.
• The technology is based on mathematics and cryptography and their planned privacy protections are unmatched in the industry.
• Wanchain launched with a $36 million hard cap and a multi-billion dollar vision. The potential investment multiplier with Wanchain is outstanding.

Our Wanchain rating: 9.2 / 10

Vision?—?10/10
Team?—?9/10
Advisors?—?8/10
Partnerships?—?8/10
Roadmap?—?10/10
Token utility?—?10/10

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Note: Blockgrade Capital and its affiliates do not provide investment, legal or financial advice. This material and opinion above has been prepared for informational purposes only, and is not intended to provide, and should not be relied on for, investment, legal or financial advice.

World Bank. “Global Financial Development Report 2014 Financial Inclusion” 2014