If there is one thing the cryptocurrency sector has made obvious, it is how blockchain technology and scalability don’t always go hand-in-hand. More specifically, there is no public blockchain which is sufficiently fast or capable of processing thousands of transactions per second. The Waves team is certainly on track to change all that. Processing thousands of transactions per minute may soon become a reality.
A Major Upgrade is Coming to Waves
Making blockchain solutions faster and more scalable has been very problematic in the world of cryptocurrency. Faster block times and an increased block size will certainly help, but they are not perfect solutions either. The Lightning Network is another great tool, but may take a while to come to fruition. In the world of altcoins, we have seen some interesting developments as well. Most recently, the Waves team has made some interesting announcements in this regard.
The Waves developers have been working on a massive “speed boost” for their blockchain. The goal is to process thousands of transactions per minute, which would certainly elevate this project to new heights. In fact, if this rate can be achieved, Waves will become the fastest decentralized blockchain platform in the world. It will certainly up the ante for other cryptocurrencies in the near future. Scaling issues have hindered all currencies, including Bitcoin, for far too long already.
Known as Waves-NG, this next generation technology will increase effective bandwidth and speed of block creation. Any business making use of the Waves platform will benefit from this concept. It seems this new solution will also allow for microtransactions on this blockchain. Instant and small payments are a critical upgrade for any decentralized blockchain in the world right now, yet none of them actually have a working solution in place at this time.
Furthermore, the Waves team is confident that the Waves-NG implementation is more than capable of handling high loads, including the distribution of tokens following crowdsales or airdrops. Moreover, this upgrade will benefit the Waves DEX in the future. Given the growing need for decentralized exchange solutions, this news is a pretty big deal for supporters of this ecosystem. It is unclear when this protocol change will be introduced, though.
Waves CEO and Co-founder Alexander Ivanov commented:
We are very excited to be able to deploy Waves-NG on our network. As a platform of mass adoption, it’s critical that we should be able to support a high throughput of transactions, whilst maintaining robust security. NG lays the foundations for our next phase of growth and a step-change in the size of the ecosystem we can support.
Surprisingly, the Waves-NG technology is based on a tool originally developed for Bitcoin. More specifically, the Bitcoin-NG protocol was designed some time ago to scale the Bitcoin blockchain, although it is unclear why nothing has been done with this protocol since. At this rate, we may very well see Waves beat Bitcoin to the punch. If that were to accelerate the implementation of Bitcoin-NG as part of the core protocol, it could only be considered to be a positive development.
