SINGAPORE, Jan. 27, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Now, more than ever, there is a need for trustworthy technology to handle financial applications. Liquid.com is ready to launch the renewal of QASH (Liquid Token) and Liquid Chain, Liquid's advanced native blockchain built to develop the next generation financial services ecosystem, or Finance 2.0. These new and improved products -- Liquid Token (LQT), World Book, Quick Exchange (QEX) and Liquid Chain -- are open for all to use and reflect large evolutionary steps in the digital asset industry.
The blockchain industry has evolved into something better
There's been an evolution in the regulation of the blockchain industry and in the underlying technology. While this has sometimes imposed changes and delays on the road to realizing Liquid's vision, the result is a more robust, secure, and long-lasting platform that protects users and investors, which fully complies with laws in the jurisdictions in which we operate.
Liquid is currently pursuing a Type 1 Securities license under new regulations in Japan, as well as a Major Payment Institution license for digital payment token services in Singapore.
Best of all worlds
Liquid has been working on a blockchain-based platform for finance that represented the "best of all worlds". Our team has analyzed the pros and cons of existing networks, including everything from Bitcoin and Ethereum to other layer-1 solutions, and set about solving their inefficiencies in cost, speed, flexibility, governance, and scalability.
We designed a system that is open for any developers to build on. Best of all, many of its components are modular -- meaning they can be swapped out and replaced as better technologies emerge, without altering the fundamental rules these applications follow. Once launched, a blockchain and its development ecosystem should be sustainable, and Liquid's platform is built to last well into the future.
Here's a brief rundown of what Liquid will soon offer. Customers can find more detailed descriptions in our blog post. Liquid is actively seeking partners to join the blockchain network and invite anyone interested to get in touch with the Liquid team at bizdev@liquid.com.
"We are excited to launch Liquid Chain and rebrand QASH to Liquid Token, which will allow truly robust institutional grade financial services built on top of blockchain technology." - Mike Kayamori, Co-founder and CEO of Liquid.com
The LQT asset, Quick Exchange , and World Book liquidity
Three years ago, Liquid.com introduced the Liquid World Book and the QASH token. World Book sources and aggregates liquidity from company's own exchange and products, as well as externally. QASH was launched as a utility token to power products and services on the Liquid platform.
Both these concepts have been expanded upon and improved. QASH will be rebranding and migrating to "Liquid Token", or LQT. Built to be a decentralized and independent asset while still serving as Liquid's native token for transaction settlement, network usage and rewards, LQT will become open-source and will run on its own native blockchain. In time, it will be decoupled from Liquid altogether, and governance and future project development will be decided by LQT holders.
Liquid.com has launched a new B2B service called Quick Exchange, or QEX. QEX is powered by World Book liquidity, which any Liquid-vetted partner can tap into. QEX B2B aims to provide liquidity to a B2B widget to allow partners to swap between digital assets, as well as have access to fiat gateways for debit/credit card purchases.
Liquid Chain: Introducing an institutional-grade blockchain for Finance 2.0
Liquid Chain, or previously named "Liquid Distributed Ledger" is an all new blockchain built and designed to be efficient, secure, scalable, and most importantly, easily upgradeable as technology evolves over time.
Liquid Chain has two special features: a unique virtual state machine (or smart contract execution unit) that can be programmed by more familiar coding language makes it perfect for not only running decentralized applications but also centralized applications; and a consensus engine that can be upgraded easily as technology evolves overtime.
Liquid built the state machine to be high-performing, with far lower execution latency (~200 milliseconds) than other blockchain based platforms. Apps are built using the WebAssembly (WASM) language, allowing anyone with knowledge of C, C++ or Rust to build applications. It is also secure, providing a sandbox to ensure apps running on the virtual machine may only change their own states, and cannot perform any exploits on the host environment.
These features overcome many of the problems with popular blockchain platforms today, such as Ethereum that faces scalability issues, high gas fees, disagreements and delays over protocol rules, and requirement to use a specialized programming language (Solidity) limiting its appeal to be used in applications that require scalability. Liquid Chain on the other hand has been designed to solve all of these problems.
Liquid Chain currently uses the Tendermint BFT (Byzantine Fault Tolerance) consensus mechanism based on proof-of-stake (PoS) validators. However Liquid Chain's modular design means this can be swapped out at some future point without changing the way the platform operates.
With Liquid, blockchain can finally deliver on its promises
With Liquid Chain, LQT, QEX and World Book, Liquid is providing a complete platform and network for all developers and their users. It's built with sound expertise in both the financial and blockchain industries, and is designed to serve all users' needs well into the future.
