Namaste Tribe! We had a great AMA session with Sten Laureyssens, Strategic Advisor for Waves Association in WazirX Telegram group as part of Grand WAVES Giveaway on Wednesday, 19th August 2020. Here’s a quick summary of the session.

Hi Sten, we are glad to have you here today! To begin today’s session, please tell us about yourself and Waves.

Hey everyone! Thanks for having me here.

My name is Sten Laureyssens. I’ve been a very avid supporter of Waves since they founded 4 years ago. I only joined recently to support them strategically. Right now i’m proud to be the strategic Advisor of Waves Association, the foundation behind the entire waves ecosystem

Waves Protocol itself, launched in April 2016. It’s a blockchain ecosystem with 4 big protocols all surrounding the same mission. Waves always had its vision aimed at achieving mass adoption for blockchain technology.

Q1. As we know, every successful project has a few stories behind the scenes, what’s the story behind WAVES success? What was that vision when it first emerged as an idea? Are there any special upcoming from WAVES updates that you want to show/share with us?

(by @semogaberkahXD)

As I mentioned before, Waves was founded 4 years ago and we have had the luxury of exploring different paths, experiment with ideas and approaches while gaining experience in a very dynamic industry. Our original vision has always been ‘blockchain for the people’ and our current focus is not far away from that initial vision. On the contrary, it’s a very precise and matured extension of that original vision. The original idea of Waves was to remove all blockchain adoption barriers for users. Right now, our vision is the following.

One powerful infrastructure, connecting the blockchain of now, not only of tomorrow, one that is truly blockchain-agnostic, where we build products, not only protocols. Inter-chain DeFi is the accumulation of our vision, and represents technological freedom for blockchain-based finance. Inter-chain DeFi is crucial to maximizing the efficiency of individual DeFi ecosystems.

It’s really important for us to bring blockchain closer to everyone, including all people in this chat, especially admins with names that are perfect fits for ban hammer gifs ;). i’m happy we can take the time to chat and listen to all of your questions and needs. sounds a bit cheesy, but heartfelt truth ?

Q2. Waves is planning to build Inter-chain DeFi with TRON and Gravity Protocol. What are will be the DeFi product’s key features?

(by @Akash_Artform)

We’re not just planning, but already (since yesterday hehe) building inter-chain DeFi, and there are 3 main parts for it: Waves Protocol, Gravity Protocol and Neutrino protocol. Together they are, respectively, a tool-rich infrastructure, a unique interoperability solution and a powerful multi-chain assetization protocol.

We have 3 ‘rules’ we’re trying to live by.

• Truly blockchain agnostic
• Products, not only protocols
• Connecting the blockchain of now, not only of tomorrow.

These 3 intertwine in various of our projects. This is what neutrino protocol leverages in a way. It’s protocol for algorithmic token creation, but on multiple chains. We can create interoperable balancers for DeFi tokens, and at the same time open the doors of eth’s ecosystem to our own interest-bearing algorithmic stable coin, Neutrino dollar. It’s backed by staked waves tokens and the waves mining rewards are converted to generate interest for USDN (like i mentioned earlier, this is the (currently) 25% APR).

Essentially all is focused on delivering what’s needed to really break the barriers of DeFi, and create cross-chain / inter-chain DeFi, and open the doors to and from our ecosystem. The article I shared earlier from Cointelegraph is a great example of inter-chain DeFi. I think what’s really important is to break the barriers of ethereum’s insane DeFi community and penetrate other ecosystems.

Q3. What is NSBT? How’s it different from USDN?

(by @Firza17328744)

So Neutrino dollar’s symbol is USDN.

The process to create USDN is as follows:

You send WAVES tokens to a smart contract (the neutrino smart contract). That smart contract gives you USDN tokens, equal to the dollar value of the Waves tokens you sent to the contract.

So every USDN is collateralized or backed by WAVES in the contract. however, the price of WAVES is not stable, it fluctuates (even though there was a period in time where waves price was very stable and our community was joking that waves doesn’t need stablecoins in its ecosystem, because it’s a stablecoin itself ha, ha, ha. our community is funny btw)

Now if the price of waves goes up (like it has over the last 4 weeks) then the dollar value of the collateral in the contract also goes up, and every USDN is very well collateralized (even over collateralized, like it is now, we have about 50 million in collateral, and about 25 million USDN issued in circulation) (this also leads to this very high 25% yearly returns pay out, totally nuts imho, i told my grandmother to take the cash from under her mattress and give it to me for money printing in my waves wallet.)

When waves drops in $ value, and thus the collateral drops: then the reserve fund is not large enough to compensate for the decline in price, the smart contract issues special tokens called Neutrino system base tokens (NSBT). These tokens can be purchased at any price with USDN (e.g. 10 NSBT for 8 USDN) and then liquidated in the ratio of 1 NSBT : 1 USDN in order of priority (FIFO — First in — First out). NSBT can also be transferred to another account or sold on exchanges.

It’s like a system to cover for the ‘shortage’ and incentivize people to buy these shortages and cover the debt of the ecosystem, and give them a reward for it in return. it’s a very common traditional economic mechanism, implemented here for stability. alongside that, Market makers and arbitration bots, which can be launched by volunteers from Neutrino community, also help to keep the rate stable at different exchanges.

Q4. What types of benefits does LPoS (Leased Proof-of-Stake) offer to WAVES? Why did you choose LPoS instead of others like PoW, PoS, DPoS, etc.?

