Waves Enterprise expands to Singapore to pursue hybrid blockchain adoption

Asian markets are much friendlier to enterprise blockchain adoption, says Waves's founder.

Waves Enterprise has onboarded Tokenomika Pte Ltd., a Singapore-based fintech company, as an operator for its hybrid public-private blockchain. Tokenomika will operate the Waves Enterprise public permissioned network, starting in March.

The expansion comes as part of a strategy shift for Waves Enterprise, focusing more on hybrid networks that can interface with public blockchains like Ethereum. In Gartner’s “hype cycle for blockchain” report, the analytical firm predicts that the enterprise world will gradually move away from fully private networks to hybrid or even fully public options. Waves Enterprise is making a bet on this prediction, focusing on creating networks that can interface with the wider blockchain world — especially in the context of tokens. Sasha Ivanov, founder of Waves, told Cointelegraph:

“There are no fully operating corporate or gov blockchain ecosystems yet; I would say that the market is still in search of a minimal viable ecosystem model. But in any case you need to start out with something small, that's the only way to build a sustainable ecosystem.”

Ivanov noted that there are attempts by companies like Hedera Hashgraph to bring a mixed model, but he sees Waves’s offering as more comprehensive. While the market demand for hybrid solutions is still small, this may change in a three-to-five years perspective, according to Ivanov. In the meantime, the Singapore operator will focus on promoting ready-made products like Waves’s blockchain voting platform.

Singapore provides the perfect jurisdiction to develop Waves’s vision. “Singapore has one one of the most advanced crypto and blockchain regulations in the world,” Sasha Ivanov, founder of Waves, told Cointelegraph. “It offers a neutral regime for the growth of crypto and digital assets transactions. All this made Singapore to emerge as the crypto hub in Asia. Such legal space is crucial for building next-gen ecosystems and disruptive economy models.”

According to Ivanov, Waves Enterprise’s hybrid model occupies a niche that other projects have not populated yet. Its architecture is configurable and can be tailored to local cryptography standards and it features “language agnostic smart contracts.” The ability to implement custom cryptography was used by the Russian government in its recent blockchain e-voting pilot.

Ivanov was somewhat critical of Russia’s new cryptocurrency regulations, noting that “new Russian crypto regulations indeed don't suppose that corporate cases are based on public blockchain technologies and cryptoeconomics,” which is one of the reasons why Waves Enterprise is now pursuing other jurisdictions. Waves will still pursue the Russian enterprise market though, with Ivanov noting that “private blockchain proved to be a demanded technology for digital transformation here in Russia.”