What can we expect to see from Waves Enterprise in the short-term (at some point in 2020) and 2021 and beyond (long-term goals)?
You can check our technology roadmap here. In terms of business we plan to expand to other regions and increase numbers of mainnet users. Our strategic goal is to become one of the leading corporate blockchain providers in the nearest few years.
DeFi, as a super outlet in the blockchain and financial field in 2020, in the view of the WE team, what is the significance of its existence and the biggest innovation? Why should I choose to use WE instead of ERC-20? Or TRC-20?
From our point of view the most important thing in DeFi is enabling a trustless environment for financial operations. Absence of trust agents and intermediaries dramatically changes the financial field. Yet this approach brings security and responsibility issues. Regarding the last one — what platform to choose for token’ issuance — it’s better to ask the Waves protocol community: https://t.me/Wavescommunity. Waves Enterprise is different from Waves protocol, we don’t provide such capability for end users.
Staking is very popular in crypto space, so are there any plans to implement a staking program in the WE Ecosystem?
Well, staking is already here, and you are welcome to join it. All staking (we call it leasing) operations are available in our client, you can also find a list of pools there. You should create an account to use the client.
https://client.wavesenterprise.com/tokens/wallet/lease
Also you can use Kucoin soft staking platform — Pool-X.
What challenges do you have and the plan to make the Waves Enterprise project strong and popular?
Our major challenges include slow adoption of blockchain in enterprises and governments and competition at some markets. We consider raising Waves Enterprise’ awareness (please do not confuse Waves Enterprise with Waves Enterprise System Token) by getting new customers and partners. Providing our technology to enterprises and other businesses around the globe is what we are aiming for.
What is your strategy for building a strong community? Do you agree that the power of the community will lead your project to develop globally? What services do you provide to the community?
For us (enterprise blockchain providers) it’s better to discuss not just community but the whole ecosystem. All stakeholders of our ecosystem are important and play their roles in our global development. The best service that can be done for the community is education. We regularly run educational programs and events at our local market and we will bring this practice to other markets we will go to.
In addition to the energy sector, the oil and gas sector, the fintech sector, could Waves Enterprise blockchain also be used in the food sector? Could you facilitate product traceability?
Absolutely! Product traceability is a huge case for enterprise blockchain and Waves Enterprise platform can be definitely used for it. Being a versatile blockchain technology Waves Enterprise can be used for almost any practical case. Moreover, we are in the early stages of discussing such a project with qualified prospects.
How does Waves Enterprise platform reach the healthcare sector from crypto space? And why do users need to provide medical records to you?
Well, if you mean blockchain-based medical records management (which is a practical and great blockchain case btw) it’s not up to a user (patient) to decide what blockchain should manage his records. Healthcare providers should choose blockchain vendor/system integrator that will implement a solution. We intently study this use case and will do our best to realize it if market opportunity will happen. P.S. We do not reach the healthcare sector from crypto space, we will reach it from the IT space.
I see that Waves Enterprise is a blockchain for the corporate sector. Do you have a project for natural persons?
If you mean services or products for consumers/individuals (non-businesses) right now we don’t provide b2c solutions. Still solutions built on top of our enterprise-grade blockchain platform by businesses can be used by their consumers — like b2b2c. Let’s imagine a loyalty program or product lifecycle mgmt system built for a retail company — its end-customers can use dapp to get statuses right from blockchain. And for sure end users at will can work with blockchain-based services like e-voting.
Why does the Energy Sector need a blockchain technology? What are those critical problems that you aim to solve through your project?
Well, we can’t say that the Energy Sector needs blockchain (there are always different ways on how to address technological issues), but there are many use cases in power and utility where blockchain fits very well. Most of them are connected with providing infrastructure for settlements, energy-sharing economy, green certificates, and etc. It’s quite a hot topic these days in the EU. Waves Enterprise also makes efforts in this space — we do a pilot project in the electric utility field. You can read details about it here.
Is there a well thought out plan to reach the largest number of audiences?
Our goal is to become a leading enterprise blockchain provider. This can be done via reaching a large number of enterprises and government agencies, not abstract audiences. Yes, we have the plan to reach our goal 😊
Currently attracting real users and mass adoption is a problem for all blockchain projects. So how will Waves Enterprise solve this problem?
