Bitcoin’s (BTC) Lightning Network (LN) promises to offer fast blockchain payments without worrying about block confirmation times.

Security is enforced by blockchain smart-contracts without creating an on-blockchain transaction for individual payments. Payment speed measured in milliseconds to seconds. But this is a little bit too late and new tech such as Waves (WAVES) is here to take over.

With the current downward spiral of Bitcoin (BTC) and the entire market, it is very easy to declare that Bitcoin is losing relevance and love amongst cryptocurrency enthusiasts.

In comes Waves (WAVES) to the rescue and to remind us why we love cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology.

So what is Waves coin?

Waves is an open source blockchain platform developed, marketed and operated by the Waves platform. The Waves platform offers solutions for storing, trading, managing and issuing your digital assets, easily and securely.

For the last option of issuing digital assets, Waves allows you to do crowdfunding for your business or project and in return, offer your custom tokens to your participants. In a nutshell, this is a simplified ICO on the Waves platform.

This means you can receive instant funding for your project from anywhere in the world at a lightning speed guaranteed by the Waves platform.

It is with the last statement that brings me back to why you should forget Bitcoin’s lightning network. The Waves platform from the start offers the speed that Bitcoin has failed to deliver on its own without hard forks.

The Waves platform has figured out a way to increase the number of transactions per block without increasing the number of forks. This means no more debate and arguments of whether to hard fork or not. The network simply does this through a protocol change when the need arises. Simple as that!

In actual fact, the Waves Next Generation technology and algorithm was designed and based on the Bitcoin’s Next Generation proposal made by Cornell Computer Science academics Emin Gun Sirer and Ittay Eyal.

They realized the limitations of Bitcoin and wanted to improve on it using a new algorithm that was adopted by Waves. With this algorithm, the Waves platform is able to withstand high loads that include distribution of tokens from crowd sales and airdrops of bonus tokens.

The decentralized exchange that is a characteristic of Waves (WAVES) is also made faster by this algorithm. The beauty of a decentralized exchange is that there are fewer chances of the host exchange being hacked because there isn’t one in the first place.

The recent hack of $530 Million at the Japanese exchange, Coincheck, left all crypto traders and central governments shook. Tighter security measures by exchanges are being offered as the current solution.

But Waves (WAVES) solves this by guaranteeing that there is no single node responsible for all trades. Therefore, lower to zero probability of hacking.

So how much is the Waves (WAVES) currently worth?

Right now it is trading at $4.17 due to the current market crash. At its peak, WAVES traded at $17.02 meaning the coin has potential. With a circulating supply of 100 Million, it would not be surprising if the coin reaches the $20 mark in 2018.