Wanchain Roadmap 2020

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Wanchain

5 min readDec 9, 2019

2019 — Galaxy Consensus Was Born

2019 was a pivotal year for Wanchain, most notably our consensus mechanism was upgraded from permissioned proof of work (PPOW) to proof of stake (POS) using Galaxy PoS Consensus. The new POS consensus mechanism developed by Wanchain’s own research team and draws from the research done by IOHK for Cardano with the Ouroboros proof of stake algorithm.

The upgrade was a smashing success, as the numbers clearly spell out. As of today, three months since the launch of Galaxy on the mainnet there are:

20% of total circulating WAN currently locked in Galaxy PoS
~23 million locked WAN in Galaxy PoS
~2000 delegators
57 validator nodes (47 delegation receiving, 10 non-delegation)

In addition to the work on the consensus mechanism itself, the Wanchain team also released a number of new updates including an all new light desktop wallet with support for staking and delegation, a mobile wallet with delegation support, updates to the old full node desktop wallet, additional language support, an all new website, additional ERC-20 integrations, and developer tools for validators.

Wanchain’s 2020 Roadmap

Focus on Applications

While 2019 was all about Galaxy Consensus, in 2020 we are making a major pivot to focus on making Wanchain a better choice for dApp developers. This will be done both through additional tools which make the Wanchain dApp building process easier than ever, as well as upgrades to GWAN, the Wanchain core protocol client.

dApp Development Tools

Wanchain Explorer overhaul for DApp development
The overhaul aims to improve support for smart contracts on the explorer. Any user can verify the consistency between the smart contract’s source code and its copy on the blockchain with new version of the Wanchain Explorer.
DApp Integration Framework
The framework will allow developers to integrate their DAPPs easily with the Wanchain Wallet, giving them full access to cross-chain and private transaction features of the official wallet so they don’t need to build these features themselves. This allows DAPP developers to focus on their DAPP’s business logic and not have to worry about the details of cross chain and private transactions.
Release of Wanchain DAPP development toolkit
Wanchain’s DApp development toolkit will provide developer facing tools to facilitate building, testing, and deployment of DAPPs on Wanchain, starting with the iWAN SDK that is already available to all community developers.
Random number generation service
This service will provide DAPP developers with a high quality and high frequency source of randomness for use in their DAPPs. Random numbers are essential for the development of a large variety of applications such as games, gambling DAPPs, generation of secure passwords, and much more. A verifiable random number generation service is an invaluable tool in any DAPP developer’s toolkit.

Core GWAN Protocol Upgrades

Proof of Concept of WASM on Wanchain
WASM on Wanchain will allow Smart Contract to be developed with C++, C#, JS, Rust, etc. It will also improve drastically the efficiency and performance of DAPPs on Wanchain.

More Cross Chain

In addition to the increased focused on applications, 2020 will also see a major expansion of Wanchain’s cross chain integrations. In addition to new ERC-20 and EOS tokens, at least two new public chains will be integrated.

Additional Cross Chain Integrations

Integration of at least two new mainstream public chains
Next 4 sets of ERC-20/EOS token integrations

Increase Storeman Decentralization

Open Storeman Initiative (3 phases)
This multi-phase initiative will gradually open up participation in Wanchain’s cross chain Storeman node system to the public, and will eventually lead to the total decentralization of the Storeman system. The initiative will begin by opening a number of nodes to the public, and will become progressively more open to the community going forward. Participating node operators will be incentivized to operate Storeman nodes similarly to how current PoS node operators are incentivized.

Research and Proof of Concepts

Standards based cross-chain mechanism & infrastructure
Wanchain has integrated with and will continue to integrate with blockchains with different characteristics like Bitcoin, Ethereum, EOS and also enterprise blockchains, using its cross-chain mechanism. We aim to provide a practical standard and necessary infrastructure for the blockchain industry that anyone can follow and use to build their own heterogeneous cross-chain implementation, not limited to those built with the same SDK.
Proof of Concept of cross-chain integration with Libra, DCEP
With the potential future introduction of various kinds of stablecoins to the market that are backed by either strong industrial or national support, Wanchain as one of the leaders in the cross-chain domain intends to follow up closely the evolution in the stablecoin field and propose solutions to bridge them.
Proof of Concept of cross-chain mechanism for NFT (non fungible tokens)
NFT tokens have gained the attention for their ability to represent and map real world unique items like land titles, contracts, art collections, etc. into blockchain world. A cross-chain mechanism however is still missing for NFTs, and Wanchain plans to fill this gap by developing a cross-chain mechanism for NFTs. An obvious difficulty which could occur is providing a dynamically adjustable collateral mechanism for cross-chain NFTs.

A big thank you to the Wanchain community for your continued attention and support! 2020 is shaping up to be a big year for us and the greater blockchain industry.

About Wanchain

Wanchain is the infrastructure connecting the decentralized financial world. Wanchain’s live cross-blockchain solution is EVM-based, includes optional private transactions, and provides a decentralized, permissionless, and secure approach for interoperability. Wanchain has employees globally with teams in Beijing (China), Austin (USA), Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), and Madrid (Spain).