Indeed, mass adoption is a general issue of public permissionless blockchains. Even such a trendy sector as DeFi still misses real mass adoption. But that is not our case. Corporate use cases for permissioned blockchains are being widely implemented. After all the hype it’s pretty obvious that blockchain and DLT in general won’t be new basic infrastructure for businesses of all kinds, but technology proved to be extremely suitable for the very specific use cases — fintech, supply chain management, notarial services, utilities, etc.
What are the specific strategies that WAVES will run to reach young people so that blockchain, especially WAVES, will get a wider audience too? We know from surveys that the majority of young people prefer crypto than banks.
Frankly speaking, Waves Enterprise doesn’t focus on raising awareness amongst the mass audience. Our target audience is enterprises and government agencies. It looks that this question should be addressed to Waves Protocol, they are doing a lot for mass adoption of blockchain technology, including courses for junior developers. https://t.me/Wavescommunity
Does Waves Enterprise have an office Latin America?
We don’t have projects in Latin America yet, but we are looking at this region with interest, it demonstrates quite good blockchain activity.
If the world economy gets worse with a new wave of COVID-19 and your project is not successful, do you have any other plans?
It is curious but COVID-19 has accelerated digital transformation for many companies. We were able to get one huge project due to this, and few more in our pipeline. So we do not consider the current economic crisis as a significant risk for our business.
What are the ways for Waves Enterprise to generate revenue in the long run?
We have one main way of revenue generation — via commercial deals. It will not change in the near future.
Every industry has its core top players, do you seek to partner with other hybrid blockchain protocols?
If you mean partnerships with other enterprise blockchain providers, we are not ruling out such options in the future. Especially when Waves Enterprise will support cross-chain interoperability via Gravity Protocol. Different scenarios are possible — e.g. connecting private Hyperledger Fabric network with Waves Enterprise private network or Waves Enterprise mainnet for data anchoring.
Partners and customers
What projects have already been implemented on your platform? Do you have any cases or projects already?
Yes, we already have good traction here in Russia with more than 20 projects.
For example, here are some of our more prominent customers:
– Rosetti, the largest Russian operator of energy grids with electricity settlements pilot project
– Alfa Bank the largest Russian private-owned bank and second by size, FMCG company X5 Retail Group with a decentralized treasury and a cash management system.
There are some other tier 1 Russian enterprises and governmental agencies amongst our clients and pilot projects, yet we can’t share their names due to NDA. Also we run several pilots outside Russia.
Our main technology partners are Microsoft in the field of cloud deployments and Kaspersky Lab — in the field of cybersecurity.
You say that your platform has more than 20 clients, why don’t you name each one?
We cannot disclose certain names due to a non-disclosure agreement, it is against their interests at this time. We can only say that these clients are large organizations from various fields and verticals.
Reading your website, I found that Waves Enterprise uses Distributed Treasury and cash management (DTCM). My question, how important is this in the Waves Enterprise ecosystem & What is the main role of DTCM in the Waves Enterprise ecosystem?
To be precise Waves Enterprise has developed a customizable distributed treasury and cash management (DTCM) service for Alfa-Bank, the largest privately owned bank in Russia. We are not users of this liquidity management service but developers. Still it is a very important story for us in many ways:
- A success story that significantly raised awareness of Russian blockchain market about our company and technology
- Demonstration of Waves Enterprise as versatile blockchain platform capable of handling highload financial services
- Proof of our capability and competence to develop complex solutions on top of our blockchain platform
Is there a partnership that Waves Enterprise has already done?
Yes, and not a single one. Here Artem tells about the most recent one — our partnership with Microsoft.
You can also check it via external media link.
WE also partners with Kaspersky Lab in the cybersecurity field,.
And we have quite a number of partnerships with system integrators and other IT companies on Russian market.
If you are asking about our public deals, you can find some info on them in our recent FAQ https://medium.com/waves-enterprise/faq-for-newcomers-july-2020-57e141deaff5
What’s the Partnership or relation between Waves Enterprise and Microsoft’s Russia? Can you please elaborate on that and how it’s mutually useful for you and how the community can be benefited from that?
Here Artem tells about our partnership with Microsoft: https://t.me/kucoin_AMA/65649
You can also check the news via this external media link.
One of the most practical and closest steps of this partnership is that Waves Enterprise will get a new deployment model — Blockchain-as-a-Service. Cloud models are more beneficial for many types of businesses including these we focus in.
