The driving mission of Wecan Group is to improve the handling of data, given the ever-increasing amount of sensitive data being generated every second by users across the world. The company believes that “tokenization” of large amounts of information on the blockchain can solve common issues with data completeness, redundancies, and security.
Wecan works towards this goal by offering a product suite with Wecan Comply and Wecan Connect. Wecan Comply provides a secure framework for the storage and transfers of data between parties, increasing efficiency at least partially through automation. Wecan Connect is a system for blockchain-enabled instant messaging. The company has partnered with banks and private wealth managers to apply these products to financial record-keeping and transactions, and it envisions other uses in business like onboarding employees and streamlining supply chain operations.
Behind these offerings is a multilayered zero knowledge proof architecture that includes a Wecan-specific blockchain, a private network, and Ethereum as the base network. As such, Wecan’s native utility token is an Ethereum-based token called WECAN—used to pay anchoring fees generated by use of the platform.
How was Wecan developed?
Wecan Group is based in Geneva, Switzerland. Its Board comprises three men: Vincent Pignon, Dominique Goy, and Nicolas Dondolini. Vincent Pignon is the founder and CEO of the company. He earned a PhD in economics before founding Wecan in 2015. Dominique Goy has made a career as an investment advisor for JP Morgan and Lombard Odier and, in addition to his role at Wecan, serves as chairman of a Swiss-based investment firm and sits on the Board of a crowdlending company he founded. Nicolas Dondolini is also a career investment advisor.
In 2019, Wecan facilitated its first transaction worth 11 million euros issued through digital tokens on its platform, which was put towards a real estate deal in Lisbon, Portugal. Two years later, it launched what would become its current major product: Wecan Comply. Within the first year of running Wecan Comply, the company had brought together 13 banks and 80 wealth managers using its platform such as Pictet, Lombard Odier, Edmond de Rothschild and Julius Baer through a non-profit governance called the Blockchain Association for Finance, guaranteeing among others independent security audits of its solutions. In 2022, Wecan officially launched its blockchain and the WECAN token. With this change and the continued growth of the company, more than 855 clients were using Wecan’s platform.
Since its founding, Wecan has garnered financial support through multiple sources. Major funding rounds between 2017 and 2022 raised more than 7 million Swiss francs. Some of this investment came from hospitality and luxury brand entrepreneur Michel Reybier, who has described himself as “not only an investor … but a partner” of Wecan.
How does Wecan work?
Wecan has built a blockchain infrastructure that supports a product suite with Wecan Comply and Wecan Connect.
Wecan Comply and Wecan Connect
In a world of big data, the ultimate control in data management theoretically relies on what is called a “golden copy.” This is a single version of desired data that can be referenced and considered the truth, no matter how many versions or copies of that information exist across the web. Wecan Comply is a solution to provide this golden copy in the Web3 ecosystem. It leverages the blockchain’s ability to timestamp data to maintain an immutable record of accurate information.
Meanwhile, Wecan Connect has been described as “the WhatsApp for private clients.” It is a secure messaging service for businesses and financial actors to communicate securely internally and with their clients externally.
Multilayer architecture
There are four main layers to Wecan’s architecture, including an app, its own blockchain, and two other blockchain technologies. The design of this step-wise system is to tokenize and communicate data efficiently but also take advantage of the security of existing solutions using methods such as end-to-end encryption.
- Wecan App: This is how clients interact with Wecan’s products. Data originates in the app before it gets pushed into the blockchain portions of the system.
- Wecan Chain: Data is communicated by the app as a “hash” (a form of converted data that uses a string of letters and numbers) to the Wecan Chain, which then generates a transaction ID. Transactions are paid for in the WECAN token.
- 3Achain: The hashed data is then communicated to 3Achain, which acts as a layer 2 blockchain in the system and offers a public record block explorer. 3Achain is a Swiss-based blockchain that uses a Proof of Authority (PoA) consensus mechanism, and Wecan operates a node on its network.
- Ethereum: Finally, transactions are recorded to Ethereum, which acts as a base layer for Wecan and allows it to issue WECAN as an interoperable ERC-20 token.
How is the WECAN token used?
WECAN is an Ethereum-based ERC-20 token that allows clients to anchor transactions associated with activity (primarily the acquisition and communication of data) on Wecan’s blockchain. A small portion of WECAN is also burned with each transaction.
Token distribution
Of the 19 billion total WECAN tokens total supply, 28% will be allocated for the Ecosystem Development, 20% for the Wecan Team, 20% for the Bonus, 20% for Presales and the Initial Exchange Offering (IEO), 5% for Partnerships, 4% for the distribution to Decentralized Exchanges, and 3% for Market Making. The initial price of each WECAN token was set at CHF 0.001 by the company.
Conclusion
- Based in Switzerland, Wecan uses a multilayered blockchain architecture to offer data management services to banks and other clients.
- The company’s suite of products includes a system for managing, requesting, and communicating data (Wecan Comply) and a secure instant messaging service (Wecan Connect).
- The WECAN token is used by clients to anchor transactions on the blockchain.