Band Protocol August 2020 Community Update
Dear Band Community
During the month of August, we have showcased work from all three technical, business and community fronts in an effort to ramp up the global expansion and adoption of Band Protocol.
We are at the stage where we are ready to support smart contract applications in the production environment and have already begun migrating existing partners while also working on GuanYu Testnet #3 and an upcoming test migration from Wenchang with all our participating validators.
Looking back, we are thrilled at the monumental progress made on all fronts and have summarised everything for you to catch up to speed below!
Tech Updates
The BandChain Wenchang Mainnet has been live and stable for almost 3 months with 67 active validator nodes bonding over 84.7M BAND tokens! This means our engineering efforts have continued to spearhead towards the official launch of BandChain GuanYu on the Mainnet which will bring full oracle functionality to partners, developers and decentralized applications in the production environment. We have also continued to work closely with our partners to migrate oracle scripts from the testnet to BandChain Proof-of-Authority Mainnet, ensuring that the data feeds have the highest security guarantee and optimizations for gas costs.
Our developments are open-source, find out more in our Github:
https://github.com/bandprotocol/bandchain
BandChain: Proof-of-Authority & GuanYu Testnet #2
On August 14 2020, we announced the launch of our GuanYu Proof-of-Authority Mainnet, along with the results of our code audit by one of the most reputable security firms, Least Authority, and a new bug bounty program.
No critical security issues have been identified by both Least Authority and Band Protocol teams who are working closely to understand the BandChain specification of the oracle module and its dependency libraries to verify that the implementation indeed follows the specification without issues.
There are a number of non-critical suggestions on how to improve BandChain, some of which will be incorporated into the upcoming GuanYu release while others will need further research.
The new public bug bounty program for BandChain Software and Oracle Scripts on PoA Mainnet was also released. Rewards will be decided on a case-by-case basis and impacted by two factors, likelihood and severity. Check out the official announcement for more details on how to submit a report
The Proof-of-Authority network has been operating in a stable manner, processing almost 100,000 oracle requests on-chain. This comes alongside Guan Yu Testnet #2 which is currently still in testing phase and pending an upgrade of yoda that will support more than 500 concurrent requests.
A strong priority for the engineering team has been to test and strengthen validator node operations including yoda to ensure that validators will not miss a single report on GuanYu Testnet #2. We have modified the node to ensure that every report can be processed on-time, even through congested networks. In addition, we have improved yoda by combining multiple reports into one transaction, reducing overhead costs and significantly increasing the throughput of the network.
Oracle Script Update
The runtime of BandChain oracle script and data sources have been upgraded to support a wider range of utility libraries including websocket-client to get data from websocket-based sources. We have also started to work on a new reference standard for querying data from Band Protocol’s oracle, this will allow users to query multiple token prices, foreign exchange rates, and other data with only one request to BandChain.
CosmoScan Update
CosmoScan has been redesigned and revamped based on multiple rounds of user and internal feedback. The new design is fully supported on mobile for GuanYU with the addition of a helper tooltip to explain the meaning for each field.
Partnership Developments
During the course of August, we have had the opportunity to showcase some of our major developments on the business and technical fronts. This includes six exchange listings from major exchanges around the world and eight strategic partnerships with leading projects who will be utilizing Band Protocol’s oracle technology.
Coinbase Pro & Coinbase Listing
Band Protocol ($BAND) was listed on Coinbase Pro, the leading licensed US-based digital asset trading platform, and began trading on Tuesday, August 11.
This is a key milestone for our global market expansion, allowing US and Coinbase users to buy, sell, convert, send, receive, or store BAND.
Huobi Global Listing
Band Protocol ($BAND) was listed on HuobiGlobal, a world leading digital asset exchange, and began trading on 11:00, August 10, 2020 (GMT+8).
Huobi Global users will be able to buy, sell, convert, send, receive, or store BAND native tokens. BAND native tokens are supported with BAND/USDT, BAND/BTC and BAND/ETH trading pairs available.