I see news about Waves & Tron Partnership, for DeFi Services. As far as i know, Waves & Tron use different types of blockchain. How is it possible?
It is possible due to the interoperability protocol — Gravity. Waves Enterprise also has plans to support it.
Would you agree with me that adoption and utility are key factors to a project’s survival and success? What’s being done to drive global adoption of Waves Enterprise amidst crypto regulations, legislation, and competition?
Fully agree, indeed adoption is the king. Our goal is to become one of the leading enterprise blockchain providers, it’s just impossible without adoption of our technology (please do not confuse Waves Enterprise and Waves Enterprise System Token). We do our best to get as many real customers and partners and have more than 20 projects so far.
Just check our most recent partnership and public project.
Are there any new partnerships and interesting upcoming use-cases?
Here are just the recent public stories of Waves Enterprise:
July 2020 — Waves Enterprise partners with Microsoft
https://www.coindesk.com/microsoft-partners-waves-tokenize-industrial-assets
August 2020 — Waves Enterprise and Rostelecom develop national-wide blockchain-based e-voting system for Russian Federation
https://cointelegraph.com/news/russia-pilots-federal-voting-on-waves-blockchain
What are WEST coin’s future projects? How will it follow
Please do not confuse Waves Enterprise blockchain and its native token, WEST. To recap on Waves Enterprise most recent projects, please check the previous answer. But we do not speculate on future projects. Usually they are regulated by NDA. In general speculation can damage our enterprise reputation.
Can you tell us about your partnership with Microsoft? this is a huge event. should be very good reflections of this.
Here Artem tells details about our partnership with Microsoft.
You can also check it via external media link.
Tech
Waves Enterprise is a hybrid blockchain platform, what is a hybrid blockchain platform? How does Waves Enterprise make it hybrid?
In one sentence, hybrid means that public blockchain and private blockchains meet in one ecosystem, obtaining a synergy of decentralization, coverage, cryptoeconomics, and privacy, security, legal compliance. We believe that for businesses it will be the most relevant and effective model for using blockchain technology in the not too distant future.
In our product strategy, we have three current evolution directions.
The first direction is the development of Waves Enterprise mainnet — a public permissioned blockchain. Here we have plans for network expansion, increasing the number of participants and transactions, launching new services and products based on the mainnet, introducing the marketplace, and so on.
We have our own native token called WEST, and WE mainnet is the place where WEST economics should work. In mainnet, you can use WEST for paying transactions commission, using services (like anchoring, data oracles), using products (we will announce some of them soon), leasing, running a node, or a leasing pool. The main goal here is to have a wide network with independent participants and contributors, strong native token and economics, and a variety of dApps and services for any business demand.
The second direction is private blockchain and technological features required by businesses to integrate blockchain in their business processes and infrastructure. For example, data privacy, high throughput, scalability, integration tools, etc. are all needed to win in competition with other enterprise blockchain solutions.
Our primary focus here is large enterprises and governments. We predict that for the next several years, large businesses and governments will be the main drivers for private blockchain technology evolution and progress. A simple reason is that many of them see fresh perspectives in technology and have money to innovate. Despite the fact that large businesses want to be innovative, they are also very conservative. It is related to the size of a company, a prolonged decision-making process, complicated business processes and IT-landscape, information security policies, and the need to comply with the regulator’s requirements. All these factors make businesses very clumsy in adopting public blockchain.
Activities are getting harder concerning the usage of tokens and cryptocurrencies by legal entities. In many jurisdictions, even token terms are not defined, as well as accounting and taxation of operations and other important legal questions.
So for enterprises, private chains are much more suitable at the moment.
And, finally the third direction is about integrating the public and private parts of the ecosystem — making hybrid solutions. With the robust mainnet, good adoption in enterprises, and a lot of implemented cases, as well as technical features (like swaps, data oracles, support of Gravity protocol etc.), we can bring the synergy of two worlds closer. The much awaited day is coming, sooner than we think.
You must agree that Blockchain stands for Decentralization. There we see many projects that claim they are fully Decentralized. But they did their work in a Centralized way. How can we be sure that Waves Enterprise is fully Decentralized? Can you please tell us what’s the WEST working method?
