Waves Launching Smart Contracts on Testnet

On April 28th, Waves released the first iteration of smart contracts on its testnet. Now, activation is expected on May 3rd.

A Careful and Considered Approach to Smart Contracts

On Saturday, April 28th, Waves officially launched smart contracts on the platform’s testnet.

This first release effectively allows community members to test non-Turing complete contracts. These smart contracts allow for a variety of account controls, in addition to other functionalities. Ilya Smagin, Head of Development for Smart Contracts at Waves, commented:

Waves smart contracts will initially include account and token controls, providing functionality for implementing the most-needed scenarios like multisignature wallets, atomic swaps, 2-factor authorization, as well as more elaborate protections for coins. We’ll also introduce a Data Transaction: a way to post Oracle data to the blockchain, of course, available from within our smart contracts code.

Waves notably took its time in implementing smart contracts, having first thoroughly analyzed Ethereum’s smart contracts before taking a careful and considerate approach to their actual implementation — utilizing a phased rollout, predictable computation overheads, and fixed fees. Waves CEO and founder Alexander Ivanov explains:

It’s really important to do this right. Non-Turing complete contracts will cover a large proportion of use cases, including smart accounts and smart tokens. These will be available from the Waves client for all users and will not require any specialist knowledge or expertise.

It’s worth mentioning that the developers at Waves will not fully activate Turing-complete contracts on the platform’s mainnet until all of the aforementioned features have been thoroughly tested and activated.

However, smart contract functionality will be activated on the platform’s testnet on May 3rd — assuming approval of the new code is granted by miners, in accordance with the Waves Feature Activation Protocol. You can find out more about Waves’ smart contracts and their implementation here.

How Will Smart Contracts Benefit Waves?

Smart contracts will bring a plethora of new additions and added benefits to the Waves ecosystem.

First and foremost, smart contracts will allow for multisignature wallets, which cannot be controlled by simply one person alone. For a transaction to occur, all necessary parties must provide their private keys at the same time.

Secondly, unlike other similar blockchains, Waves smart contracts do not use gas for non-Turing complete smart contracts — which means that fixed costs are always known upfront. Compared to Ethereum, this makes Waves significantly more simplified, efficient, and cost-effective, while still providing essentially the same service.

Additionally, Waves Tokens are like Waves itself, which means that they are treated exactly the same and are held in your address — while the platform still supports token creation in the core and from the standard Waves wallet. Essentially, this makes life a lot easier for end users. Furthermore, the tokens you create can immediately be distributed and traded on the Waves decentralized exchange, DEX, with no further work.

Atomic swaps will also be added, while smart contracts on Waves will also allow for token freezes — meaning users will be able to introduce parameters which prevent buyers from selling or transferring tokens from their address for a specified amount of time.

Finally, decentralized applications (DApps) which are based on Turing-complete smart contracts will be able to complete complicated processes on the Waves blockchain, meeting a wide range of different criteria.

All things considered, the implementation of smart contracts on the Waves platform is a huge step forward for the already successful project.

Are you excited for the activation of Waves smart contracts on May 3rd? Where do you see the successful platform going in the next few years? Let us know in the comments below!

Images courtesy of Adobe Stock and Waves.

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