The booming token sales market has seen a variety of projects spring up over the past six months. However, one important category of projects remains a rare find: established companies launching token sales that are integral to the development of their products. Unsurprisingly though, true innovations usually come from industry veterans with a knack for staying ahead of the curve. The virtual asset trading market is no exception. Although the market for trading in-game items and skins (objects which change the physical appearance of in-game characters) already demonstrates a yearly volume of $50 billion, industry experts believe that it is still far from its peak.
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The founders of OPSkins, whose centralized platform shaped the virtual asset market as it is known today, believe that only decentralization can support its future growth. Currently, the majority of centralized virtual asset marketplaces operate in silos and within specific geographies. This means that cross-border trade is difficult and liquidity is limited, with items remaining unsold even when demand exists. Even OPSkins, a company that has facilitated 150 million transactions for its millions users in just under three years, has certain limitations: it supports most currencies, but not all; it has a vast item catalogue, but not all games and items are represented.
To unleash this market’s full potential, the team behind OPSkins is launching WAX – the Worldwide Asset eXchange. WAX is a peer-to-peer trading protocol for the virtual assets market. It innovates on a foundation of blockchain technologies and smart contract tokens to allow buyers and sellers to trade efficiently without the need for middlemen. Importantly, it draws on its founding team’s experience to cater precisely to the market’s needs, resolving some of the industry’s most pressing problems.
WAX enables anyone to operate a fully functioning virtual marketplace, with zero investment in security, infrastructure, or settlement. With the inclusion of WAX’s simple marketplace widget, video gamers will have access to a worldwide market, with blockchain trust and transaction verification. The WAX widget can be integrated into any website so buyers and sellers won’t have to navigate away to a centralized marketplace. This opens up an opportunity for a wide array of websites to reap the benefits of an already exciting market. This means that users are brought out of silos and become free to reap the benefits of a global market.
OPSkins is currently the number one bitcoin merchant on the planet. However, the bitcoin blockchain’s notorious sluggishness meant that a true shift towards decentralization and cryptocurrencies remained impossible — until now. The WAX protocol will utilize Delegated Proof of Stake (DPOS), as opposed to bitcoin’s Proof of Work (POW) or Ethereum’s Proof of Stake (POS), neither of which are suited for high-throughput environments. Based around DPOS, WAX’s architecture means that settling transactions will take about as long as it takes to refresh a browser tab – something that is vitally important for a fast-paced market filled with micro-transactions.
WAX is therefore truly a project born out of innovation and necessity. As the demand for virtual assets inevitably increases, the need for a lightning fast and secure trading mechanism which works across multiple geographies will become more apparent. WAX is set out to cater precisely for this growing need. The WAX Token Sale is not only one of the handful of token sales on the market today launched by an existing successful company, it is also resolving a significant problem within a nascent industry. This places WAX in a league of its own in today’s overcrowded smart contract token market. The the involvement of investment firms like Hyperchain Capital and Pantera Capital, adds significantly to WAX’s credibility.
