Wanchain’s goal is to build a new distribution structure for digital assets in the finance industry. Currently, the problem with digital assets is that they are stored in one place and cannot easily be transferred to other businesses using other blockchain systems. Think of Wanchain as a bridge that enables digital financial assets to move between different blockchains.

What are digital assets? These can be things like loyalty point registers and future earnings rights. The security, speed, cost effectiveness and transparency of blockchain technology makes it perfect to help businesses store and process this type of data. However, businesses are building applications and storing information on a variety of different blockchains. The problem is that data and digital assets cannot be shared with users or other businesses using a different blockchain. That’s where WAN comes in.

Blockchain is becoming more widely adopted by businesses and there are an increasing number of bespoke business applications built on private, consortium or public blockchains like Ethereum. As more businesses adopt blockchain technology, the mismatching blockchains mean their digital assets are often incompatible. Wanchain aims to solve this problem by being the framework where digital assets can be transferred, viewed or interacted with. Crucially, this compatibility will work across different types of blockchains.

Traditional banks are currently the infrastructure of the the financial framework. Wanchain aims to be the updated framework for digital assets in the financial sector. As the WAN team put it:

“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… Wanchain is a distributed super-financial market based on blockchain.”

What Else Does WAN Offer?

Wanchain allows digital assets to be transferred easily across different blockchains. However, it also has some additional key features for application developers looking at building on WAN:

• Privacy: Transactions can be verified on the network. However, unlike other systems like the Ethereum network, Wanchain has a private send function to hide the amount transferred. This is big news for businesses, who might not want the public to know how much money they are making. Also, publicly listed companies only announce their earnings figures once a quarter. The ability to hide transaction amounts protects the integrity of these earnings reports and ensures nobody has a trading advantage.
• Smart Contracts: WAN can process smart contracts. These are enhanced with Wanchain’s API’s (data feeds) and can be combined with the platforms privacy and blockchain compatibility features.
• Initial Coin Offerings: Like Ethereum, new cryptocurrency projects are able to launch their ICOs on the Wanchain network.
• WANLab: Is a blockchain incubator powered by Wanchain. The lab will give blockchain projects the resources, support, access to marketing & PR expertise, contacts and mentorship they need throughout their development process. Needless to say, projects created through WANLabs will add to the already growing Wanchain ecosystem.
• The Interoperability Alliance: In November 2017 WAN entered the alliance with Aion and ICON (both top 60 cryptocurrencies). The purpose of this organisation is to promote connectivity between different blockchains through sharing research and technology. ICON is focused on connecting together blockchains for different industries and creating an ecosystem. In addition, AION is producing the standardised protocol to be used on these chains. Together, the Interoperability Alliance have a much better chance of delivering great products and increasing their global footprints faster