Band Protocol February 2021 Community Update
Dear Band Community,
The second month of the year proved to be one of Band Protocol’s strongest in terms of adoption as well as growth in production crossing over 1.7M oracle requests in production and an estimated $4.5 Billion in value secured across smart contracts in the top blockchain platforms.
The BandChain Proof-of-Authority network will also be deprecated by March 2, 2021 — allowing our engineering resources to be consolidated and streamlined to improve BandChain on the fully decentralized mainnet with 72 active validators
Early February, we also had the opportunity to showcase our 2021 Vision & Roadmap which outlines our critical next steps to make Band Protocol the decentralized oracle for scalable blockchain applications, offering end-to-end flexibility and customizability for both spectrums of users — institutional data providers and oracle integrators.
By the end of 2021, developers will be able to integrate Band Protocol oracles in a fully documented, self-serviced manner. Enterprise data providers will also be able to self-sufficiently provide data to smart contracts and automatically collect fee revenue.
Tech Updates
In February, the cumulative number of oracle requests in production has reached over 1,700,000 — growing 170% from the end of January. We are delighted to continuously support existing partners as well as new teams expand oracle usage on Band Protocol across all blockchain platforms namely Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Polkadot among many others.
BandChain Proof-of-Authority Network Deprecation
The BandChain Proof-of-Authority Network will be deprecated on March 2, 2021 after seven months in production and 2.6M oracle requests — allowing engineering resources to be consolidated towards improving the Mainnet Network at an even faster pace.
Known teams building on the Band Protocol Proof-of-Authority (POA) network have been contacted and transitioned to Mainnet. The POA Mainnet will cease to send oracle requests on February 25 2021 GMT+7 and the network will be stopped on March 2 2021 GMT+7.
With BandChain Mainnet securing ~$4.5 Billion in value locked in smart contracts, operating at 100% uptime and functionality with extensive monitoring systems set in place — all PoA oracles will be transitioned to the Mainnet.
Using the Mainnet oracle that is secured by more than 72+ of Band Protocol’s validators positioned globally, and aligned through economic incentives, benefit the developers in higher degrees of decentralization and security on the main network.
Notable BandChain Update
Our oracle network on Stargate (Cosmos v0.41.2) codebase has been implemented to allow cross-chain data requests via IBC. With the completed proof-of-concept, we will be finalizing the specification and code for the public testnet. The codebase can be viewed in the repo below:
The old BandChain codebase will still be maintained for update performance and new features on the GuanYu testnet and mainnet.
A significant milestone for improving BandChain’s performance has been reached with the completed upgrade to wasmer1.0.2 and additional caching layer to reduce the time to compile code when the same oracle script is executed. This performance upgrade enables nodes to sync faster, enhancing both speed and scalability on BandChain.
Our next steps are to research and experiment to increase throughput in the next phase with faster wasm execution. Additionally, the team will begin to formulate new ideas and implementations on how to make seamless on-chain payments from a requester to data providers both on-chain and cross-chain, which will be a big improvement for developer experience on BandChain Phase 2 upon release.
Notable Standard Price Reference Update
The Band Standard Dataset now supports more price data on both Ethereum and Fantom Mainnets as well as testnets on other blockchain platforms. This has been prepared in advance for new upcoming DeFi projects working with Band Protocol to integrate a secure and decentralized cross-chain oracle. The new feeds can be visualized here:
Notable CosmoScan Update
CosmoScan has been optimized to produce faster queries, the report counts on validator page as well as have oracle script statistics such as response time load separately. This is part of a major effort to streamline the bandwidth required to load CosmoScan and loading times.
There is also an internal alert system implemented for the team in the event of slow queries on CosmoScan. There has also been development to kickstart support for IBC messages in preparation for the support of cross-chain oracle data requests using IBC.
Partnership Developments
The month of February showcased eight significant partnership developments and completed integrations with leading projects across the industry. This includes adoption from significant builders on Polkadot and expanded support for our existing partners.
CoinMarketCap Partnership
CoinMarketCap, the world’s most-referenced price-tracking website for cryptoassets, has partnered with Band Protocol to complete integration of their enterprise-grade crypto data into the Band Standard Dataset and support BandChain Phase 2 by commercializing their API through premium oracle scripts.
The partnership extends deeply into both teams working in collaboration on the launch of BandChain Phase 2 where institutional data providers, such as CoinMarketCap, will have an avenue to monetize their data and automatically collect revenue on-chain.
Mirror Protocol Partnership Update
Mirror Protocol, the rapidly growing decentralized trading and synthetic asset platform, has launched mirrored assets for $AMC and $GME! The total value secured by $BAND in Mirror smart contracts has now surpassed $451M+.
Band Protocol is currently working with Mirror Protocol to improve the degree of security and redundancy of the stock oracle script — we are onboarding four more institutional-grade data providers in the short-term who will also be supporting BandChain Phase 2. Stay tuned!
