Waykichain Review: Blockchain Development Platform for dApps

Waykichain is an interesting blockchain development project that has been flying under the radar for the last year.

Much like Etheruem and EOS, the Waykichain blockchain allows for other developers to build their own decentralised applications (dApps). Waykichain actually launched their mainnet ahead of more well-known projects such as Tron and EOS.

However, can Waykichain overcome their relative obscurity?

In this Waykichain review, I will attempt to answer that question. I will also look at the potential for adoption of their WICC utility token.

What is Waykichain?

Waykichain is a third-generation blockchain that gives developers the freedom to build their own decentralised applications (dApps) on their platform. This is all made easier through the use of their Turing complete smart contracts.

Development of these dApps is made that much easier due to the unique templates that the Waykichain team have built. These allow developers to easily build their dApps without having an in-depth knowledge of smart contract programming languages.

There are grand ambitions for the Waykichain project and they have stated in their Whitepaper that they want to bring "blockchain technology into people's lives". They went on to say:

We hope to build up a brand new blockchain ecosystem which will be an option for the internet value transmission protocol in the future

The project is based in Hong Kong and as such, is much more well known in Asia than it is in some western markets. However, awareness internationally is beginning to pick up as the project is beginning an international expansion.

Waykichain Technology

Central to the Waykichain protocol is their consensus mechanism. This is a Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) protocol which makes it similar to the likes of EOS (compared to Ethereum's Proof-of-Work).

With this dPoS consensus mechanism, there are 11 voting nodes that will generate a block every 10 seconds. This means that transaction speeds on the Waykichain network can currently reach in excess of 3,200 tps.

The Waykichain dPoS will work by randomly selecting an accounting node from the 11 nodes with the most votes on the network. This happens when a new block is created and the node will gain the transaction and handling fees.

You can also "stake" your WICC tokens (covered below) in order to earn a staking reward. Those who have staked their tokens can then vote to select 11 accounting nodes for the Waykichain network.

This "staking reward" has been set to 5% for the first year but will decrease by 1% for each of the following years. This will eventually level out to 1% return and will remain fixed going forward.

Waykichain is also implementing sidechain technology as part of their network infrastructure. This will enable certain applications to operate in their own sidechain without slowing down the network on the mainchain (a la Cryptokitties on Ethereum).

Waykichain Applications

Waykichain actually launched their mainnet back in May of 2018 which was actually ahead of other more established smart contract projects.

Waykichain also has a pretty unique model in that they don't charge users "gas" when they use the dApps. In this case, it is the smart contract owner that will pay the gas required to run the dApp.

Since mainnet launch, there have been a number of applications that have been built on the blockchain. Below are some of the most popular dApps in the ecosystem. These include the likes of WTB, Waykiman, WaykiLegend, Gemrush etc. You can see the full list of all of the dApps that have been built on the Waykichain blockchain here.

The Waykichain team is also actively encouraging dApp development through their funding initiative (more on this below).

Waykichain Team

The Waykichain team has quite a diverse background and there are members who have worked for a range of different companies.

Waykichain was founded by Wayki Sun (hence the name) who is also the Chief Security Officer for the project. He is a well-known investor in the digital currency space and has an entrepreneurial background. He previously founded Oulu Crowd Funding and is the president of Hurricane Digital Assets Management Co.

Joining him as a co-founder and sitting in the CEO seat is Gordon Gao. He is a graduate of Columbia in New York and is an ex-data scientist from both Fishbowl and the Alibaba group.

The third co-founder of the project is Tony Chau and he is also the COO. He holds a degree from the University of Toronto and has worked in finance at Hongshang Asset Management Co.

In the CTO position of Waykichain is Richard Chen. He as a M.Sc. in Computer Science from the National University of Singapore. He was previously a senior vice president at Morgan Stanley for three years and was a chief architect at Intel for 8 years.

Finally, you have Xi Zhang who is the Cheif Product Officer. He has more of an entrepreneurial background and has been involved in internet startups for the past 14 years. He also founded QiuShang APP which was the first prediction App in China.

Waykichain Community

As mentioned above, Waykichain is not as well known in the Western markets as it is in Asia. However, one of the most effective ways to change that is through a large and engaged community.

Therefore, we like to sometimes take a dive into project social channels to get an idea of the level of engagement and awareness of the project. Hence, we decided to take a look at Waykichain's channels.

Waykichain has an official Twitter account that has over 11k followers. They regularly post updates here to the community which is a positive sign of activity.

They also have numerous Telegram Channel. For example, their English channel that has over 6,000 members. Then they have a Chinese channel which has over 23k members. In fact, this was so large that they have had to open up a second Chinese channel which has over 4,000 members.

