Waves is a decentralized trading platform having its own blockchain and coin. The platform is so decentralized that they plan a reputation system that will assign reputation based on network activity and other parameters – a unique feature among cryptocurrencies. Like bitcoin which has a limited supply of coins, Waves is also has a limited number of coins that will ever be issued: 100 million.
Mining Waves
Mining in Waves is different from mining other cryptocurrencies. To mine Waves you run something called a Full Node which participates in the network. No special hardware is required – the Waves platform guide suggests using a regular Windows Amazon Web Services instance installed with the Waves Full Node to start mining. One of the key qualifications for running a Full Node is that you hold at least 10,000 Waves, making running a Full Node impractical for most people.
Leasing Waves
Another way to get Waves is to lease your waves to those that want to run Full Nodes. You can lease your balance of Waves to someone who’s trying to accumulate their 10,000 Waves without you having to transfer your Waves balance – you always retain control of your Waves when you lease them. You lease your Waves right from the Waves Lite Client. Leasing your Waves is an effective way of earning passive income without having to risk buying specialized mining hardware and running a miner. You can calculate how much you’ll earn using this calculator, while this video provides the details of how to lease your Waves.
Waves Faucet
A free way of getting Waves is to use a Waves faucet. A faucet site gives you Waves for free, in exchange for solving a captcha or other small task. There are two Waves faucets: WavesGo faucet which gives a random amount of Waves between 0.0001 and 0.00001 Waves and WavesDrop which gives a random amount of Waves up to 0.0003 every hour.
Buying Waves
You can buy Waves at an exchange or use the Waves Lite Client. If you use the Waves Lite Client, the Waves Platform team says you’ll pay a premium exchange rate, so you might want to consider buying at a regular exchange. Exchanges include the following:
If you’re interested in trading more than 8,000 Waves, you can buy them directly from the project, over the counter, here.
Waves Wallet
You store our Waves in a wallet; there’s a wallet for desktop, web-based client, Chrome plug-in, and mobile wallet.
For desktop, download and install the Waves Lite Client. The official detailed installation guide is available to read here.
For the web-based client, visit this web page and fill in the fields as required: https://waveswallet.io/
The Chrome plug-in is located here and functions similar to the web-based version.
For the mobile wallets, you can find their apps links to download from Google Play for Android and Apple Store on IOS.
Conclusion
This article described Waves, how it differs from bitcoin, how to mine Waves and how to lease your Waves, how to buy Waves at an exchange, and how to store Waves.