Binance.US Lists Band Protocol
Band Protocol ($BAND) is listed on Binance.US, one of the leading digital currency exchanges licensed in the United State, and began trading on Friday, August 28, 6:00 AM Pacific Time (PST).
Coinone Listing
Band Protocol ($BAND) was listed on @CoinoneOfficial, one of South Korea’s major digital asset exchanges, and began trading on Wednesday, August 19, 12:00 PM Korean Standard Time.
Coinone users will be able to convert, send, receive, store, buy, or sell BAND against the Korean Won.
Only the ERC-20 version will be supported at launch. Please do not deposit the Band Native token. We will be working towards future support for native Band token and will inform our community once the support is live.
Bitkub Listing
Band Protocol has been listed on Bitkub, one of the top licensed digital asset exchange in Thailand! Our Thai community can now directly buy, sell, or convert $BAND against $THB.
This brought Band Protocol into the vision of millions of people who had the opportunity to learn how we are creating a decentralized oracle network for the future of decentralized finance and smart contract applications while earning rewards.
Binance Smart Chain Partnership
Binance Smart Chain, a new scalable EVM-compatible blockchain built by the number one digital asset exchange Binance, has completed integration with Band Protocol to power a truly scalable decentralized application ecosystem. Developers will be able to leverage customizable decentralized oracle technology provided by $BAND.
There are 12 price pairs currently available to be read from the BandChain bridge contract on Binance Smart Chain covering cryptoassets which update every 5 minutes, foreign exchange and commodities which update every 60 minutes.
Band Protocol has also been officially added into the Binance Chain Developer Documentation, allowing developers to create and utilize custom data oracle scripts that secure and power decentralized applications. Check out Binance Smart Chain’s announcement which includes a developer guide to build a synthetic asset platform leverage Band Protocol’s oracles:
With complete access to Band Protocol’s tools that reliably connect smart contracts to any external real-world data source, developers are equipped to build truly scalable products ranging from DeFi, programmable payments, betting games, VRF applications, prediction markets and more!
Swipe Partnership & SwipeFi Integration
SwipeWallet $SXP, a leading digital asset wallet and VISA platform backed by Binance, has listed BAND and chosen Band Protocol to provide scalable oracle technology for the launch of SwipeFi — a decentralized lending protocol on Binance Smart Chain. This brings the BAND token globally to 60+ million merchants who accept VISA.
Band Protocol has also been working closely with Swipe to design and integrate a highly secure custom price oracle for SXP/USD to diversify existing oracle dependencies such as update time and costs that ensures the highest degree of trust and transparency in the token conversion process.
SwipeFi developers are using Band Protocol to create custom decentralized oracles that will be integrated upon their launch on Binance Smart Chain providing reliable and real-time price feeds for all collateral assets including $BTC, $ETH, $BNB, $SXP, $BUSD, $TUSD and more.
Nervos Partnership
China’s leading blockchain network, Nervos Network, strategically partners and integrates with Band Protocol to bring extensive data support and scalability for their rapidly growing DApp ecosystem through $BAND decentralized oracles.
To ensure the success of Nervos’ integration with Band Protocol, both engineering teams have clearly defined a working integration plan with key milestones across two phases to be showcased to the public in the upcoming weeks.
$BAND oracles will bring real-world data on-chain in a manner that matches Nervos design principles: security, decentralization, efficiency, and flexibility.
Elrond Network Partnership
Elrond Network, a leading blockchain platform focused on scalability, has chosen to integrate $BAND oracles to bring significant improvements to the existing data availability and scalability in their rapidly growing application ecosystem. This will bring the ability for Elrond developers will be able to create end-to-end customizable and flexible decentralized data oracles that can connect external data and APIs into Elrond blockchain with low cost and latency.
