Band Protocol April 2020 Community Update
Successful Testnet#2 launch, Cosmos Hackathon, Wallet & Validator Partnerships, KyberSwap Listing
Dear Band Community,
This is a long one.
To begin the second quarter of the year, we continue to be ahead of our original roadmap with the mainnet launch of BandChain coming up very soon. We launch our successful testnet #2 with 17 industry-leading genesis validators, first wallet and decentralized exchange partnership, and a partnership with Vietnam’s top blockchain project.
Last month the Band Protocol team transitioned into a remote work environment, consistently delivering progress on technical, business and community development fronts.
We are grateful to not be impacted by COVID-19 and our heart goes out to everyone during this unprecedented time. We have continued to keep our heads down to ignore the noise and do what we do best — focus on great technology and keep building.
Tech Updates
Successful Wenchang Testnet #2 Launch
With our partnered industry-leading validators committed to supporting BandChain’s mainnet launch, we are proud to say that over 800,000 blocks have been mined already in testnet #2 with zero downtime. We already have a headcount of 30+ validators who will help conduct further extensive stress tests on BandChain to ensure that mainnet launches with the highest degree of security and decentralization.
If all continues to go well in testnet #2, the next step is to gear up for the mainnet launch. We will announce the precise date in our official channel.
Join BandChain as a Validator
We have shared a guide on joining us on Wenchang Testnet #2. Unite with the other Band Jedi and help us build out the BAND ecosystem, we are only getting started at reshaping the oracle space and will need your help to grow our decentralized community.
Santiment Ranks Band Protocol #4 In Development Activity
Santiment, a cryptocurrency data feed for investors similar to a Bloomberg of the blockchain space, has ranked Band Protocol #4 among all ERC-20 projects in March. Be sure to check out their announcement and stay tuned for April’s development statistics of Band Protocol.
Phase 1: Oracle Functionality Development Update
While Phase 0 is being security-tested, we are also putting a final touch for our phase 1. To recap, the Phase 1 upgrade covers large-scale improvements including flexible data queries through oracle scripts in WebAssembly-supported languages, support for multiple blockchains, and a catalog of built-in oracle scripts readily-available to be integrated into any decentralized application.
In April, the Band Protocol engineering team has pushed over 1000 commits on Band’s Github repository spanning across an array of areas including the core BandChain, block explorer, smart contract bridging layer and our own domain-specific language for oracle scripts in Oracle WebAssembly (Owasm). From the beginning, our developments have been open-source so you can always check on our technical updates and progress.
BandChain
The IBC branch of the Cosmos-SDK has been merged to the master branch and we are now in the process of testing integration after quickly patching it for BandChain. Currently, we have been refactoring the codebase for a more robust testing framework and are aiming for 100% test coverage in the oracle module prior to the launch to ensure that BandChain is a secure and safe as possible from release.
Bridge Contracts
The Ethereum EVM bridge has been patched to the most up-to-date Cosmos store architecture. A few minor changes need to be made as the module architect has been changed with the recent IBC merge. Curious developers can check out our progress here:
Once the reference bridge written in Solidity is finalized, we will proceed to translate the bridge code into different blockchain architecture and languages to support all major layer-1 networks, enabling cross-chain compatibility for Band Protocol oracles.
Oracle WebAssembly
While developers will have full end-to-end customizability to create their own fine-tuned oracle scripts, the Phase 1 mainnet will also have built-in oracle scripts for easy integration. These scripts cover crypto price & volume, traditional stock prices, random number generation, flight verification, weather information, Ethereum gas cost, Bitcoin block hash, and more!
We have written a number of reference implementations to connect to the most reliable and reputable data sources and APIs such as CoinGecko, CryptoCompare, Binance, Alphavantage, OpenSky API, and more! Feel free to reach out to us with any specific requests!
BandChain Block Explorer
Transparency and visibility are core values in the blockchain ecosystem — for that reason, we have been actively developing the block explorer with real-time updates and hardware wallet integration. The explorer is written purely in ReasonML, an open-source function language with type safety developed by Facebook.