Please do not confuse Waves Enterprise with its system token, WEST. We are not a decentralized project. We provide an enterprise-grade blockchain platform for businesses and government agencies and currently this audience doesn’t require decentralization (sometimes it needs distribution but not decentralization). Our method of finding balance between true decentralization and enterprise requirements is in hybrid architecture, when sidechain transactions are anchored or validated by public (permissioned or permissionless) chain consensus. This provides the promised trust that blockchain supports, while preserving business confidentiality.
What do you mean by merging Waves Protocol and Waves Enterprise networks?
We didn’t mention the merging of Waves Enterprise and Waves Protocol networks. What we are telling is that Gravity protocol will allow us to connect them for information exchange as well as with other blockchains. Check this https://t.me/kucoin_AMA/65500
What technology stands behind Waves Enterprise platform and why it’s better than the others?
There are tons of technology behind Waves Enterprise — private transactions, advanced and high-speed smart contracts, scalable and fault-tolerant design that leads to optimized performance, data anchoring, data oracles, next-gen blockchain-based solutions (in the end it’s all about them but not blockchain) like this and this.
We have wrapped all this complex and advanced enterprise-grade blockchain stack in ready-to-deploy, use, and develop on top of solution. This approach significantly differs from other enterprise blockchain providers and reduces entry barriers for businesses of any size to blockchain implementation.
I looked at features like private transactions and others on the platforms you offer which have been widely adopted by other projects. Then what is your advantage that can beat platforms in other projects?
Our biggest strength is in providing enterprise blockchain in a practical way — we have wrapped complex and advanced infrastructure in ready-to-deploy and use solutions. That approach significantly reduces entry barriers to blockchain technology. This statement is proven by market feedback. E.g., our customers were able to launch WE pilots much faster than with other corporate blockchain platforms. For example, building a blockchain network consisting of 70 banks takes two weeks if you do it on Waves Enterprise (we did such a project here in Russia). On Hyperledger, a similar project with similar resources will take several months.
The other difference is our hybrid model. Most of our competitors provide just private blockchains. Waves Enterprise blockchain platform can be used in several ways — you can build fully private permissioned infrastructure, use our public permissioned mainnet for your purposes or make a hybrid scenario when a private sidechain is connected (e.g., data anchored) to WE mainnet. We believe that in several years a hybrid approach will be the most beneficial for enterprises.
Can I consider WE as a Blockchain-as-a-Service to migrate from SaaS?
Waves Enterprise indeed will be available in the BaaS model in Microsoft Azure.
Not in all areas there is an internet connection, how would Waves Enterprise work in the cargo industry to sign transactions? Do you have some kind of register and then when there is connection, it is signed? Would it be possible to implement Waves on transoceanic ships? What GPS system do you use?
Waves Enterprise (do not confuse with Waves/Waves Protocol) is an enterprise-grade blockchain platform that can be integrated with any other information/navigation system and IoT device. Please check one of our pilots in that field. For sure Waves Enterprise can be designed for tracking of transoceanic navigation and shipping.
One of the greatest threats to blockchain is security, so can you explain how secure you are?
Security of our platform and data inside is our top priority — that is why we do regular checks by specialized cybersecurity teams. Just to mention recent ones:
There are two sides of cybersecurity of us — security capabilities of our platform and platform’s own resilience. As for the first, WE delivers an impressive feature set of data security functions including private transactions mode and enterprise-grade encryption modules.
Do you intend to expand your line of Smart Contracts? If yes, what are the advantages of using your network to host new assets?
We already have advanced Smart Contracts — they support any programming languages and are wrapped into Docker containers. You can read details here. And they are really fast. Recent platform release (v. 1.3) allows running some types of smart contracts in multiple threads parallelizing their execution. On average, this makes the throughput of smart contracts’ call-processing five times more efficient.
Moreover, our partner company, Easy Chain, provides Easy Chain Studio, the first visual constructor for decentralized enterprise applications for Hyperledger Fabric and Waves Enterprise. This low-code solution makes things with smart contract coding even simpler.
Compared to the first generation Blockchain, how do you scale up your transactions within the Waves Enterprise blockchain? Do you have a vision and plans for interoperability of your enterprise-level platform?
Depending on deployment option and project requirements Waves Enterprise uses different consensus protocols — PoS, PoA, CFT (will be added soon). These protocols provide much faster transactions in comparison with the first generation blockchains. Due to regular performance tests we consistently demonstrate more than 1000 tps for transfer transactions.
