Band Protocol March 2021 Community Update
Dear Band Community,
The rate at which Band Protocol adoption and usage continues to grow with oracle requests in production over 2.9M+ and an estimated $8 Billion dollars in value secured in smart contracts that have integrated Band Oracles.
The team continues to work closely with the Cosmos team as we move closer to the launch of BandChain Phase 2, enhancing the scalability properties, throughput of the network while also serving the needs of institutions looking to commercialize and monetize their solutions for decentralized applications.
We are proud to share our major technical updates for March and seven meaningful partnership developments.
Tech Updates
In March, the total number of oracle requests on the BandChain mainnet has grown to almost 3,000,000, signalling rapid adoption and usage of the oracle network. With increasing demand from inbound and existing partners looking to expand their product offerings, we are proud to have Band Protocol oracles live in production on all the leading blockchain platforms — both layer-1 and layer-2.
Notable BandChain GuanYu Update
We have released BandChain GuanYu v1.2.7.a on the Mainnet to fix a security vulnerability that has been identified on Cosmos’ Gaia. This release was pushed to our validators as precaution who have all updated swiftly with no issues.
The team have also released `v1.2.8-rc0` to test wasm execution optimization on testnet and will launch a new version that fixes the above issue on rc1 later.
Notable BandChain Phase 2 Update
Codenamed Lao-Zi, we are delighted to share one of the first public updates on the upcoming BandChain Phase 2 which will bring more institutional and enterprise adoption through support for querying data sources while collecting fees to data source owners directly on-chain.
Our chain on the Stargate (cosmos v0.42.3) version codebase implementation is close to the finish line with core logic almost complete. We are also working with the Cosmos/Tendermint team closely to finalize the optimal design of how to request data via IBC.
With the new wasm execution optimization and optimization of parameters, we are ensuring that BandChain can maintain the short block time of 3 seconds in production. In theory, the new chain throughput has increased ~5 times from the Guanyu version — a significant improvement in the scalability of BandChain.
On-chain revenue collection to data source providers has been implemented, allowing the exclusive data sources to be used in the new chain. We are currently working with our institutional-grade data providers to pilot and test BandChain Phase 2 prior to release in production.
Notable Client Library Update
The team has released pyband v0.1.1, adding request timeout to prevent process struct when the endpoint doesn’t return a response.
The client library also supports more messages (e.g. MsgCreateDataSource, MsgCreateOracleScript) that can be sent via pyband and bandchain.js.
Notable Standard Price Reference Update
The overall robustness of the Standard Price Reference on BandChain has been improved to guarantee that data has been updated every specified period based on the each partner project and network where it is built upon.
Notable CosmoScan Update
The official blockchain explorer for BandChain, CosmoScan, officially supports IBC messages on the transaction overview and transaction details page! This is live on the development network and will be rolled out into production shortly.
Check out the visualization below which shows both incoming and outgoing packets:
Partnership Developments
During March, our team was focused on integrating with the leading layer-1 and layer-2 blockchain platforms to support the many DeFi projects migrating from Ethereum or with an upcoming release! We are delighted to be supported by the strongest platforms in the industry and continue to expand the rate of adoption of Band Oracles.
Polygon (Matic Network) Partnership
Band Protocol is delighted to share the completed integration with Polygon (previously Matic Network), the leading platform for Ethereum scaling. As strategic partners, Polygon will be working alongside $BAND to secure their ecosystem of DeFi, NFT and gaming DApps.
Polygon is a layer-2 scaling aggregator that enables the creation of low-cost and high-throughput smart contract applications on an ideal platform for the growing DeFi and on-chain gaming applications that are required to operate at scale.
Polygon has added $BAND to their official developer resources, enabling developers to integrate the Band Standard Dataset which covers 150+ feeds spanning across crypto assets, commodities, FX and later expanding to support custom oracle creation.
This is one of the critical steps for the adoption of Band Protocol oracles through accessibility with leading blockchain platforms including NEAR, Polkadot, Fantom as of recent — and now, Polygon.
Stay tuned as we continue to expand Band Protocol to more L1 and L2s!
MonteCarloDEX (MCDEX) Partnership
MonteCarloDEX (MCDEX), a leading #DeFi protocol for perpetual markets and futures, is integrating Band Protocol to support the upcoming launch of MCDEX V3 on Arbitrum — a layer 2 platform that makes smart contracts scalable, fast, and private.
With a strategic partnership in place, Band Protocol has worked with MCDEX to implement a highly robust and reliable price feed to secure all perpetual markets on the V3 Beta2 Testnet starting with $BTC, $ETH, S&P500 and $DPI oracles that update on a 0.1% deviation basis.