A pre-release version of the block explorer is available for our Cross-Chain Hackathon participants to hack on which supports complete IBC and oracle functionality, here’s a sneak peek of it and an upcoming project:
Partnership Developments
All hands are on deck for our second mainnet launch, we have announced partnerships with KyberSwap for $BAND listing, KardiaChain to power enterprise and government applications with Band Protocol oracle, nine more industry-leading validators and Atomic Wallet, world’s leading wallet integration with over 300k users able to store, stake and buy BAND tokens with credit card.
We’re excited to share our growing support and partner network with our community, here’s some quick highlights below.
KyberSwap Listing
One of the leading decentralized exchanges with $196M trading volume in March alone, KyberSwap, has listed the BAND token. This will enable a frictionless and more efficient data request process for decentralized applications looking to integrate Band Protocol — BAND can be used simultaneously to pay and call decentralized oracles on BandChain in a single atomic transaction. For our token holder community, BAND will benefit from increased liquidity derived from exposure on the KyberSwap platform and any of their 88 integrated DApps. In fact, during the first week of listing, we consistently rank top 10 in terms of trading volume, totalling over $630,000 weekly trading volume.
Atomic Wallet
One of the most popular cryptocurrency wallets, Atomic Wallet, that has 300K users and over $20M total value staked will integrate full support of the BAND token on both desktop and mobile wallets.
Atomic Wallet is non-custodial and completely anonymous, there is no registration process and all sensitive information including private keys are stored on the user’s device. Here is what the Band Protocol community will be able to do on Atomic Wallet, completely free of fees:
- Store BAND tokens alongside other top crypto assets on the market
- Stake and delegate BAND tokens to BandChain’s validators
- Swap BAND tokens for other crypto assets
- Buy BAND tokens with USD/EUR/Fiat via credit card gateway
KardiaChain Partnership
Band Protocol will be integrated into KardiaChain, a layer-1 blockchain network that is working with major service providers, governments and enterprises like Geleximco, a conglomerate with over $2.2B in assets, the top telecommunications company in Vietnam with over 60 million customers to develop a mobile gateway and ON Sports, a betting DApp with over 200,000 users.
Band Protocol will provide highly secure and robust oracles for the Vietnamese Dong and various crypto assets that will be supported on the mobile payment infrastructure platform while real-world and sport events data oracles will be used by ON Sports. Additionally, for private enterprise solutions, such as the ones by Geleximco, Kardiachain will use Band Protocol to bridge all external data sources including enterprise, pricing, and identity data in a secure manner.
Validators
From the beginning of March, we have been pushing to onboard the top validator nodes from all the leading blockchain networks in the space — these are infrastructure providers who have an undisputed track record and extensive experience working with institutional-level clients who require a highly secure staking service.
All of our partnered validators will be strategically supporting Band Protocol to drive the connection of smart contracts to external data for any decentralized application and also support staking for BAND upon the mainnet launch of BandChain.
- Chorus One — $16M+ total value staked, supports Cosmos, Terra, and Loom.
- StakeWithUs — backed by the Singaporean government and founders of Cosmos Singapore.
- B-Harvest — top Korean validator supporting Cosmos, Polkadot, and Terra where they built the most widely used oracle script.
- Infstones — Poloniex Exchange & Circle’s official staking provider, over $200M value staked across 30+ blockchain networks.
- Forbole — award-winning Hong Kong validator on Cosmos, founders of Desmos.
- Figment Networks — top Canadian blockchain infrastructure company, over 128M tokens staked across 14+ blockchain networks.
- WeStaking — 8th ranked validator on Cosmos for unique delegators, support for Cosmos, Terra, Kava, and various Tendermint-based platforms.
- Castlenode — backed by Starchain Capital (investors in Coinbase, Maker, and Cosmos), over $4.5M in total value staked.
