Waves says it’s launched the ‘fastest blockchain platform in the world’
2Waves says it’s launched the ‘fastest blockchain platform in the world’.
Little-known public blockchain Waves debuted an upgraded protocol today that it’s billing as the fastest in the world. Waves-NG, a “next generation” update of the Waves blockchain that first launched back in 2016, is currently running a stress test to reinforce that claim.
The Moscow-based company completed its ICO back in June 2016, before initial coin offerings became the fad they are today, pulling in $16 million, a substantial raise at the time.
Like Ethereum, Waves has smart-contract capabilities built-in and allows a host of other businesses to launch tokens on its chain. Some 5,519 tokens have been released on the platform to date, totaling a market capitalization of $1 billion, according the company’s website. Unlike the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains, Waves runs on a proof-of-stake basis rather than proof-of-work, meaning it doesn’t demand heavy compute resources in order to process transactions. (You can find an overview of proof-of-work vs. proof-of stake here.) The Waves-NG upgrade promises to accelerate transactions even faster. (It takes its name and strategy from Bitcoin-NG, a 2016 proposal for upgrading Bitcoin transaction speeds that drew support from within the Bitcoin community before faltering amid debate.)