Our official roadmap can be viewed on our website here.

Introduction

2018 was a monumental first year for the Wanchain team, having delivered the three major product releases laid out in our original whitepaper including Wanchain 3.0 in December. In 2019, we’re putting our foot on the gas pedal, and an even more productive year is well underway. Below we expand on many of the milestones in our roadmap, and will also add some additional insights about our other plans for the year.

Proof of Stake

Wanchain’s research and engineering team has been developing their own approach to Proof of Stake (PoS). The proof of concept is currently in the development and testing stage. The protocol draws on previous proof of stake models such as Ouroboros and others, while also innovating in a number of key areas. One of the primary innovations is the Unique Leader Selection (ULS) algorithm which serves to reduce the risk of forks and reduce the time needed to reach consensus. Our team has also implemented an innovative random beacon mechanism, as well as a system which ensures that consensus participants are highly active. Another feature in our PoS system is that of participation by delegation with proxy signatures. This allows smaller holders of WAN to still participate in consensus and earn rewards by participating through delegating to a node operator who will then act as their proxy. Due to the costs of participation, it would not otherwise be practical for holders of smaller amount of WAN to participate in the PoS system. Through delegation, all holders of WAN will have the chance to participate. We will begin rolling out PoS on testnet in Q2 and will have the mainnet PoS live by the end of the year. Before the launch of our PoS solution, we will be running a staking pilot that will run from April 3 to July 3.

New Blockchain Integrations

2019 will also bring at least two new major public blockchain integrations in addition to the Bitcoin and Ethereum bridges which are already live. The business development and engineering teams are working diligently on prioritizing and evaluating the many top candidates that make the most strategic sense for our next integrations. The integration of a new blockchain is not a purely technical feat, it is also the bridging of two communities, so we are of course also taking community feedback into account. After the integration, Wanchain’s community will have access to new assets, while the bridged chain will gain access to all the assets on Wanchain’s network such as BTC, ETH, DAI, and many more.

Wanchain 4.0

Our next major platform release, Wanchain 4.0, is set to be complete before the end of the year. Wanchain 4.0’s primary development is cross-chain integration with a private and/or consortium chains in the enterprise space. This implementation will leverage Wanchain’s private blockchain solution to integrate public chains with private ones. The technical framework behind our solution is based on the same Storeman node system which is currently powering Wanchain’s public chain-to-public chain integrations. For the development of 4.0, we will be working closely with major blockchain standards organizations and industry groups such as Hyperledger and the Ethereum Enterprise Alliance (EEA). Our cooperation with the EEA will be led by Wanchain’s VP of Engineering Weijia Zhang, who was recently selected as the EEA’s representative in China.

Focus on Developer and User Experience

We will be rolling out several improvements to improve both general user and developer experiences. This year will see a major push on the developer front with the launch of our new developer community, as well as much improved technical and non-technical documentation, improved developer tools, and more. We will also implement updates to our wallet to create a smoother user experience.

ERC20 Integrations

We will continue to roll out new ERC20 integrations throughout the year. These new tokens will expand on the current set of ERC20s that are live on our mainnet: MakerDAO’s Dai and MKR, Gemini dollar, Loopring, and Chainlink. We will have a new major stablecoin integration in the next month.

Ecosystem Building

In 2017 our efforts were focused on the launch of our mainnet, in 2018, the focus was on the development of our first two cross-chain connections. We are now shifting our focus to be aimed squarely where it is most needed: at growing our community of blockchain and dApp developers. As Wanchain’s technology continues to grow beyond its core functionality, the next step towards growing our ecosystem is to reach out to the developer community and get more developers to choose Wanchain as the platform for building their projects. Our efforts include, but are not limited to, improvements to documentation and product experience, improved developer tools, solving pain points in the developer journey, expanding our developer community, and engaging in global hackathons. We will also be reaching out to various blockchain developer communities to educate them on how they can leverage Wanchain’s cross-chain functionality within their dApps, as well as how they can launch their dApp as a cross-chain app on Wanchain in addition to its native chain. While our primary focus will be on developers, that does not mean we are forgetting the rest of our community. We will continue to engage with our general public and crypto-enthusiast audience with content, educational pieces, conferences, meetups, a completely re-vamped Wanchain.org website, and a much more frequent series of video updates from the Wanchain team. We will also continue to connect with enterprise and crypto companies through behind-the-scenes product marketing efforts to ensure our cross-chain solution is easily understood from a business value perspective.

Final Thoughts

This blog post covers our 2019 plans for Wanchain’s ecosystem, protocol, and products. We will continue to publish additional materials on everything explained above, including our engineering team’s research on Proof of Stake. Keep in mind that development comes with significant unknowns which can affect timelines. We will do everything in our power to hit each quarter’s timelines. It is also quite likely that we will release product updates that were not included in our roadmap as things come up from our business teams. These additional advancements will be integrated into the roadmap on a case-by-case basis. Thank you for all of the support, and we look forward to a fantastic 2019 together.

About Wanchain

Wanchain is a public blockchain platform that enables decentralized transfer of value between isolated blockchain networks like Ethereum and Bitcoin. Wanchain’s live cross-chain solution is EVM-based, includes optional private transactions, and provides a decentralized, permissionless, and secure approach. Wanchain has employees globally with teams in Beijing (China), Austin (USA), London (UK), Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), Paris (France), and Madrid (Spain).

You can find more information about Wanchain on our website. Additionally, you can reach us through Telegram, Medium, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Reddit.

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