The CEO of Wanchain has said cross-chain support will have a “huge impact” on the traditional financial industry by linking it to the crypto industry. In an interview with NewsBTC, he discussed Wanchain 2.0, which was launched on July 23 with cross-chain interoperability.

Wanchain Version 2.0: “Big Milestone for the Industry”

Wanchain has three primary objectives: privacy protection, smart contracts and interoperability. The first two were completed in January and Wanchain 2.0 is the release of the third “pillar” allowing for cross-chain support. After six months of development, including one month of alpha testing and a period of beta testing, the product is ready to launch.

Version 2.0 supports ETH to be transferred from the Ethereum blockchain onto the Wanchain platform which will be represented with WETH tokens. This also allows for ICO contracts supporting ETH and WAN and deployment of debit and credit contracts for WAN, ETH and other tokens. Wanchain will support BTC cross-chain transfers by the end of 2018 and plans to implement functionality for at least one or two ERC-20 tokens.

The end goal of interoperability for Wanchain is to connect individuals to a decentralized platform which will offer digital asset management and exchanges, loans, and credit payments. These financial services will be privacy-protected. Wanchain said, in a statement, that the cross-chain functionality opens up “entire new worlds of opportunities across many industries.”

Founder and CEO Jack Lu said that Wanchain is the “first and pretty much the only one” to have achieved cross-chain interoperability. He argued that it is not just a “milestone” for Wanchain but for the industry as a whole. By having a solution to connect to most blockchains, this opens up the ability to connect with the traditional financial market.

Lu told NewsBTC:

“It will enable us to build a bridge to the traditional financial world. A lot of traditional finance assets will be moved into private chains or public chains and once we connect them we can create private smart contracts, make all assets tradeable and create a programmable digital economy across all these new assets and also traditional assets.”

“Huge Impact” on Traditional Financial Industry

When asked how quickly this move will happen, he compared it to the e-commerce revolution. He believes that it will be a lot faster than the e-commerce movement because most assets are already on the blockchain. Once the link is made to traditional markets, change will be much quicker.

Lu pointed out the benefits of crypto assets in the traditional sector. He said that transaction costs will be reduced dramatically and that there will be a higher trust in the transactions due to the immutability of the blockchain. It will also minimize costs and reduce counter-party risks. He said “it will revolutionize the whole financial industry.”

Lu said:

“Fiat currency just like stocks, they can be tokenized. Right now, there’s a lot of problems, you use [stablecoins] but once the banks or the government can issue or tokenize the fiat currency, with our interoperability feature, all these crypto assets can be traded with fiat based cryptocurrency or blockchain directly. There will be a huge impact to the traditional financial world.”

Lu further emphasized that internet-based companies are “more eager” but the financial space will “move faster” and will have the highest value compared to other industries. He highlighted the medical industry and advertising platforms and said that Wanchain are working with various projects to increase adoption.

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