Blockchain platform WAVES partners with 'Swiss knife' Bitcoin wallet Mycelium

WAVES, the open blockchain platform looking to tokenise national currencies, has partnered with Bitcoin wallet provider Mycelium to allow users to send fiat money tokens through their smartphone app.

WAVES and Mycelium are both in the process of running crowdfunding campaigns. WAVES has raised over $3m to date. The Mycelium crowdsale will fund its new "Crypto-Swiss knife" wallet upgrades, including support for various API integrations, and universal wallet functionality to deposit, store and transact in a range of cryptocurrencies and digital assets.

Core to the WAVES platform is the ability to issue, transfer, and exchange custom blockchain tokens – including those tied to national currencies through market-making services provided by fiat gateways. Besides liquidity provision and exchange services, gateways will also manage AML/KYC policies, so that decentralised blockchain value transfers are fully compliant. Fiat-equivalent tokens will be used for anything from remission to decentralised crowdfunding, said a statement.

Mycelium's Bitcoin wallet software already boasts more than 200,000 users. The upgrade will see the integration of WAVES fiat assets, enabling the transfer of national currencies with all the speed, efficiency and decentralisation that blockchain technology brings. It will also see third-party developers and blockchains adding wide-ranging new functionality to the wallet, with the aim of mass-market adoption in the fiat world.

WAVES founder Sasha Ivanov, said in a statement: "We're very pleased with the collaboration with Mycelium. It's the perfect partnership: the popularity and broad user base of the Mycelium wallet, with the powerful facilities offered by WAVES' blockchain-based fiat tokens.

"This opens a whole new era in financial technology, and one that we believe will prove enormously beneficial both within and outside the crypto community. We know that banks and financial corporations want to work with blockchains, but they are increasingly talking about using permissioned ledgers.

"WAVES' vision is for an open ledger that can be used by everyone, banks and customers, whilst maintaining the KYC and AML their jurisdictions require of them.'

Ivanov said a couple of payment systems are going to test his open blockchain, which will go live this summer.

The WAVES platform will use proof-of-stake to manage consensus on its blockchain. Ivanov said the PoS system will have something similar to Casper, the Ethereum PoS governor, which penalises bad actors on the network, but not in the first roll-out, which will be more basic.

He added the WAVES system will use gateways to do token transfers like the Ripple architecture. As well as a native token on the network, custom tokens can be built on top. He said that for the network to work normally it will need about 1,000 nodes.

WAVES is currently in development, with testnet already operational. The crowdfunding campaign will run until 31 May, with the launch of the platform set for summer 2016.