Blockchain technology is creating incredible opportunities for innovation and disruption. And when you start learning about all the possibilities, you might even come up with ideas for creating your own cryptocurrency. However, programming your own blockchain is complex to say the least and this is probably where your dreams ended. But do they have to be? The Russian-based company Waves answers that question by allowing you to create your own token on their platform. They’ve created a blockchain platform on which everybody can issue their own token within minutes.
This may sound too good to be true, but it actually is that easy. All you need is 1 Waves crypto and an idea how to structure your token and you’re all set. But that’s far from all that Waves wants to offer. Ambitious as the team is, they’re also a decentralized exchange on which you can trade cryptocurrencies, fiat currencies and any tokens that were created on the Waves platform.
Waves Token Creation
“Your blockchain token in one minute” used to be the first thing you saw when you opened the Waves website. Although they have changed this because of their broader orientation of services, it is still applicable.
In the name of research, I created a token on the Waves platform using the Waves Lite Client. All you need to do is come up with a name and description, decide how many tokens will be available and how many decimals they have and whether you want the option to add more tokens in the future.
Once you’ve finished these, you’re the proud owner of your own blockchain token. These tokens can be anything you want them to be. You can crowdfund a project through them, create your own micro economy, or do whatever your creativity guides you to. With this technology, Waves provides the world with a tool to digitise every asset and aid the world in becoming more decentralized and tokenized.
The Waves Decentralised Exchange
In addition to token creation, Waves has launched its Decentralized Exchange (DEX) on which the created tokens, existing cryptocurrencies and fiat currencies can be traded. This is a huge advantage for Waves. Today it can take months to get your tokens listed on the exchanges, but with DEX your tokens ready to be traded instantly.
All currencies listed are integrated in Waves through gateways. You can see gateways as a means to transfer a currency to a platform. An example is the exchange Kraken, on which you can deposit fiat currency to convert into cryptocurrencies.
These gateways are a unique selling point of Waves and they strive to create a gateway for every single currency in the world, both fiat and crypto. They plan to do this by creating a large network of third parties and license unrelated parties to operate these gateways. It’s hard to be more decentralized than Waves desires to be.
The Waves Team
Unlike most of the bigger cryptocurrencies, Waves doesn’t share much information about the team on their website and it takes a lot of effort to find information about the leadership of Waves. Maybe it’s a Russian thing, but you’d expect more transparency from company that’s worth over $500 million.
The founder and CEO of Waves, Sasha Ivanov, has a track record in the crypto space with multiple projects, of which the most successful is coinomat.com. This company was created to be a gateway service for both fiat and cryptocurrencies and now mainly provides Waves clients with information and support for how to create a gateway. Next to Sasha, we have the head community manager Martin Spodymek, engineer Alexey Kiselev as the main back-end developer, and Sergey Ishchenko as the leading front-end developer.
From a platform that has such big ambitions and is willing to create a wide array of new services and applications, more transparency and information about the team will be needed to establish trust. However, their recently announced partnership with Deloitte and their link to the Russian government does provide some reassurance as it can be assumed that these parties do their due diligence before announcing their cooperation.