Then, there are a number of other Telegram channels including those for news, dApps and fan channels. These telegram channels are larger than those that we have seen at similar sized projects. This also excludes the sizable Chinese following that they are likely to have on other local language apps such as Weibo, Tencent and WeChat.

Finally, the team also has an official blog where they regularly post weekly updates which keep the community informed on aspects such as Technology, roadmap and business relationships.

WICC Token & Trading

Central to the Waykichain ecosystem is their WICC native token. This provides the fuel to the network and is the means by which users can gain access to the applications and transact in the system.

The WICC token started out at an ERC20 token as it was issued on the Ethereum blockchain. However, they migrated away from this standard when they launched the project mainnet in June of 2018.

WICC tokens have had quite a volatile time since trading began in January of 2018. They were first listed and started trading at a price of $0.95 and began to rally in anticipation of the Mainnet launch.

In May of 2018, they reached their All-Time-High of $2.60 just prior to launch. However, WICC was caught up in the subsequent bear market that enveloped the rest of the market. They are currently trading at $0.27.

WICC tokens are listed on a number of exchanges although the bulk of the volume is currently taking place on BCEX, Huobi Global, CoinTiger and a few other exchanges. The best exchange for a Western market would perhaps be Huobi.

There appears to be reasonable levels of volume spread across these exchanges. This implies healthy levels of liquidity for large block orders. Token trading still remains volatile so you should trade with caution.

WICC Token Storage

Once you have bought your WICC, the most prudent move would be to take your tokens off of the exchange. We are all aware of the risks that we face from centralised exchange hacks and as such.

Given that this is the native token for the Waykichain network, you do have less selection of wallet support than you will have with an ERC20 token for example. However, there are currently 10 third party wallets that you can use to store your WICC in.

The list above includes the like mobile as well as web wallets. Some of them are also multicurrency wallets which means that you can store your other coins here as well and don't have to rely on a collection of wallets.

If you want to be able to stake your WICC tokens and earn the returns then your best bet would probably be to use the officialy Waykichain wallets. These include the wallet function in Waykitimes app we mentioned above as well as their core open source wallet.

WaykiChain Development

It can sometimes be hard to determine exactly how much work is being done on a project. While teams can always claim to be working on the protocol, the proof is often in the pudding.

Having said that, one of the best ways to track the development progress of a project is through their public code commits. Therefore, we decided to take a look into the Waykichain GitHub commits over the past year.

As you can see, the team has been quite active pushing code. This is about in line with the commit activity that we have seen at other projects at similar stages of their project life. There are also a further 13 repos on their GitHub although these have received far fewer commits.

Indeed, this development would make sense given the milestones that the team has been setting themselves. Below are some of these network releases combined with other more general project achievements.

We also have something to look forward to from a developer perspective for the rest of 2019 and 2020. In Q3 of 2019 they will start development on their decentralised trading application and in Q3 of 2020 they will move onto the decentralised forex trading app.

Something else that could that is in the pipeline for Waykichain is their WUSD stablecoin. This will be the world's first stablecoin at the bottom layer of a Public chain. It will be interesting to see how this will perform compared to the likes of MakerDao's DAI.

Dapp Funding Program

Something else that the Waykichain team have done in order to boost development on their platform is the Dapp funding program. They have essentially set aside $1.5m in order incentivise these developers.

For each decentralised application that will be built on the Waykichain blockchain, they will offer $15,000 along with other services that include tech support, branding and product marketing.

They have also encouraged those in the community, media and general public to invite developers to build on the blockchain. For those that make the introductions and connect the right developer teams will also receive awards.

This is actually a great initiative in our view. A blockchain ecosystem can only thrive when it is actually being used as intended. It is one of the reasons that the Ethereum blockchain ecosystem is so successful. More dApps means more use cases which means more users and subsequently a larger and more robust ecosystem.

Conclusion

From our Waykichain review it does seem as if the project has potential and it could provide developers with an attractive alternative to more established blockchains.

Their Dapp funding program together with their unique "gas" charge feature could provide as added incentive for more developers to build on the platform.

Of course, one of the biggest challenges for Waykichain remains their relatively unknown status outside of Asia. They need to be able to get their name out and grow their international community if they are to attract users and developers.

While the WICC token has been through some volatile markets and is below its listing price, there appears to be healthy volume and exchange support. More wallet support is needed though for more adoption to take place.

So, although the road ahead is still quite challenging, Waykichain is working hard to build out its technology and meet its upcoming milestones.