Rise of India as a Global Player in Blockchain Technology
India is increasingly seen as a hotbed of creative entrepreneurship and, with 65 percent of its population under the age of 35 and smartphone use growing rapidly, the country’s most ambitious young businesspeople have the technology sector firmly in their sights, not least in relation to the blockchain.
One young Indian man who is leading the rise in the nation’s blockchain innovation is Abhinav Ramesh, the 26-year-old CEO of Bangalore-based WandX, which is India’s first blockchain protocol-level innovation. WandX is a platform, which allows investors to create and trade in derivative products based on crypto-assets.
The benefits that such a service brings to customers are huge. It enables people to create more equivalent of financial instruments to harness some of the rapid growth in the cryptocurrency markets, while hedging the risks associated with them, with all this done entirely peer to peer with a Blockchain based ID management system.
Not only is WandX the first high-level blockchain product to come out of India, it is leading the world with a new algorithm built on the Ethereum blockchain which allows for cheaper use of the system by customers and makes it possible for the WandX team to upgrade their Ethereum based smart contracts.
Ramesh explains: “Cryptocurrencies rely on the storage of transactional data in order to work. If their history was not recorded in a way that cannot be edited, it would be possible to duplicate a unit of currency, and this would stop the currency from working in a meaningful way.
“Our Split Vault algorithm, allows us to easily upgrade smart contracts as well as reduce Ethereum transaction costs. Crucially, for our own development, it also allows us to upgrade our existing smart contracts without losing any historical data.”
Steering away from the more traditional venture capital route, Ramesh decided to fund the development and construction of his ground-breaking platform with a token sale, which closes on December 5 2017. A token sale allows people who are interested in his new platform to buy the WAND token, which will be used to access the finished service, in return for Ether, a blockchain cryptocurrency.
Expectation around the token sale is high and a pre-sale raised 530 Ether (approximately $150,000) in only 36 hours.
Ramesh, who has a background in supply-chain and analytics at Ernst & Young, added: “Until now, cryptocurrency investors have used centralised exchanges to buy and sell different cryptocurrencies, in the hope of growing their assets. With the rise of decentralised exchanges, the difficulty is that the values can be volatile.
“Investors can only exchange an amount of one currency with an equivalent value of another, which is problematic because it makes it more difficult for them to diversify their portfolio and avoid unnecessary risk.
“That’s where WandX comes in. WandX goes a step further than the decentralised exchanges that enable trade between different tokens, and enables users to create – and trade in – baskets of tokens built on the ethereum blockchain.
“These instruments can facilitate the hedging of risk and enable users to own multiple tokens with a single transaction. The plan is that this will not only make investing in cryptocurrencies easier for those who are already involved, but will attract new investors to the market.”
As it is built on the Ethereum blockchain, WandX can use smart contracts to ‘bundle’ together assets. Unusually for a product holding a token sale, Abhinav’s team – based in Bangalore, India – have already created a prototype platform. The platform will also contain measuring and analytical functions, so that users can compare the performance of products and strategise accordingly.
The token sale will see the introduction of the WAND token, 55 million of which will be issued. The WandX team will end the sale when they raise their maximum of 12,500 Ether – approximately $3,720,000 or the 40-day time limit expires on December 5 2017.