There is a proposal live on Mirror Governance to shorten the time required for new asset support to be completely rolled out. This will position Mirror to be able to react more quickly to market trends, news, and announcements.
Fantom Partnership Update
Band Protocol is now live with over 19+ new #DeFi price feeds on Fantom! This provides $FTM developers with the scalability and accessibility to the most popular asset feeds to secure lending, exchange, derivatives and stablecoin protocols.
Fantom and Band Protocol will provide documentation for developers to integrate the price data in the coming weeks. The data available through the bandchain.js library.
Both teams are excited to showcase the upcoming #DeFi builders and teams integrating $BAND price feeds — stay tuned!
New price feeds supported:
$AAVE, $BAND, $BTC, $COVER, $CREAM, $CRV, $DAI, $ETH, $FRAX, $HEGIC, $KP3R, $LINK, $SFI, $SNX, $SUSD, $SUSHI, $USDC, $USDT, $YFI
Interlay Partnership
Interlay has teamed up with Band Protocol to bring the $1T #Bitcoin market to Polkadot, completing the integration of $BAND oracles to secure the PolkaBTC trustless bridge with highly secure $BTC price and fee feeds. Oracles provided by Band Protocol will be critical in maintaining a secure collateralization ratio on the bridge and overall system security.
PolkaBTC is the trustless representation of Bitcoin on Polkadot. Once deployed, users will be able to mint 1:1 Bitcoin-backed assets onto Polkadot, as PolkaBTC, and use these across a wide range of applications, including decentralized exchanges, stablecoins, and lending protocols.
Oracles provided by Band Protocol will be critical in maintaining a secure collateralization ratio on the bridge and overall system security. This ensures that sufficient collateral is locked in the system and invokes auctions and liquidations to prevent imbalance.
Band Protocol is delighted to work with Interlay to complete the integration just in time for PolkaBTC’s Beta testnet which will be announced soon. We are proud to support a critical DeFi project on Polkadot from the very beginning and look forward to expanding the collaboration in the near term.
Polkacover Partnership
PolkaCover, the first decentralized insurance marketplace for the #DeFi, has strategically partnered with Band Protocol to utilize real-time data for quoting and policy issuance from leading multinational insurance providers natively on Polkadot.
Polkacover is a global DeFi-Insurance marketplace providing several insurance products geared to safeguard crypto, DeFi and NFT asset users in over 120 countries. Users can search, compare and buy multiple insurance products backed by traditional insurers on Polkacover.
Custom oracles created on Band Protocol offer a decentralized solution for quoting and policy issuing through connections with multinational insurance providers.
This will significantly drive $BAND integrations with traditional insurance enterprises to secure #DeFi.
Band Protocol is excited to support Polkacover, bringing extensive coverage and transparency into insurance for the DeFi and crypto industry while also expanding the number of enterprises leveraging the BandChain decentralized oracle network.
Secret Network Partnership
Secret Network is the first blockchain with privacy-preserving smart contracts. Applications built on Secret can utilize encrypted data without revealing it to anyone, even the nodes in the network.
Band Protocol’s implementation brings significant benefits to developers building on Secret Network — enabling #DeFi developers interacting with the Band Protocol API will be able to retrieve data premium data providers and seamlessly create custom decentralized oracles.
Band Protocol, as strategic partners with Secret Network, looks forward to driving rapid adoption and setting a standard for the usage of scalable and secure decentralized oracles — bringing the power of privacy back to users and blockchain technology.
Citadel.One Partnership
Band Protocol ($BAND) has been integrated into Citadel.One, a leading staking platform offering a non-custodial all-in-one service complete with a fiat gateway — increasing the token utility for our rapidly growing global community.
Citadel.one is a non-custodial Proof-of-Stake platform for the management and storage of crypto assets. Users can create public addresses for Band Protocol (BAND) with one seed phrase, connect their Ledger or Trezor device, or import an address generated by another wallet.
Band Protocol Spotlight Article Featured on Everstake
Everstake, a leading $BAND enterprise-grade validator with $1.1 Billion in assets secured for institutional delegators, has published a spotlight article on Band Protocol with the most up-to-date statistics in production.
Everstake has been a key partner for Band Protocol and has operated a BandChain node from the beginning. You can delegate or view the performance of the Everstake validator node on the official Band Protocol block explorer, CosmoScan.
Band Protocol total secured value in smart contracts has reached ~$2.5B with the recent addition of Venus Protocol (SwipeFi). We have shared some BAND statistics for February 10 2021 in the Twitter announcement.
Band Protocol Russia
Everstake, a distinguished and reputable validator on BandChain, has taken the initiative to create a Band Protocol Russian Community. To our Russian community, you can now read Band Protocol articles, detailed guides, and news about Band in Russian.
Closing Remarks
Moving into March, we will be ramping up on the number of DeFi integrations across the board on all blockchain platforms. This includes working in close collaboration with existing partners to optimize the oracle scripts in production and expand product offerings with speed to market.
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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