(by @cikagasih)

Leased Proof-of-Stake is one of our advantages, it is faster and less power consuming compared to PoW, at the same time it is more decentralized than DPoS. LPoS does not have limitations for the number of block producers and there were more than 130 in the last month, while DPoS blockchains usually have less than 50. You can start making blocks with a stake of 1000 waves on a virtual machine for $10 per month

Leased PoS also does not require your $Waves to leave your wallet, when you lease it to another node, in order to get your share of the block rewards. You maintain control over your assets essentially.

Right now LPoS is generating around 5-7 % (usually 6%) yearly rewards for our Nodes, and leasers, just fyi.

Q5. What kind of unique features does WAVES have that attract more users and developers to it?

(by @nikola_crypto)

I think a lot of projects are building really awesome stuff. Not only some of the projects we partnered with, but also some others who are trying to solve the same problems as us. I don’t think there’s 1 winning approach, or 1 solution to everything.

There’s a few advantages that we are proud of that really differentiate us and put us on the map:

• Easiness of use and integration. Very user and developer friendly products like Waves Signer and Ride language dramatically lower the complexity of tech.
• Great products on top of the protocol. Waves Exchange, Neutrino, Signature Art are products ready for mass adoption.
• Protocol security and speed. so we build tech which is fast, secure and ready for scaling, so we can adapt to whatever the industry is moving towards, and be ahead of the curve.

Q6. How does Waves use cross-chain technology? What advantages does Waves have over Cosmos, Oracle, or Polkadot?

(by @ThongPham95)

I’m not saying at all that cosmos, or polkadot, or link or any other chain is taking the wrong approach to the challenge they are trying to solve. It’s just that we have looked at how the challenge of ‘interoperability’ needs to be solved, and to do that we took a few steps back to really see what things we may or may not be missing/looking over/forgetting/blind spots etc.

Q7. As we all are aware that you have completed mainnet in the 2019. We would like to know more about how Waves chain better than the rest. And how it’s better to build dapps on Waves. How will inter-chain solutions for DeFi apps enhance mainstream adoption?

(by @__Aghori_)

I think the message I dropped earlier, how we differentiate ourselves, is a good summary of how we think we can be attractive to developers.

Q8. Does the $WAVES team have a training and guidance system for newcomers to cryptocurrency? How do you attract and reach them?

(by @airdropkaya)

Previously, we were focusing mostly on developers and make lots of educational stuff for hem, like this Coursera course: https://www.coursera.org/learn/mastering-web3-waves

In the last months we realized how important it is to really provide information for people from all levels, my grandmother with her mattrass money, and total experts, but new to waves. We are focusing now on general information, not only blockkchain development and we started building “Community Campus”.

Overarching theoretical basics and practical frameworks were enshrined in Waves.campus to make the first steps in adopting a decentralized web as fast and easy as possible. We will launch Community Campus soon, I hope still in August, but surely no later than September.

Q9. Is smart contract of Waves better than Ethereum?

(by @Cryptoblodlover)

I think there’s a few interesting things our smart contract allows you to do, different, not necessarily better, really depends on what your needs are. We have some cool stuff such as ‘smart assets’, that allow for some programmable features that is unique to our smart contract. Additionally, our smart contracts are based on our own smart contract language RIDE. RIDE makes it very easy for people to start coding and developing apps, it’s very logical and if you have some base knowledge, you can get started right away, which is different from solidity, it’s quite complex, yet powerful too.

Q10. Most investors are only interested in the immediate benefits rather than the real long-term value of the project. How can you convince investors to invest in your platform over the long term?

(by @zeart0102)

I think most investors and traders (including myself) have enough time in the industry now to see that good marketing makes you grow fast, good development makes you go further. It’s a balance of course between opportunity cost and belief in a project’s capacities to execute. I would ask people to join our chat and ask our community if it’s a good choice to buy waves right now, invest time and love in the project

Q11. Can you tell us what are the main advantages of the Waves protocol For investment purposes, why should we invest in Waves protocol & what benefits does Waves protocol provide to the holders?

Making investment decisions is not easy. I can’t tell you what to do. If I make decisions myself, I look at the project’s fundamental challenges they are solving, if they are BIG enough, and if they are solving them in the right way. secondly I would try to find out if they are executing, really building stuff and not just writing whitepapers.

I can’t tell you whether Waves is or isn’t doing that, you should do your own research, but plenty proof is laying around on the internet for those who search.

Q12. Sasha mentioned in one of his tweets that the current DeFi system out there is not sustainable, like yield farming. Why is it not sustainable and how does Waves solve that problem?

A lot of the yield farming is generating returns only because they are being incentivized. These incentives are interesting short term, but they get arbitrated in the longer run, and cannot always keep sustaining the mechanism. A lot of the yield farming is borrowing based, where there’s substantial risk for the person initially providing the capital.

He’s likely referring to this, and that this is a very financially interesting part of the ecosystem, but not necessarily worth it for people who want safe, stable, but easy returns.

Q13. What are the requirements to run a full node in WAVES platform?

https://docs.waves.tech/en/waves-node/waves-node-in-docker

Q14. How do USDN and Waves tokens affect each other? What are the main use USDN tokens in WAVES ecosystem?

The synergy between USDN and WAVES is interesting. Waves is needed to generate USDN, like I mentioned before but essentially, the more USDN is created, the more WAVES is locked up in a smart contract, and taken out of circulation, this has an interesting effect on supply and demand.

Q15. Apart from your current partnerships, which particular projects do you find exciting (stuff that gives you goosebumps) and would like to collaborate with in the near future, within the DeFi ecosystem?

I’m super excited about the ethereum DeFi projects we are partnering with. We had 1inch last week, we’ll have a few more coming up. It really opens our ecosystem, tokens and tools up, to a bigger audience.