Regarding our interoperability vision — we have plans to support Gravity protocol.
Who is responsible and covers losses in the event of blockchain failures?
The answer comes from the position of private blockchain provider when using a public permissionless blockchain is a different story. It depends on failure’s nature. You can consider blockchain as an infrastructure layer (which it basically is) with solutions on top. Usually infrastructure operational issues are the responsibility of an operator/owner, while failures connected with infrastructure technology stack are responsibility of technology providers. In case of fully private blockchain deployments these networks are typically operated by third parties, not by a blockchain vendor. Still, a blockchain vendor (like Waves Enterprise) is responsible for the stability, security and fault-tolerance of provided technology. That is why we provide top level support services (including SLAs) and do huge efforts to keep our platform safe and failsafe by various tests:
https://medium.com/waves-enterprise/waves-enterprise-completes-performance-tests-fc89e71b6800
The biggest blockchain needs is interoperability, providing cross chain interactions and multiple blockchains, how does WE achieve this?
Indeed, with a colossal amount of blockchain networks cross-chain interoperability becomes super actual for any kind of blockchain — public or private. Waves Enterprise (do not confuse with Waves Enterprise System Token) plans to support Gravity, an interoperability protocol and technology stack designed to solve cross-chain communication issues.
How secure are Waves Enterprise smart contracts?
Waves Enterprise makes strong focus on our smart contract capabilities. But security of smart contract code is the responsibility of a customer. Cybersecurity companies already provide security assessment of smart contracts so it can be outsourced to professionals. We recommend blockchain security service provided by Kaspersky Lab.
Security and anonymity are always prioritized by blockchain projects in the development of project platforms and technologies. So, does Waves Enterprise have any technological solutions or plans to enhance user trust in these issues?
Waves Enterprise is an enterprise-grade blockchain platform, our customers are businesses and government agencies. Providing anonymity is not our case, but privacy — yes. Also we do care about cyber resilience of our solutions.
Can you provide some information about your facial recognition service please?
It’s one of our products that we develop for Waves Enterprise platform. This solution consists of a video camera, recording the building’s entrance; WE Node, which could be deployed on any laptop with internet access; a containerized smart contract with a neural network responsible for facial recognition; and a frontend application providing functionality for viewing attendance statistics, adding new employees, and interacting with the smart contract and Node. Please check the details here.
In regards to Waves Enterprise sharding, what kind of real-life application or adoption will sharding improve to help bring the mass adoption to Waves Enterprise and crypto in general?
Sharding is the key for blockchain scaling, throughput, and production performance. It is essential for creating scalable cross industrial networks with different businesses processes automated on a single chain. We plan to add sharding in early 2021.
How can Waves Enterprise’s hybrid models be used by customers to ensure data storage security and privacy?
Waves Enterprise blockchain platform can be used in several ways — you can build fully private permissioned infrastructure, use our public permissioned mainnet for your purposes or make a hybrid scenario when a private sidechain is connected (e.g. data anchored) to WE mainnet. We believe that in a few years a hybrid approach will be the most beneficial for enterprises. Now most enterprises and government agencies prefer to work with “traditional” private networks.
What makes the Waves Enterprise blockchain network faster? Is it because of privacy?
In most cases customers of Waves Enterprise (please do not confuse with Waves Enterprise System Token) prefer private blockchain deployments. We use PoA consensus (and will introduce CFT soon) for private permissioned configuration. Indeed in comparison with public networks and their consensus mechanisms PoA and fast finality consensuses like CFT provide better speed for many enterprise use cases.
What types of benefits does LPoS (Leased Proof-Of-Stake) bring to Waves Enterprise? Why did you choose LPoS instead of others such as PoS, DPoS, PoW etc.?
Waves Enterprise mainnet is a LPoS network, which is quite close to PoS. In general, the absence of complex calculations allows PoS networks to lower the hardware requirements for participants of the system, which reduces the cost of deploying networks. Also, in PoS systems, the creation of a block does not require energy-intensive calculations, the miner’s task is to create a digital block proof. Talking about Leased Proof of Stake features it’s mostly about being more fault tolerant to some specific PoS attacks (like multibranch mining attacks). You can find details in this article.
Tell more about Waves Enterprise’s private network model and its privacy. Why is it different from others?
