Bancor ❤ Uniswap

Yesterday, I was amused to read a CoinDesk article by Brady Dale about Uniswap and Bancor, making an analogy to two famous biblical characters, of different weight classes, who are specifically known for their epic battle to the death.

Gulp.

Luckily, nothing could be further from the truth. Bancor’s website clearly states:

“The Foundation’s mission is to champion the Bancor Protocol as a standard for value creation and transfer.”

Last I checked, Uniswap uses Bancor Protocol extensively (with its Ethereum-specific iteration, based on the mechanics we invented in 2016), and they are not alone. Numerous projects have chosen to integrate the Bancor Protocol into their solutions, from EOS to Enjin to TRXMarket and Bonding Curves — just to name a few.

We see all of this progress as a great thing, attracting more attention to the drawbacks of the classic bid/ask model, and leading to more research on the implications of automated liquidity and pool-based conversion networks. Blockchain isn’t about building “moats”, as the CoinDesk article suggests. For us, it’s about building bridges, rather than barriers. The structural distinction of decentralized technologies allows for open-source innovation, empowering new entrants into the space.

We created the Bancor Protocol to suggest a standard for token conversion that would allow small, niche and new entrepreneurs like Uniswap to build blockchain solutions with lower barriers to entry. And we’re glad they did, because they’ve attracted much-needed liquidity to the network and are building tools to help users understand these nuanced mechanics.

The CoinDesk article seems to miss that the beauty of truly open finance is its interoperability. For instance, Bancor can integrate Uniswap’s DAI liquidity into its network, and Uniswap can integrate BNT to achieve cross-chain conversions. This is exactly what our space is about — inspiration, iteration, collaboration, and the courage to break age-old paradigms and try new things.

As for “David and Goliath” — well, it seems that they both have much bigger fish to fry, like centralized exchanges, market manipulation and the deeply entrenched monopolies in finance. We couldn’t be more excited to fight for the same cause. You in? Because the real Goliath won’t be nearly as easy to “crush” with unicorn memes…and they have way more resources than our entire industry, combined.