- Hashquark — one of Asia’s largest staking services, part of HashKey Group the strategic partner of WanXiang Blockchain Labs & WanXiang Holdings.
Community Outreach
With all major conferences and hackathons canceled, the Band Protocol team has doubled down on virtual events to ensure our promise of ramping up community efforts is met. We will continue to drive these efforts, be sure to let us know what events you’d like us to be involved in!
Cosmos Publishes Guide On How To Build DeFi Using Band Protocol
Decentralized finance has explored from a niche market to a full-blown industry that crossed over $1 billion dollars earlier this year. Nevertheless, global liquidity and development activity is still limited to Ethereum to date.
Cosmos alongside Band Protocol has published a step-by-step walkthrough guide on building a DeFi application that utilizes the most recent releases of BandChain and IBC. This is the starting point for any developers to build a cross-chain compatible DeFi application with secure price oracles provided by Band Protocol’s blockchain agnostic solution.
LunarCRUSH Ranks Band Protocol #1
Band Protocol has hit #1 Altrank on LunarCRUSH, a platform analyzing how social media impacts Bitcoin and altcoin movements — the index combines social activity, price performance, and trading volume across all cryptocurrencies. Thank you to our ever growing number of community members who support us on Telegram, Twitter and beyond.
Stakefish, Figment Networks & Chorus AMA
Band Protocol hosted an AMA with the stakefish team where we bought in Jun, Head of Strategy at stakefish, to answer any questions from our community about the validator partnership.
Soravis & Sorawit from the Band Protocol team also participated in AMAs on the Figment Networks and Chorus One Telegram channels where they introduced Band Protocol, what staking support from the validators will mean for their communities and how the oracle space is shaping up amongst the recent chaos.
Additionally, Soravis spoke on a podcast with the Chorus One team to discuss our position in the Cosmos-SDK space and the recent events of #BlackThursday.
KyberSwap Trading Competition & In-Depth Band Protocol Spotlight
To celebrate the BAND listing on KyberSwap, both teams came together to host a trading competition that offered $6,000 in prizes to the top 53 traders of BAND on KyberSwap and 10 lucky winners on Twitter.
The competition was a success with over 2977.5 ETH or $630,000 USD in trading volume and over 4000 participants on the Twitter campaign on both KyberSwap and Band Protocol posts.
KyberSwap has also published a full-feature spotlight on Band Protocol that covers the upcoming launch of BandChain, how Band Protocol is unique, and the use-cases unlocked with our new solution. Check it out here:
What Will May Look Like?
Our engineers will spend more time on penetration and security testing BandChain, ensuring that no rock is left unturned and the highest security standard possible for launch. More technical documentation and staking details will be released alongside supporting tools to connect smart contracts to real-world data through BandChain.
Meanwhile, we will also continue to onboard more ecosystem partners including reputable validators, wallets, and exchanges to support the BandChain mainnet launch and strengthen the network from day one of launch.
Although phase 0 still contains only limited functionality, our phase 1 development is already being tested and moving toward production at the same time. We purposefully separate them into two stages to ensure that our transition is as smooth as possible. Changing engine mid-air is not easy. Once phase 0 is launched successfully, phase 1 will come right after to ensure that our full oracle functionality can be used by our partners. In the meantime, our testnet integration continues at full speed.
We’re extremely excited for May and June as we continue on the path to becoming the decentralized cross-chain compatible oracle solution for any decentralized applications to query real-time external data and API.
Towards smart contract 3.0 era. Onwards!
About Band Protocol
Band Protocol is a cross-chain data oracle platform that aggregates and connects real-world data and APIs to smart contracts. Blockchains are great at immutable storage and deterministic, verifiable computations — however, they cannot securely access data available outside the blockchain networks. Band Protocol enables smart contract applications such as DeFi, prediction markets, and games to be built on-chain without relying on the single point of failure of a centralized oracle. Band Protocol is backed by a strong network of stakeholders including Sequoia Capital, one of the top venture capital firms in the world, and the leading cryptocurrency exchange, Binance.
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