It is more correct to talk about our private transactions feature. In short Waves Enterprise provides a secure database and P2P encrypted data transfer between authorized participants of a specific business process or operation. All of this ensures privacy of data in motion and data in rest. You can also read our deep dive article.
As a developer I know Solidity, Java C, KSML, how easy is it to build DApps on Waves Enterprise?
The good news is that our smart contracts are programming-language-agnostic — you can use any language to develop a smart contract, let’s say Java or C. Typically enterprise blockchain apps consist not only of smart contracts but also include frontend so you will also need to code this part.
What are the unique features of your smart contract SDK?
We use our smart contract SDK to rapidly build and deploy smart contracts for our customers. It enables users to focus on business logic implementation, as all required abstractions for blockchain interaction have already been written. Right now it is only for internal use, but we plan to make it public.
The TPS battle remains one at the core of blockchain solutions, what TPS Waves Enterprise can handle?
Our proven throughput is 1,000 transactions per second (tps) for transfer transactions. It’s more than enough for any use case we’ve worked with yet. Higher values make sense only for payments systems and we do not position Waves Enterprise as an infrastructure for payments.
Is there any event that pays rewards for hacker/bug finder? Will there be any safe mode for users?
We constantly check our solutions via blockchain security firms and think of getting in a public bug bounty platform (like HackerOne).
Token
What is WEST (Waves Enterprise System Token)?
WEST — is the platform’s system token, and it is a universal asset for accessing all operations and services on the main network, as well as on hybrid sidechains.
The token can be used in several different ways:
– to pay transaction fees, as well as to purchase services on the main network.
– to get a right to participate in the network as a miner — miners on mainnet must hold a balance of WEST tokens to generate blocks
– to purchase or rent a license to use Waves Enterprise software
– also, it can be used for staking.
The token is currently available on the following exchanges:
– Tidex
– Kucoin
How does WEST staking work?
Well, staking works pretty simply. A WEST token holder can collect more tokens by leasing their balance to a network miners’ nodes or to other mining pools that participate in network maintenance. Based on the number of leased tokens, the owner can collect a proportion of the tokens that the node, in turn, receives from transaction fees on the network.
Here are some numbers:
- Total supply — 400M. More information about token distribution can be found on our blog
- Circulating supply — 38M (according to CoinMarketCap)
- Currently staked — 24M (70%)
Kucoin exchange is currently (07.2020) running a staking program with 3–5% interest.
Annual ROI on mainnet is ±3%, these numbers may change,
Is there a schedule for unlocking the rest of the supply?
At this stage, we can talk about team tokens that will be stored on a smart contract, 150 million of which will be frozen until 2022. Details can be found here.
How many total WEST? , if i have a WEST so what can I do?
There are 400 million Waves Enterprise System Tokens. Read details here. WEST is a universal tool for accessing all operations and services on our mainnet — pay transaction fees, purchase licenses of our platform and forthcoming products and use services like our e-voting, run your own node/leasing pool. Just holding them allows you to increase your balance via staking, you need to lease your token to a leasing pool for this. You can read all of this (including list of exchanges to buy/trade WEST) at this page.
What will happen to VST token in future? How will the token be utilized?
VST token changed its name to Waves Enterprise System Token (WEST) in 2019, you can read about it here. You can find details about token utilization at this page.
Will there be a VST and WAVES merger?
First of all VST was changed to WEST last year (read details here). WEST and WAVES are separate tokens that exist in separate blockchains, so no merge is planned. Still in near future these networks can be connected via Gravity protocol.
Is there a special reward for holding WEST tokens for a long time?
A WEST token holder can collect more tokens by leasing (it is also called staking) out their balance to a network miners’s nodes or to other mining pools that participate in network maintenance. Based on the amount of leased tokens, the owner can collect a proportion of the tokens that the node, in turn, receives from transaction fees on the network. You can find details here.
Can you tell us about the liquidity of $WEST token? What strategy have you put in place to ensure there is sufficient liquidity for $WEST tokens on exchanges? Where can I buy $WEST? And why should we hold them? What benefits would the users give us?
WEST is presented at several exchanges including Kucoin, so you can easily trade it already. We expect more listings soon. Our core focus is on mainnet development — more users (companies that interact with mainnet) mean more transactions and increase of WEST’ demand. That is the most natural market making for our business model. All other traditional ways of increasing token’ liquidity is complementary. WEST is a universal tool for accessing all operations and services on our mainnet — pay transaction fees, purchase licenses of our platform and forthcoming products and use services like our e-voting, run your own node/leasing pool. Just holding them allows you to increase your balance via staking, you need to lease your token to a leasing pool for this. You can read all of this (including list of exchanges to buy/trade WEST) at this page.
