Introducing BAND Protocol
BAND Protocol is an open blockchain protocol to create token-curated communities. We aim to band communities together with open and reliable data source through decentralized curation protocol.
What is BAND Protocol?
BAND Protocol is a permissionless blockchain protocol to create token-curated communities, each with its own personalized tokens. We make it easy for any entities (developers, companies, brands, celebrities) to issue a personalised Community Token used to curate data in their specific community. These Community Tokens, issued via continuous bonding curve, are used as an economic incentive for curators to provide good, reliable set of data within the community.
Why Now? Why Tokens?
Data in the online communities is often misguided and unreliable. In a centrally curated data such as Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants, curators can be biased from paid reviews or sponsors. In many cases, data is valuable so private curators do not provide access to general public (e.g. Bloomberg Terminal, VC Funds). On the other hand, data in public communities is unreliable because there is no inherit incentive for general public to curate and monetize good information. This becomes more apparent with fake news in recent presidential election, spam account on Twitter, or bot upvote on Reddit to further one’s own agenda. There is now a way to fix this with blockchain technology.
Crypto asset is a new asset class which acts as an economic incentive for network participants to trustlessly coordinate around a similar objective. We now have an incentive for people to curate good data in the open communities without any centralized parties. Band Protocol is a protocol to create such token-curated registries and communities. People can now gather around a specific topic, stake tokens to submit and validate data, and ultimately benefit from token’s value appreciation if they are able to build good community with many followers. Tokens make it economically irrational for bad data to exist in the community and instead incentivize curators to contribute positively to the communities.
One Community, One Token
To incentivize curators and punish bad actors, value of the community token needs to be directly linked with quality of that particular community. It make sure every curators and followers have big skin-in-the-game. This also reduces attack vectors such as 51% attack, coin-flipping, vote bribery, and registry poisoning. We will expand on these attack vectors in the coming post.
Band Protocol facilitates the issuance of community token via bonding curve. Bonding curve is a smart contract that mints and burns token through buy/sell function. Followers and curators who wish to partake in the community can send BAND token to the contract and receive community token, and vice versa for sell function. The price of community token, denominated in BAND token, is prescribed by price curve set initially at contract equation. This gives several benefits: 100% liquidity, seamless token conversion, full price transparency, reward for early curators, etc.
We are still in the early days of token-curated community. Join us on our journey by subscribing to our social media channels and check us out on Github. We will release more updates including technical update, beta product and the launch of our platform in 2018.
Check out our website at bandprotocol.com and subscribe to our mailing list to receive regular updates. We will post updates through our mailing list, Reddit, Telegram, and Twitter.
We welcome every feedback. If you are a passionate developer and want to contribute to Band Protocol, feel free to reach us at talent@bandprotocol.com
Acknowledgement: Band Protocol has been inspired by many crypto primitives and crypto valuation model as championed by many thought leaders such as Simon de la Rouviere (curation market and bonding curve), TwoBitIdiot (TCR/Messari), Aleksandr Bulkin (Discount model/CoinFund), Bancor (bonding curve), John Pfeffer’s token velocity, Multicoin Capital’s new model for utility token, and many others.
For full transparency and clarity: we currently have no official affiliation with any of the names mentioned above and we will disclose if any future engagement is to be taken. We have been big fans of their writings/projects and we simply work toward developing a practical real-world application of curation market, TCR, discount token, etc.
