Band Protocol

What is Band Protocol ?

• Band Protocol allows data from the real-world to interact with blockchains in order to allow developers access to various datasets, including but not limited to price feeds, wallet metrics, or even weather, random numbers and sporting event results.
• Band Protocol was initially developed on the Ethereum network as an ERC-20 project, but migrated to the Cosmos network in June 2020 (including a shift in development to the Cosmos SDK)
• BAND acts as the native token of the Band Protocol, and is used as collateral to verify and fulfil data requests as well as a medium of exchange on BandChain as payment for private/exclusive datasets.
• Band Protocol is designed for greater efficiency than other oracle networks, coupled with increased compatibility with various blockchain and smart contract networks that allow accurate and reliable data to be fed cross-chain in a timely manner.

Key Metrics

Ticker	BAND
Token Name	Band Protocol
Token Type/Protocol	Cosmos
Total Token Supply	100,000,000
Current Circulating Supply	See Coinmarketcap
Market Capitalisation	See Coinmarketcap
Token Creation Date	Sep 2019
Can it be mined?	Yes

Who is behind Band Protocol?

Soravis Srinawakoon heads Band Protocol as the current CEO, combining his pedigree in Computer Science from Stanford University with software engineering and management consulting experience at Ericsson and Boston Consulting Group respectively.

Sorawit Suriyakarn serves as the CTO and co-founder, graduating with equally reputable pedigree with a Masters in Engineering and Computer Science from the titular Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prior to Band Protocol, he spent time in Hudson River Trading, Quora and Dropbox.

Paul Nattapatsiri – the final co-founder of the tactical trio – was a former web developer at Tripadvisor as well as Turfmapp. He has launched various crypto games with critical reception of over 800,000 users since 2013. 

What is the purpose of Band Protocol?

Band protocol seeks to provide a completely secure, decentralized, and blockchain-agnostic oracle framework for Web 3.0 applications. This will serve as a ‘golden’ source of data which smart contracts are reliant upon for their execution by using economic incentives to ensure that all information is verified and legitimate.  This will build a platform to evolve devices from Web 2.0 to 3.0.

Insights:

• Multichain – BandChain is designed to be natively compatible with various smart contract platforms, allowing it to aggregate data from various external sources and then present them in a format that is easy to use and cryptographically verifiable cross-chain. This differentiates it from most Oracle services by its ease of use and compatibility from the get-go.
• Built for developers – BandChain allows developers to use WebAssembly to create custom-made oracles and connect orthodox APIs to smart contracts within minutes.
• Delegated Proof-of-Stake (dPoS) – BandChain uses a modified version of PoS to secure the network in a decentralized manner using its native BAND token. Like most other PoS-based blockchains, this allows for the creation of new blocks and validation of the network in an energy efficient manner while also protecting the network from bad actors by having tokens ‘locked up’ in staking pools.
• Band Protocol has raised over 8 million dollars across 2 ICOs and 1 IEO. The first ICO took place in August 2018 and raised approximately 3 million USD. The second ICO privately took place in May 2019 and raised a total of 2 million USD. The third IEO was by far the most ambitious, taking place on Binance launchpad and raising a grand total of just under 6 million USD. Overall, the market sentiment on BAND’s use case seems positive with an average return for initial ICO and IEO investors of almost 20x.
• Band protocol is chain-agnostic as compared to its most famous competitor, Chainlink (LINK). While LINK requests data on an ‘per request’ service, BAND protocol usually will already have the data you wish to acquire on chain because it runs as a feed instead. This means that you can receive the data faster and cheaper as compared to LINK’s ERC-20 implementation (especially in times when the ETH network is congested).

Risks:

• Band protocol recently rolled out a variable inflation rate of between 7-20% per year in order to incentivize network participation among BAND token holders. The goal of doing so is to help keep a minimum of 66% of BAND’s total circulating supply to be staked on the network. This ensures that the protocol continues to be decentralized among various holders, in order to maintain the network’s security.
• Unlike Chainlink (and some other oracles), Band protocol does not require Know Your Customer (KYC) documentation. While this means that more data providers are likely to work with Band Protocol because of the option of anonymity, the worldwide regulatory environment for cryptocurrencies has been shifting towards increased KYC and regulation, which exposes it to some level of risk, or at the very least, the possibility of eventually having to include KYC through a governance vote. 
• Despite BAND’s clear advantage in being blockchain-agnostic (as compared to its closest competitors), the fact that the vast majority of widely-adopted dApps are built on Ethereum renders this largely moot. However, given the increasingly competitive nature of the smart contracts environment, BAND may soon be able to make use of its idiosyncrasies to the benefit of both developers using it as an oracle, as well as holders of the cryptocurrency hoping for price appreciation.

News and Updates:

• https://medium.com/bandprotocol/google-cloud-integration-with-band-protocol-oracles-and-deep-learning-for-real-time-crypto-price-e6e863070f74
  Band has recently partnered with Google Cloud Public Data to allow accurate analyses of financial time series data. This allows various applications (both on and off the blockchain) to take advantage of the highly unique data feeds that are provided upon Band Protocol in a decentralized manner. 
• https://twitter.com/BandProtocol/status/1428662561369513987
  Band Protocol has partnered with Beta Finance to provide their oracle services. This adds Beta Finance to their growing list of partners, including the likes of Mirror Protocol, Venus, and even Injective Protocol.
  

Community & Whitepaper Links:

Official Website: https://bandprotocol.com/
White Paper: https://docs.bandchain.org/whitepaper/

Disclaimer 

All investment is speculative and involves substantial risk and uncertainty. Investors should understand the nature of digital assets including the terms of return and the risk of assets. We encourage investors to fully understand the assets and the risk associated with them prior to making any investment.