Why should investors enter your ecosystem? Can you give 3 reasons?
Well if you mean why people should buy WEST (we do not consider this action as investment in our company) for investment purposes, here is 3 reasons for this — WE already has market-ready and superior technology, we do not sell roadmap; WE has real enterprise projects and customers, huge partners that highly rate our technology including Microsoft and Rostelecom; WE has big growth potential cause we are only just started to go to the territories outside of Russia. But in the end it is totally up to you to make any investment decisions. If you talk about real institutional investors — they have their own methods of evaluation, but not 3 reasons to buy business share.
How does $WEST play a role in the waves enterprise ecosystem? What are the benefits of holding $WEST in long-term?
You can read about the WEST role here.
What will happen as a growing market cap affect #WEST? And the total supply of #WEST is 400,000,000 coins, what is the negative effect on #WEST? Will it make the price of #WEST not soaring in the future?
By general economical considerations limited supply is a positive factor for price forecasts. We don’t provide any price predictions.
How do you expect WEST to develop in the future? Please tell me some of the reasons I should invest in WEST?
It makes more sense to discuss the development of the Waves Enterprise platform, but not its token. The platform indeed is fueled by the Waves Enterprise System Token (WEST), the native utility token of payment for all network operations. You can read about the WEST role here. We don’t provide any price predictions, but we hope that WEST will have a good future due to growth of our mainnet with more companies and users to join it. But it is totally up to you to make investment decisions.
What are the difficulties and chances that WEST faces right now while the crypto/blockchain market is still young and needs time to grow?
To be precise Waves Enterprise is not in crypto business. We play on the markets of infrastructure and enterprise information systems. Talking about our token, WEST, we hope that it will have a good future due to growth of our mainnet with more companies and users to join it.
Can you explain how WEST works and what makes it different from other mining & leasing platforms?
Waves Enterprise is not a ‘mining and leasing’ platform but enterprise-grade blockchain for corporate use cases. Yet we have staking in our mainnet (it’s lPoS) and you can run a leasing pool or just get your staking rewards. You can read about the WEST role here.
Why will WEST (Waves Enterprise System Token) be successful and what are its real life utilities?
You can read about the WEST role here. We don’t provide price predictions, but we hope that WEST will have a good future due to growth of our mainnet with more companies and users to join it.
What’s the team plan to increase the token value & demand?
Our plan is to grow our mainnet and bring real value to its users but not just increasing token value.
The platform system token is a universal tool for accessing all operations and services on the main network, as well as on hybrid sidechains, can you explain that? And what actions has the platform taken against hackers?
All mainnet operations are done via and backed by Waves Enterprise System Token. E.g. you can use our mainnet services like e-voting paying for them by WEST or run your own node/leasing pool only if you have required WEST balance. Moreover any mainnet transaction (literally any blockchain record, including WEST transfer) is taxed with WEST fee. You can read all of this at this page.
Answering your second question — we do regular checks by specialized cybersecurity teams.
Why is your token name Waves Enterprise? And what are the benefits if I invest in Waves Enterprise? Why do you call it WEST? What is the superiority of WEST from other coins?
Waves Enterprise is the name of our platform/blockchain, token name is Waves Enterprise System Token (WEST is an abbreviation). We don’t provide price predictions, but we hope that WEST will have a good future due to growth of our mainnet with more companies and users to join it. We believe in the superiority of blockchain technology but not token itself (it is a part of overall stack).
What are your estimates regarding the trading volume you see for WEST in the next 3–4 years?
We don’t predict price/trading volumes, but we hope that WEST will have a good future due to growth of our mainnet with more companies and users to join it.
What’s your outlook on the future of cryptocurrencies? What can we do to keep increasing adoption?
Frankly speaking we are more interested in adoption of enterprise blockchain, that’s our native market. Still talking about cryptocurrencies adoption, the most efficient thing that can be done by a person — drive adoption of their own. If you are a business owner — think on how your business can benefit from it and after finding a proper use case launch a pilot (if it is permitted by your country regulations). If you are a cryptocurrency user — use it not only for trading and hodling but also for practical cases like cross-border payments (again, only if it is permitted by your country regulations).
