WanChain (WAN) Beta Goes Live, Reducing Block Production Time by Half: Exclusive Interview With CEO Jack Lu

Wanchain is a platform meant to connect local, heterogeneous networks and aims to be the backbone of all blockchain networks, founder and CEO Jack Lu said in an exclusive interview with CryptoPotato.

Lu, who is also the co-founder of the crypto company Factom, has a background in economics and computer science, having worked for over 20 years as a software engineer in Austin, Texas before first hearing about Bitcoin in 2012.

“I decided to look into it [Bitcoin]. I spent my spare time as a moonlighter doing a lot of reading, and also looking into the code, and also set up a mining node in my home,” Lu says. “Back in 2014, I made a tough decision. Basically, I invested all my money in Bitcoin into Ethereum, and I invested all my time in the Factom project.”

Beta launch and PoS switch

Wanchain held an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) back in October 2017 in which the organization reached its hard cap of $36 million. Since then, the interoperable blockchain platform has released its Galaxy PoS beta network (a switch from PPoW) along with a new wallet in June.

“So in our lab, our TPS can reach thousands. Hopefully our target TPS on production after POS will be more than 1,000. That will continue to be a lot faster. In the beta version, compared to alpha, we cut the block-producing time from 10 seconds to 5 seconds,” Lu says.

According to the Wanchain CEO, the platform’s beta is “running fine”, though it needs network, code, and speed improvements.

Lu believes switching to PoS will help the company find a balance in the so-called blockchain trilemma of decentralization, security, and performance; as a PoS network will be “a lot faster” than its PPoW predecessor.

“POS can get a lot of involvement from the community. Once they get used to the POS, some people will be more encouraged to use their token power to participate in all the on-chain governance and events,” he says.

Sorry, I don’t see Libra as a threat

CryptoPotato asked Lu what he thinks of Facebook’s ambitious Libra project, which involves the tech giant releasing its own cryptocurrency in the first half of 2020.

Contrary to many others in the crypto industry, Lu doesn’t see Libra as a threat to decentralized cryptocurrencies, but the opposite.

“Sorry, I don’t see that [Libra] as a threat,” Lu says. “We’re trying to find this killer app for mass adoption, and this is really a good opportunity for average users, Facebook users. They will be exposed to cryptocurrency and to blockchain technology. So although they use Libra as a stablecoin in the beginning, more and more users will be rushing into this crypto industry. There will be more money coming in, more users coming in. That would definitely, definitely be good news for the whole industry.”

Lu believes Facebook’s Libra project could bridge the gap between fiat and decentralized, digital currencies. According to him, there has to be a “middle step” that connects traditional finance with blockchain technology. And both Facebook and Wanchain are trying to provide that middle step to the financial world, he noted.

The CEO has an even more ambitious plan: connecting Libra with other cryptocurrencies.

“I say we can build a bridge between Wanchain and Libra, and Libra Coin can move onto Wanchain and be connected. It’d be exchangeable with other cryptos. At the same time, we could ship the other cryptos onto Libra and they could have more applications on Facebook’s platform. So potentially this will be a win-win situation.”

For the full interview – watch the video.

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