MCDEX is a fully decentralized perpetual swap exchange providing users to long/short assets at leverage without exposure to any other cryptocurrencies. MCDEX V3 allows anyone to create any perpetual market for an asset by setting an underlying asset and risk parameters.
This means that creators of new markets on MCDEX, will have the ability to leverage the full extent of $BAND oracles, scalability to adequately support perpetual markets and the significant data availability on the Band Standard Dataset which supports over 150+ feeds.
Working with MCDEX, Band Protocol is empowering the $MCB community to support more markets for crypto, synthetic assets and even long-tail assets. We are making perpetual markets accessible to everyone in the world, bringing in a new wave of adoption directly into #DeFi.
NEAR Protocol Partnership
We are thrilled to announce our integration with NEAR Protocol, a leading dApp platform leveraging sharding technology for scalability.
With the completion of our implementation on NEAR, Band Protocol will be added to the official NEAR developer resources. This provide easily accessible guides and tools for developers to integrate various price feeds or create custom data oracles. NEAR developers will have unrestricted access to Band Protocol oracles, enabling smart contract interoperability with any external data sources or APIs.
Equilibrium Partnership
Equilibrium, the first decentralized interoperable money market combining lending with synthetic asset generation and trading, has partnered with Band Protocol to secure over $230M TVL. Equilibrium will also be creating custom oracles on $BAND for new synthetic and collateral asset support which can be implemented at speed using BandChain.
Starting with integration on Polkadot, Band Protocol will be empowering the Equilibrium cross-chain money market with highly reliable and accurate price feeds for all assets on the DeFi platform. Bringing the scalability and high-performance capabilities of the BandChain decentralized oracle network, Equilibrium will be well-equipped to support new assets and expand product offerings as they scale.
Working together, Band Protocol and Equilibrium share the common vision of interoperability across blockchains, uniting cross-chain liquidity and capital to create a more accessible and widely adopted decentralized finance ecosystem. Both teams look forward to expanding the Equilibrium money market to more chains with additional asset support.
Finage Partnership
Finage, a leading enterprise-grade data provider for stock, forex and crypto, has strategically partnered with Band Protocol to bring instant data availability covering over 60,000+ price feeds for developers and partners using $BAND oracles.
Trusted by Stripe and Amazon Web Services, Finage will be a recommended provider for the increasing number of DeFi protocols building custom oracles on BandChain. Finage has turned to $BAND to kickstart their international expansion with increasing data coverage and adoption.
Given the cross-chain compatibility, flexibility and lack of technical resources required to provide data through Band Protocol, Finage will be commercializing their financial data through the creation of premium oracle scripts upon the release of BandChain Phase 2 in their effort to expand internationally and increase adoption.
Working with trusted data providers such as Finage is critical to increasing the degree of security and reliability of $BAND oracles which are collectively securing billions of dollars in production. More institutional-grade providers working with Band Protocol to come!
Fantom Partnership Update
Fantom, a leading blockchain platform for secure and low-cost DApps, has expanded their collaboration with Band Protocol to operate a $BAND validator node — participating and increasing the degree of decentralization on the oracle network.
With the future of cross-chain #DeFi constantly being innovated by Fantom’s Architect, Andre Cronje, we are excited to further our working relationship and will continue to support their team in the long-term.
$BAND is currently securing ~$400M TVL on Fantom Finance.
Both Fantom and Band Protocol community are able to delegate to the Fantom Foundation node on BandChain. With an additional 19 decentralized price feeds from Band Protocol now live on the Fantom Opera Mainnet, we look forward to sharing the developer documentation to integrate Band Oracles and showcasing the leading DeFi projects already integrating Band Protocol.
Fantom Creates Developer Documentation For Band Protocol
The Fantom team has created developer documentation for their Band Protocol integration. This means Fantom developers can now integrate the $BAND oracles and the new #DeFi price feeds added last week on both the Opera Mainnet and Testnet!
We are proud to work alongside Fantom to assist developers who are now empowered to create custom decentralized oracles for any external data source.
This includes price data, real-world events, insurance data, and more!
Closing Remarks
Moving into April, we are excited to draw closer to yet another milestone with the launch of BandChain Phase 2 which is expected to drive adoption on both ends of the user spectrum — data consumers and data providers. With enterprise-grade partners ready to monetize and commercialize their solutions on BandChain, we can look forward to significantly stronger depth in the data availability and offerings for decentralized applications.
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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