Understanding the WAX Ecosystem
Tags: wax, blockchain, tutorial
Published: 2023-07-20 03:32:27


## Introduction
 
In this section, we will go over the WAX Blockchain, what an NFT is, and how a Smart Contract works. By the end of this article, you’ll have a good understanding to start building Smart Contracts with.

## The WAX Blockchain

At a high level, WAX is:

1. a purpose built blockchain - designed to make e-commerce transactions faster, easier, and safer for everyone.
2. a protocol token - WAX has digital tokens that are governed by a coded protocol.

WAX is based on the [EOSIO blockchain](https://eos.io/), meaning that we get to leverage a lot of the existing documentation and infrastructure that has been built for Smart Contracts based on EOSIO.

While cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are proof of work - requiring tons of compute power to solve computational tasks -, WAX is Proof of Stake. If a wallet has 1 percent of available coins, that wallet should only be able to mine 1 percent of blocks if the entire 1 percent of coins is staked.

WAX also makes building and deploying dApps – decentralized apps – easy. There are tons of resources, sample code, and guides to show you how to build smart contracts and deploy them to the WAX blockchain.

Throughout this class, we will be focusing on how to build, deploy, and test smart contracts for WAX, and how to interact with these contracts via command line, web, and server interfaces.

## NFTs on WAX

An NFT, or non-fungible token, is a unique digital asset that is stored on a blockchain. Unlike fungible tokens such as cryptocurrencies, which are interchangeable and have the same value, each NFT is unique and has its own distinct value.

NFTs are becoming increasingly popular for a wide range of applications, including digital art, gaming items, and collectibles.

On the WAX blockchain, there are multiple ways to mint NFTs. We will go over two main ways: a completely custom NFT, and leveraging existing Smart Contracts and ecosystems with AtomicAssets. The AtomicAssets contract will provide all the building blocks we need to create NFTs that can be used and interacted with on multiple ecosystems built on WAX.

## Smart Contracts on WAX

Smart Contracts are programs stored on a blockchain. Accounts can call actions on the Smart Contract, then the transaction and results are stored on the blockchain. You can think of it as terms of agreement between buyer and seller being directly written into lines of code.

Smart Contracts are designed to be trustless, meaning that they can execute without the need for intermediaries such as banks or lawyers. They are becoming increasingly popular for a wide range of applications, including financial services, supply chain management, and more.

In WAX, a Smart Contract includes a collection of actions and some persistent storage. An action get initialized and signed, the message is pushed the WAX network, and then the action gets added to a block.

## Up Next

Now that we know some baseline information about WAX, NFTs, and Smart Contracts, in the next section we will set up our local development environment to start creating our own Smart Contracts.

[Setting Up a Local WAX Development Environment ->>](https://dev.to/idmontie/setting-up-a-local-wax-development-environment-1cik)

## E-book

Get this entire WAX tutorial as an [e-book on Amazon](https://amzn.to/3ZjwaK7).

## Additional links

* Photo by [Sajad Nori](https://unsplash.com/es/@sajadnori?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText) on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/photos/21mJd5NUGZU?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText)
* [Why WAX choosing to build on EOS.IO isn’t a bad thing](https://medium.com/eos-new-york/why-wax-choosing-to-build-their-own-blockchain-based-on-eos-io-isnt-a-bad-thing-de90e84d0045)
* [The official WAX website](https://www.wax.io/)