During a panel discussionfat the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) on the emerging role of Blockchain technology, Waves CEO Sasha Ivanov was asked about the most urgent issues facing Blockchain technology.

He began by noting that Waves’ presence at such a major Forum was proof in itself that open Blockchain protocols like Waves were coming of age. Blockchain has passed the “point of no return’ — the brink of mass adoption into the mainstream world — and these technologies are clearly here to stay.

“Blockchain will lead to rapid progress not only in state administration, but also in business,’ said Sasha Ivanov, CEO of Waves, “This is an intriguing point in history: over the past 5,000 years technology has move progressively towards centralisation, and so the paradigm shift towards decentralisation is dramatic,’ continued Ivanov.

But it’s still unclear how government will operate with these protocols.

“We need pilot programmes, and to scale them up when we know they work,’ he commented. The technology has real-world use cases in the financial sector but also for administration and business too. “A big story within the cryptocurrency world is the ICO or crowd investment using the Blockchain, with different projects raising tens of millions of dollars. This is a new and very effective way of attracting resources. If it is legitimised, it will lead to a huge leap forwards in business as many things can be optimized,’ said Ivanov.

The rapid changes in the cryptocurrency world of recent weeks and months, he said, are being driven by evolving realities in Japan and other major economies.

“If other countries do the same we will see explosive growth in these new technologies.’

The panel discussion was entitled The Explosive Impact of Blockchain Technology, with participants including Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin; Movencorp Inc. Founder and CEO Brett King; Minister of Communications and Mass Media of the Russian Federation Nikiforov; First Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Igor Shuvalov; Waves CEO sasha ivanov; Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation Olga Skorobogatova; Founder and CEO of The BitFury Group Valery Vavilov; and numerous other figures from the banking and public sectors.

Waves Platform (http://www.wavesplatform.com/) is a decentralized platform for launching crowdfunding campaigns and issuing digital assets. It is the largest Blockchain project to originate from Russia. The Waves encryption platform is primarily designed to support the issuance, trade and exchange of digital assets/tokens using Blockchain technology. The project is characterized by its emphasis on usability and widespread application. It is supposed to use Proof-of-Stake as its consensus algorithm. Waves Platform completed its Initial Coin Offering in June 2016, garnering more than $16 million (30,000 BTC) and becoming one of the Top Three most successful Blockchain projects in terms of crowdfunding investment.