Counterparty is a platform for user-created assets on Bitcoin. It’s a protocol, set of specifications, and an API. Taken together, it allows users to create and trade assets on top of Bitcoin’s blockchain. In this way, Counterparty is similar to platforms like Waves or Ethereum. Of course, the difference is Counterparty integrates directly with Bitcoin. Therefore, it comes will all the security and reliability (and issues) that are part of the Bitcoin blockchain. This is a fairly old project. In fact, it pre-dates Ethereum with its launch in 2014. It was the original asset creation mechanism. As you’re probably aware, Counterparty has faded from prominence over the years. This is largely due to the rise of the ERC-20 token standard on Ethereum. While we’ve become used to calling blockchain assets, tokens, it doesn’t necessarily have to be the case. An asset can represent anything that has value or is rare. As a result, Counterparty steers clear of the word “token” in their marketing and documentation. They’re much more interested in digital assets of all kinds, not just currencies, securities, and utility tokens. Digital assets can be a digital marker of a physical object, an easy way to manage shares in your company, or reputation karma for a website. These are all types of assets you could create on Counterparty (or Ethereum or Waves, for that matter). Counterparty creates the set of rules, requirements, integrations, etc that are necessary for assets on the Bitcoin blockchain. It’s the infrastructure behind user-created assets in much the same way that the ERC-20 protocol sets up guidelines and standards for asset creation on Ethereum. One useful function of digital assets is as a marker of ownership or voting rights. Imagine a scenario where you issued a digital asset to each of your company’s board members in proportion to the amount of voting power held. Or if you gave your stockholders a digital asset as a marker of the amount of stock they owned. If you issued your stock asset, you could then use Counterparty’s distribution function to pay out dividends in BTC based on the amount of digital stock asset each person owned. Counterparty addresses many of the same issues as Ethereum or Waves, but on the Bitcoin blockchain. While that does come with some advantages, ultimately it is not as strong a platform for development as its competitors. It’s best suited for applications that need to interface with Bitcoin or assets that have a specific connection to the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Waves is an open blockchain platform designed for ease of use and mass adoption. Anyone can use Waves to launch, distribute and trade their own crypto token. The platform is fully decentralised, transparent and auditable. Waves is inspired by NXT with team members previously being involved with NXT. Its name is inspired by the gravitational waves discovery. It is a cryptocurrency platform that had been coded for scratch and allows for asset issuance, decentralized crowdfunding, community management and encrypted messaging. Waves is creating a comprehensive blockchain ecosystem that will provide all the necessary features for business adoption, and the platform already has a number of powerful tools and services that make building user applications straightforward. Waves is a Proof-of-Stake cryptocurrency that conducted its ICO from 12 April 2016 to 31 May 2016. It raised a total of $16 million worth of bitcoins during the ICO. There is a total of 100 million tokens of which 15 million tokens are reserved for bounties and the development team while the remaining 85 million tokens are distributed to ICO participants. Features: 1. Highly accessible - Clean & familiar UX, Chrome app or html lite client, No blockchain download necessary 2. Fast, low-cost and scalable - One-minute blocks, Low (0.001 WAVES) transaction fees, Tx fees can be paid in tokens, Up to 1,000 txs/second 3. Fiat transfer - Fully compliant & licensed gateways into and out of the blockchain, EUR blockchain tokens with USD and other currencies on the way, Tokens fully backed by fiat deposits, Bitcoin gateway and tokens also available. 4. Easy token operations - Launch a new crypto token in under a minute, Tools for mass token distribution, Ideal for crowdfunding 5. Decentralised exchange (DEX) - Peer-to-peer trading from within the client, Trade any pair of Waves tokens, Near-realtime order matching, Blockchain settlement for security 6. Smart contracts - Non-Turing complete, Powerful but secure