Both teams have been working closely to complete the BandChain bridge implementation with the end-goal of providing all Elrond decentralized applications highly reliable and secure customizable oracles that exhaustively cover all developer needs.
dForce Partnership
dForce, the DeFi super-network built on top of Ethereum, backed by Multicoin Capital & Huobi, has strategically partnered and integrated $BAND decentralized oracles starting with securing their digital gold token $GOLDx.
Starting with $GOLDx, this is only the first of many upcoming integrations of $BAND oracles on the dForce ‘super-network’ of DeFi protocols covering an array of open financial products. dForce has created a custom oracle on #BandChain to query the PAXG/USD price feed once every 2 minutes or upon every 0.1% price deviation.
Future iterations of the oracle script are already in progress and will include more data sources as well as optimization to maximize the degree of security, speed, and cost.
Both projects are teaming up to build a ‘super-app’ like the WeChat ecosystem but for DeFi protocols to drive further adoption of #DeFi. This includes decentralizing lending, synthetic assets and more!
FutureICX Partnership
FutureICX, a multi-grant winning decentralized prediction market built on ICON Network, are integrating $BAND oracles on the BandChain Proof-of-Authority Mainnet for scalable decentralized price feeds for all current and future markets.
FutureICX is a trading-related prediction market where the players can place a wager on what a certain crypto asset pair’s price would be at a pre-determined future moment of time. This provides a decentralized and equally fair environment for traders to make returns without having to outplay the institutional investors.
FutureICX has created a custom oracle script on BandChain to query the ICX/USD price feed which has been customized to update once every 5 minutes or upon a 1% price deviation. The data is being aggregated from five trusted sources: CryptoCompare, CoinGecko, Binance, OKEx, HitBTC.
Ubik Capital Partnership
Band Protocol has strategically partnered with leading ICON Network P-Rep and award-winning DApp developers Ubik Capital who have over 14.5+ million $ICX staked to them from 3800 unique delegators.
Ubik Capital has been providing enterprise-grade validator infrastructure for BandChain and will assist in driving the adoption of BandChain oracles across the ICON DApp ecosystem as well as community events such as meetups or developer workshops.
Stacktical (DSLA Protocol) Partnership
Stacktical (DSLA Protocol), the leading decentralized service-level-agreement (DSLA) protocol, integrates Band Protocol to bridge external service analytics data on-chain for smart contracts.
BAND oracles will be securing the status and resolution protocol for all DSLA agreements.
DSLA Protocol creates a decentralized marketplace of peer-to-peer SLA contracts for anyone to freely buy and sell protective insurance against validator service delays and disruptions.
Community Outreach
During August, while most efforts have been focused on driving usage and adoption — we have not forgotten about community efforts. We have been working alongside Binance to support a world-class hackathon and accelerator program over the span of 3 months and also released a developer guide on how Band oracles can be integrated into the user interface of any decentralized application.
Band Protocol Joins Binance’s Build for Bharat
Band Protocol will be joining forces with Binance’s Build for Bharat, a 3-month hackathon and accelerator program designed to bring blockchain to mass adoption!
We’ll be working with fellow collaborators Google Cloud, Matic Network, Marlin Protocol and Ankr.
Developer Guide to Integrate Band Oracles Into UI
We are proud to have released a guide to use BAND oracle in application’s user interfaces for getting reliable crypto prices, foreign exchange rates, and any data supported by $BAND flexible oracle scripts.
Any developer can use $BAND oracle data in their frontend applications. Data such as crypto prices can be consumed through #BandChain nodes via javascript library.
This solution presents a significant improvement in terms of security, reliability, and decentralization over centralized counterparts. We’re looking forward to having developers adopt this tool and make sure their dApps stay robust and trustless for the end-users.
Looking Into September
Stay tuned for a busy month in September where we will focus on bringing partners and decentralized applications that are secured by Band Protocol into the production environment as well as gear up for the public migration from Wenchang to Guan Yu!
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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