By
Chimamanda U. Martha
April 23rd, 2024
Decentralized сryptocurrency trading platform Waves has stopped its activity as a DEX and is starting to operate as a hybrid exchange.
In what seems like migration for the future, sources have indicated that Waves, a popular decentralized cryptocurrency exchange, has shut down its operations on its decentralized platform and is migrating to a new hybrid-based system that is intended to combine the best of both worlds. The exchange indicated this yesterday in a press release stating that it is shutting down operations on the old website and is shifting to the new Waves.Exchange site where the development of its hybrid model is ongoing at the moment. The exchange said:
“From this point onwards, the old version of the exchange will be unavailable, and the website will offer only functionality to support migration. User funds held on Waves DEX will remain completely safe during and after the process.”
The company further indicated that it had started minimal operations on the new platform as the ongoing development continues. The company also noted that the immutability of transactions, security and the control of funds by users will be in tandem with the centralized characteristics of the new platform.
According to Waves, while its core development team will be working on the protocol, sharding and other mission-critical features of the new platform, another team will focus on the operations and support systems of the new platform. This separate team will have members from the core development team for easy assimilation of the project by new entrants.
Waves CEO Sasha Ivanov explained their move in the following way:
“Waves DEX was a kind of prototype. Now, after 2 years of operation, it has grown and become a separate project. […] Now it’s time for us to focus on protocol development and hand over the exchange to an external team and community separate from Waves, so we can merge all the infrastructure teams into one, synchronizing development work and taking the combined product to a new level.”
The cryptocurrency exchange also indicated that innovations that will bring much to the crypto space which include partner and market-making programs that will also be introduced to enable further inclusion of liquidity on the platform. Moreover, Tether (USDT) trading shall ensue on the platform once the trading gateway opens up in December. Per Waves, new products will be available on the platform to allow passive income and the collation of interest-based on the acquisition of stablecoins on a low-risk basis.
This brings to the fore a new hybrid-based model as a new paradigm in the decentralized finance (DeFi) space. The concept has a mix of centralized systems with decentralized features considering the various costs involved where the implementation of purely centralized systems is concerned. How Waves will succeed in the long term depends on how the new platform’s protocol will work and its adaptability to the emerging situations and risks that financial systems always face. The strategy of having separate teams indicates that Waves is a forward-looking organization.