If tokens were superheroes, what kind of hero would WEST token be?
From our point of view it’s better to draw such an analogy with blockchain projects, not with its token. So Waves Enterprise would be Iron Man. We get our superior and practical tech only by our intelligence but not by a set of circumstances.
What are the core utilities of WEST token in the Waves Enterprise ecosystem?
Waves Enterprise System Token is a universal tool for accessing all operations and services on our mainnet — pay transaction fees, purchase licenses of our platform and forthcoming products and use services like our e-voting, run your own node/leasing pool. You can find details about its utilization at this page.
How does Waves Enterprise evaluate the role of community, users and investors in the development of WEST? Currently, which segment are you focusing on: partners, products, a token value, a team? Does WEST have a long-term plan for the project?
Waves Enterprise (please do not confuse with Waves Enterprise System Token) respects its community and wants to get more blockchain practitioners, developers and corporate IT people on board. We are truly delighted when there are discussions about use cases, tech stack, enterprise adoption, etc. This raises awareness and moves the whole industry including our project forward, but not price discussions. In general our ecosystem is much bigger than community (not many blockchain projects can say this). Talking about investors — this term is being widely confused in crypto space. If a person did not participate in ICO or similar investment campaign and just purchased a token as means of investment it does not make this person an ‘investor’ of a project. Waves Enterprise in particular gets its money from commercial deals but not from token sales.
You can check our technology roadmap here.
Do you have any plans to attract non-crypto investors to the Waves Enterprise project and how?
For now we don’t have such plans. Regarding increasing awareness in our main — digital transformation — space, we bet on success stories of our platform (case studies perform really well at b2b markets) as well as partner channels outside of Russia.
What is the main utility of WEST? And how about its tokenomics?
WEST is a universal tool for accessing all operations and services on our mainnet — pay transaction fees, purchase licenses of our platform and forthcoming products and use services like our e-voting, run your own node/leasing pool. Just holding them allows you to increase your balance via staking, you need to lease your token to a leasing pool for this. You can find all of this (including list of exchanges to buy/trade WEST) at this page.
What are your estimates regarding the trading volume you see for WEST in the next 3–4 years?
We don’t make trade predictions (as well as price ones), but we hope that WEST will have a good future due to growth of our mainnet with more companies and users to join it. More markets are also in plans, which basically means more trading activity.
What is the governance model of WEST? How will your staking ecosystem ensure fairness and balance in the amount of power in decision-making in the community between large token holders and users outside the large holding circle?
Waves Enterprise has staking (we call it leasing) but being enterprise-grade permissioned blockchain we don’t provide network governance models similar to public blockchains. You can check our staking details at this page.
Does your great project have a plan about token burn?
We have already done it last year, read here. Who knows, maybe it will happen again, but not soon.
Team
Where is the development team located?
Most of the team (including dev and sales force) is based in Moscow. We are currently recruiting regional representatives who will be responsible for business development in other regions.
How many developers roughly do you have working in your ecosystem?
Besides WE’ dev team (and we develop not only the platform itself but also solutions on top, like e-voting) we have around 10 external developer teams that work with WE stack. They include some large Russian system integrators.
As you said, the core development team is located in Moscow, Russia and opened offices in the EU (Germany), China and the UAE this year. Is Waves Enterprise also planning to expand to Asia?
While we are in the process of opening news offices or recruiting local reps on territories that you mentioned in the question, we are also intently studying other markets, including APAC. It’s too early to say smth specific, but many APAC countries look like markets with huge potential for Waves Enterprise.
What was a hurdle that you nearly had to turn back on during your CPO journey for Waves Enterprise and how you overcame it?
“The hardest thing was to staff my RnD team. There is a huge skills shortage on our market and it’s really hard to find qualified techs who understand both enterprise software and blockchain.” Artem Kalikhov, Waves Enterprise Chief Product Officer.
How many members in your team, and do you want to hire outsource?
We have more than 150 employees. Our team consists of highly skilled blockchain experts, including business analysts, systems architects, cryptographers, developers and testers, experienced in the development and implementation of blockchain-based solutions for a wide range of use cases. Most of us are based in Moscow, Russia. We are not hiding our sources of talents, but it’s a tough job to hire enterprise blockchain professionals these days.