There were some changes and concerns I have towards the World Asset Exchange (WAX) block chain since my WAX overview post. As a result of a large increase of users, they have made a few different changes to the block chain. I still think WAX is a great block chain and it is trying to adapt to the large amount of new users but I think people should be aware of these issues. In fact there was a post earlier today where I found out that WAX had become the most used Dapp yesterday.
Changes to WAX
There are two main things that have changed since my post: CPU fluctuations and Captchas. I think the primary reason why is because of Alien Worlds and how its popularity exploded after the TLM Bridge with Binance started. Also the recent NFT crazes from collections such as Topps MLB and Captom's Street Fighters collection have added more fuel on the people creating accounts over at WAX.
CPU
I think this is probably the biggest reason why people are finding the network unstable. If you did not understand, WAX is able to change the amount of CPU you get per staked WAX. So you can take a look above and see what my staked CPU was 2 weeks ago before the network started being so congested. As you can see, I have 377.64 ms for my 8.18 WAX staked WAX which translates to 46.16 ms per WAX staked 2 weeks ago.
Now you can see my current CPU based on relatively the same amount of staked CPU. It has went up by a small amount since I have claimed some of my voting rewards after setting a proxy. So given the math, I get about 9.507 ms per WAX staked today. This means we now require about 4.85 times more WAX to do the same amount of actions 2 weeks ago. All of the resource data I found was found on bloks.io and I understand that the number fluctuates quite a bit so it maybe the rate is better or worst than what I have here.
Captchas
Nobody really likes captchas and now every action to the network requires a captcha. It may become a necessary evil though to ensure things work properly in the meantime. It was created to fight against the bots that are using the network and has ensured that they can handle the stress for all the users. Only the login screens where they verify your usernames do not. I have heard that using a Desktop WAX Wallet like anchor can help you avoid the issues but I already have most things staked directly to my cloud Wallet Account. So I don't want to change it.
Another issue that I tend to get after doing like 30 transactions in a relatively small amount of time is the automated queries error. It generally resolves itself if I let it go idle for 1 hour but it means I can't do anything with the network in the meantime. This doesn't seem to change even if I were to stake more WAX so it might have to be my ISP instead.
Conclusion
These issues have put huge stress on the WAX block chain as they struggle to deal with the amount of new users. Now I wonder whether or not HIVE can handle a large influx of new users?
Will these new users have similar issues as WAX when it comes to HP (for resource credits) similar to how CPU is required for WAX. Will captchas be implemented to filter out bots? I think it is best to figure out possible solutions before they become an issue.
Please feel free to leave a comment if you read my post. If you have any questions, feel free to ask and I will do my best to answer.