Band Protocol May 2021 Community Update
Dear Band Community,
With the 2021 year crossing over into June, the setting stones for BandChain Phase 2 has been placed and the gap for enterprises as well as institutions to enter the decentralized application space has never been closer. Codenamed Laozi, the BandChain Phase 2 testnet #1 is currently live with a successful test migration and undergoing a series of stress-tests to prepare for the upcoming launch in production.
On the partnership development side, the team has been working with institutional-grade data providers and pilot partners who will be using BandChain Phase 2 upon launch. While confidential at time of writing, we expect to slowly showcase these partnerships and developments in the leadup to Phase 2.
During the course of May, the crypto-market experienced a ‘Black Wednesday’ which resulted in significant network congestion across various blockchain networks including Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain. As the first major battle-test for the BandChain decentralized oracle network in production, we are proud to say that all Band Protocol partners retrieved price updates with incident.
Tech Updates
In May, the total number of oracle requests on the BandChain decentralized oracle network continued to grow and surpass 5,880,223 requests due to increased price feed support and new partners.
Notable BandChain Update
Early May 2021, we launched GuanYu testnet #4 (v1.2.7a) as a part of the migration test for BandChain Phase 2 with our validators. All data source scripts and oracle scripts have been migrated from GuanYu testnet #3 without issue and the network successfully upgraded to Laozi testnet #1 (v2.0.0-rc0) on 13 May 2021, and it is now live at https://laozi-testnet1.cosmoscan.io.
With Laozi testnet #1 live, it has been tested to find potential bugs and errors before the official upgrade on Mainnet. This includes transactions, stress-testing the data request processes and using the IBC protocol.
To improve the logic for premium data provider and Yoda’s runtime, Laozi testnet #1 has been updated from v2.0.0-rc0 to v2.0.0-rc1 on 25 May 2021. Yoda’s runtime executive now has the new following libraries:
- Added `bech32` library
- Updated `ccxt` library to v1.31.1 as the previous version has been removed from PyPI registry
Yoda runtime has also been moved to a separate repository with an updated wiki, which can be found here:
CosmoScan can now also display packet communication to other chains to retrieve traffic data on BandChain. The endpoint to receive the Proof-of-Result of data requests has been brought back for verification purposes on EVM-compatible smart contracts.
Our team is currently proceeding with unit testing of the IBC protocol to ensure that the implementation is functioning properly and can adequately cover all scenarios as well as edge cases that could result in bugs.
Notable Premium Data Source Update
With BandChain Phase 2, which is live on Laozi testnet #1, we have designed an architecture to incentivize data source providers which entails revenue collection in BAND token from decentralized protocols using their data.
We are collaborating with pilot data providers which provide institutional-grade solutions to develop a new server that verifies pending oracle requests and access data provider’s credentialed APIs in a more seamless manner. In addition, data source scripts are being developed to collect information of pending oracle requests to send to the aforementioned servers.
Notable Band Standard Dataset Update
The Band Standard Dataset has new retry logic implemented whereby in the event of possible network congestion, an increase in gas prices will be submitted to ensure that new price updates can always be retrieved by Band Protocol partners.
We have also added support for new symbols on Ethereum and BSC Mainnet. Find the full list of Band Standard Dataset symbols here:
https://data.bandprotocol.com/
Notable CosmoScan Update
CosmoScan now supports BandChain Phase 2 features for on-chain revenue collection for premium data sources and providers. This will be available on the Laozi public testnet coming up next month. Features includes displaying a premium data source’s:
- Fee accrual/Treasury amount
- Fee amount and treasury address on create/edit data source message
- Fee limit when request data to BandChain
Partnership Developments
Over the next coming months, we will begin to showcase new partnerships and developments in the leadup to Phase 2 which includes new enterprise-grade data providers, highly requested data support and the decentralized applications that will be integrating premium oracle scripts.
Alpha Finance Partnership
Alpha Finance Lab has integrated $BAND oracles to secure their flagship leverage yield farming product Alpha Homora which has a combined total value locked over 1.49B+ on both Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain through the Alpha Oracle Aggregator.
The growing DeFi landscape has increased the necessity for projects to think broader in terms of adopting oracle solutions. The Alpha Oracle Aggregator open-sourced for all blockchain and DeFi projects to freely utilize Ethereum and other chains.
This creates an avenue for Band Protocol to be integrated alongside other leading oracle solutions to aggregate price oracle data to ensure the output price is within a predetermined threshold for reliability and consistency without having to set up new infrastructure.
The Alpha Oracle Aggregator with Band Protocol integration will play a critical role in the next growth stage at Alpha Finance Lab with Band Oracles supporting 22 price oracles from the Band Standard Dataset at the time of writing.
Band Protocol looks forward to integrating with the various industry leading projects who have expressed interest in leveraging the Alpha Oracle Aggregator tool, indicating a positive response and stronger target market for developers integrating Band Oracles for enhanced security, support and scalability.
Genshiro Partnership
Band Protocol is coming to Kusama Network, Polkadot’s Canary Network with Genshiro integration of $BAND oracles to access over 196+ price feeds and secure Equilibrium Kusama-based #DeFi parachain.
With the integration in place, Genshiro will be enabled to leverage and access price feeds for more than 196+ digital assets, foreign currencies, and real commodities. This scaling ability will be vital to borrowing, lending, stablecoin, and synthetic asset product offerings as their team continues to grow cross-chain DeFi.
CREAM Finance Partnership
CREAM Finance, a cross-chain decentralized money market and close collaborator of Yearn Finance, has completed integration with Band Protocol price oracles on Binance Smart Chain and Fantom — upgrading all lending markets to use $BAND oracles.
The integration comes to increase the degree of security into the protocol level to secure more than $622M in total value locked in C.R.E.A.M. Users can now rely on secure and truly decentralized oracles, updating to reflect accurate market prices.
Band Protocol provides C.R.E.A.M with integration-ready price oracles for over 196+ digital assets, foreign exchange and commodities on the Band Standard Dataset which is widely available on leading blockchain platforms such as Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Fantom among others.
Both teams have completed integration for existing markets and additions such as SUSHI, IOTX, SXP. The next steps are to work closely as both projects grow to support DeFi in a stage of rapid growth.
Balanced Network Partnership Update
Balanced Network, the first #DeFi application on ICON Network, has secured $225M without incident in the 5 weeks it’s been live for reliable collateral, risk ratio, and liquidation mechanics using secure price oracles from $BAND.
Balanced is based on the ICON Network, so interoperability and cross-chain capabilities will soon be available through BTP: a standard that enables all blockchains to be interoperable — regardless of their consensus model and algorithm.
With BTP expected to launch soon, both teams are working to support a genesis set of synthetic assets such as equities other than sICX (staked ICX derivative) and Balanced Dollars (synthetic USD) with more capital flow, new participants, and increased adoption of Balanced.
Band Protocol is also working with Balanced on protocol design, economics, and optimizations, and industry connections. We look forward to working closely in this next stage of innovation using highly secure and decentralized oracles provided by Band Protocol.
Closing Remarks
Our priority and efforts remain streamlined to steer towards the successful launch of BandChain Phase 2 in production. This includes working closely with each institutional-grade data provider to set up highly requested premium oracle scripts and connecting them with Band Protocol partners both in production and in the pipeline to begin implementation.
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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