What is Waves cryptocurrency?
Waves cryptocurrency is a proof-of-stake blockchain network, decentralized exchange, and wallet that allows individuals to easily create their own coins as well as exchange and trade cryptocurrencies. The Waves protocol also has smart contract capabilities.
Consensus and mining
The Waves blockchain is a leased proof-of-stake blockchain, which means it’s a blockchain where light nodes do not download the blockchain at all, but instead, rely on full nodes for payment verification and network interaction.
Since only full-staking nodes can add blocks to the Waves blockchain, light nodes are allowed to lease their tokens to full-staking nodes to secure the blockchain. Individuals who are interested in participating in the staking process, but do not have the bandwidth to operate a full node, can lease their tokens to a full-staking node for .002 Waves. Individuals who lease their funds to full staking nodes receive interest of up to 5% per year on the balance that they leased, in addition, they will receive transaction fees in proportion to the amount they leased when the full-stake node operator who received their leased tokens mines blocks.
What’s unique about Waves is that unlike most blockchain networks, Waves does not provide its miners with a block reward. Instead, the individuals that validate and relay transactions on the Waves blockchain (full-staking node operators) receive all the transaction fees in the block plus an additional token–the Miners’ Reward Token (MRT) — for processing transactions.
The Miners’ Reward Token (MRT) is a token native to the Waves platform that is distributed to the miners (full-staking nodes) for the work they do to secure the network. Nodes receive 60 MRT per block for the first 70 blocks that they mine (per day) and 30 MRT for each subsequent block. To become a full-staking node on the Waves network, you need at least 1,000 Waves,
Waves opted for a leased proof-of-stake system because reducing the number of nodes that can potentially produce blocks can lower latency, allow blocks to be added to the blockchain faster, and create a network with higher system throughput overall.
The Waves blockchain can currently process about 100 transactions per second, and blocks are added to the blockchain about every minute.
Key features of Waves cryptocurrency
There are three key features to the Waves: token creation, the Waves decentralized exchange, and the Waves wallet.
Token Creation: The token creation feature is one of the platforms most popular elements. Waves allows individuals to create a token in under a minute by simply filling in a few fields such as token name, token supply, etc., and it only costs one Wave to create a token. Afterward, the token is automatically listed on the Waves decentralized exchange and can be traded against any of the trading pairs in the DEX — 22,212 tokens have been created on the Waves protocol to date.
The Waves blockchain allows nodes to implement new transaction types (custom tokens) via plug-ins that can be thought of as extensions on top of the main network. Because a plug-in is merely an extension that works on top of the main chain, even the nodes that have not installed the appropriate plug-in can still relay the transactions that involve custom tokens.
Decentralized Exchange: The Waves decentralized exchange is one of the only decentralized exchanges that offer multiple fiat to crypto gateways. On the DEX, users can exchange USD, EUR, CNY for various cryptocurrencies, and all of the tokens created on Waves are automatically listed on the DEX.
Waves wallet: The Waves wallet is a Google Chrome Extension that allows users to create, transfer, and trade their digital assets. The wallet has the Waves decentralized exchange built into it so users can exchange and trade cryptocurrency and fiat directly from their desktop or mobile device.
Why Waves?
The team at Waves acknowledged that a significant amount of value within blockchain technology is due to the blockchain-database and in peer-to-peer cash. Therefore, the team decided that giving individuals the ability to launch their own token, crowdfund, as well as digitize and trade financial instruments was a service that consumers were in need of.
So the team at Waves created a blockchain protocol that gives individuals and companies an easy way to create a custom token and issue it over an exchange (the Waves decentralized exchange); for these reasons, Waves could be great for companies looking to crowdfund or digitize shares of their company.
In the complex world of blockchain and digital currency, not everyone has the expertise to launch a blockchain network or token from scratch; If you would like a token but do not have the technical know-how, you may be interested in creating your token through Waves.
Or, if you are interested in using a decentralized exchange with over 60 trading pairs, the Waves decentralized exchange allows users to trade and exchange their fiat currency for a variety of cryptocurrencies.
