Wanchain seeks to link the present to the future, through the exploration and implementation of blockchain technology. Wanchain aims to build a distributed “bank”. Just as traditional banks are the infrastructure of the current financial framework, Wanchain seeks to build a new, distributed infrastructure of digital assets to form an improved, modern framework - an ambitious goal indeed. Wanchain connects and exchanges value between different blockchain ledgers in a distributed manner. It uses the latest cryptographic theories to build a non-proprietary cross-chain protocol and a distributed ledger that records both cross-chain and intra-chain transactions. Any blockchain network, whether a public, private or consortium chain, can integrate with Wanchain to establish connections between different ledgers and perform low cost inter-ledger asset transfers. The Wanchain ledger supports not only smart contracts, but also token exchange privacy protection. With Wanchain, any institution or individual can set up their own virtual teller window in the “bank” and provide services such as loan origination, asset exchanges, credit payments and transaction settlements based on digital assets. Under the guarantee of “banks” based on the blockchain infrastructure, more people can participate in financial services based on digital assets. To describe it more accurately, Wanchain is a distributed super-financial market based on blockchain. Wanchain uses the Locked Account Generation Scheme to secure funds and keys when there are multiple parties involved. Based on Shamir’s Secret Sharing Scheme, it effectively breaks up a key into shares and distributes it to all included participants. The Storemen are responsible for maintaining and managing the appropriate key shares of the locked accounts for transactions. This method of key share distribution has a few benefits. Because Wanchain generates locked accounts through multi-party computations, there’s increased decentralization. And there’s more stability because you don’t need every key share to produce a signature for a locked account. If some of the Validators are offline, transactions can still be executed with a minimum number of shares. Finally, any transaction with a locked account is done via the original chain. This means that any chain can easily integrate and interact with Wanchain without the need for new transaction types or validators. The Wanchain Foundation is a non-profit organization primarily operating out of Singapore but also has a significant presence in Austin, TX. Wanchain was founded by Jack Lu, a respected player in the blockchain space. Before his current role, Lu co-founded Factom and started Wanglu Tech, a blockchain application development company. Wanglu Tech has been a primary contributor to the open-source Wanchain project. Dustin Byington serves as the Wanchain President. Byington is a blockchain veteran having founded Bitcoin College in 2014 as well as co-founding Tendermint, a software mechanism to securely and consistently replicate applications across machines. Byington also co-founded Satoshi Talent, a platform to connect blockchain entrepreneurs with developers. WAN tokens were initially distributed as ERC-20 tokens to ICO participants, but it’s now possible to exchange these for tokens on the Wanchain mainnet or buy them directly. It’s a common misconception that WAN is an ERC-20 coin. Wanchain is a pioneering and potentially disruptive project with its sights set on becoming a super financial market of the world. Although achieving its lofty goal(s) is going to require a lot more work, Wanchain is further along its roadmap than some projects. But there’s still a good bit of “in theory” going on here. As Wanchain is addressing the whole financial market, it has a number of competitors. Most notably Fusion, Pantos, Ark, and Qash; some may even consider big players the likes of Ripple, Stellar and Ethereum competitors. On the positive side, Wanchain has strong fundamentals, they’ve got a functional mainnet, the vitality of their use case is indisputable, the huge interest in their ICO showed a powerful vein of investor confidence, and the team has a track record of success.
Huobi, the third-largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, recently announced and launched a new currency. The Huobi Token (HT) rewards exchange users for their loyalty with lowered transaction fees while also carrying its own value in tradable pairs against popular currencies. The hope was to bring greater value to Huobi’s millions of users, mostly located in Asian countries. The launch of the Huobi Token follows in the footsteps of other loyalty-building tokens that other exchanges have launched. The first and most successful of these tokens has been Binance Coin (BNB). The creation of BNB secured Binance’s place as the world’s leading exchange. It offered discounted trading fees in exchange for customer loyalty, primarily functioning as a loyalty rewards system. Huobi officially announced its intentions to launch a new token on January 22, 2018. Over the course of 15 days, Huobi would distribute 300 million HT (60% of the total supply) to its pro users who purchased a discounted service package. Each morning, a new batch of HT would become available on a first come, first served basis. Huobi declared this token distribution scheme, “not an ICO,” due to the nature of the offering. Users are buying a specific service package, part of which includes HT that give a discount toward trading fees. The exchange launched the Huobi Token as part of an overall strategy to recover its user base after tightening regulations in China severely restricted cryptocurrency trading. In an interview with CoinDesk, Leon Li, Huobi’s founder, revealed that Chinese rule changes had decimated the trading volume on Huobi by 95% between September 15 and November 1, 2017. The HT token distribution began on January 24 and wrapped up on February 7, 2018. Each day of the distribution, millions of tokens sold out in mere minutes after going on sale. At that point, 300 million HT had been distributed to Huobi Pro members who bought packages. That’s 60% of the total supply currently in public circulation. Another 200 million HT, 40% of the total supply, was set aside. 20% goes toward user rewards and platform operation. The other 20% is vested for four years and constitutes the team reward. Huobi isn’t the first exchange to issue its own token. Binance (BNB), Bibox (BIX), KuCoin (KCS) and Coss (COSS) have all issued their own tokens as well.