Basic Information

Location: Ban Khlong Tan, Samut Sakhon, Thailand

Network Detail

Brief Introduction

Band Protocol is a secure and scalable decentralized oracle, serving as a layer-2 protocol on public blockchains. It allows dApps to leverage existing data on the internet without trusted intermediaries, bridging the use cases between Web 2.0 and 3.0. Band’s unique multi-token model and staking mechanism ensure that data is free from manipulation. By making data readily available and reusable on-chain, Band Protocol offers a cheaper and faster solution compared with alternatives, all without compromising security. Developers using Band Protocol will be able to build a wider range of dApps with integration to off-chain financial data, reputation scores, identity management systems, and much more, bringing blockchain closer to mass adoption.

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History

Band Protocol was created to solve the problem of smart contract applications lacking access to real-world data. It also intends to provide reliable transaction speed and scalability (ability to serve a large quantity of data requests to multiple public blockchains with minimal latency), cross-chain compatibility (blockchain-agnostic), and data flexibility (ability to support both public and private data). Originally released on the Ethereum blockchain in 2019, Band protocol eventually built its own blockchain using the Cosmos SDK to relay data across different blockchains.

BandChain’s mainnet is being fully released across four phases:

Phase 0 is the foundational version of BandChain that enables BAND token transfer and staking for validators; Phase 0 Mainnet was launched on Jun. 6, 2020.

Phase 1 supports permissionless creation of customizable data oracle scripts that can query public and permissionless data sources; Phase 1 Mainnet migration was completed on Oct. 15, 2020.

Phase 2 aims to enable API providers to commercialize their data on-chain in a trustless manner and collect revenue on-chain.

Phase 3 supports private/identity oracle scripts and more payment options in the ecosystem, allowing developers to pay in a token of their choice or subscription model. The focus upon this release will be to complete the BandChain decentralized oracle network, ready to drive interoperability between smart contracts and traditional enterprise services.

Band Protocol saw rapid growth in 2020 as it transitioned to Band Protocol v2.0 (also known as BandChain) from the community token and bonding curve model in v1.0. Band Protocol’s new direction led to over 50 planned oracle integrations (where Band will provide price feeds to these protocols) and 15 new genesis validators for Band Protocol v2.0. Band Protocol also became the first blockchain firm to join the OpenAPI Initiative alongside names such as Google, Microsoft, and IBM in December 2020. This group aims to create a common API standard enabling blockchain applications to easily leverage APIs and data.

Feature (Design Goals)

Speed and Scalability

The system must be able to serve a large quantity of data requests to multiple public blockchains with minimal latency and while maintaining a high throughput. The expected response time must be in the order of seconds.

Cross-Chain Compatibility

The system must be blockchain-agnostic and able to serve data to most publicly available blockchains. Verification of data authenticity on the target blockchains must be efficient and trustless by nature.

Data Flexibility

The system must be generic and able to support different methods of retrieving and aggregating data, including both permissionless, publicly available data as well as information guarded by centralized parties.

BandChain achieves the aforementioned goals with a blockchain specifically built for off-chain data curation. The blockchain supports generic data requests and on-chain aggregations with WebAssembly-powered oracle scripts. Oracle results on BandChain blockchain can be sent across to other blockchains via the Inter-Blockchain Communication protocol (IBC) or through customized one-way bridges with minimal latency.

Network Status

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Staking Pool

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Teams and Partners

Teams

Partners

Funding

Overview

Funding Rounds

Refer from crunchbase.

Band Protocol has raised a total of $7.9M in funding over 5 rounds. Their latest funding was raised on Sep 17, 2019 from a Seed round.

Investors

Band Protocol is funded by 11 investors. Binance and Evernew Capital are the most recent investors.

Technolgy

Code

GitHub Homepage

Repositories：67

Submit language：Go丨TypeScript丨JavaScript丨Rust丨Python

Total number of main contributors：7

Overview Introduction

Band Protocol is a cross-chain data oracle platform that aggregates and connects real-world data and APIs to smart contracts. Band Protocol’s blockchain BandChain (Cosmos-based blockchain) uses Delegated Proof-of-Stake (DPoS) to secure the network. BandChain allows developers to customize and create data oracle scripts that allow smart contracts to connect to external data sources and APIs and specify aggregation methods and security parameters.

BandChain is operated by a distributed pool of validators, and when a smart contract data request is submitted, validators are pseudo-randomly selected based on the weighted average of their respective stake to provide the data. They do this by fetching the data from the sources specified by the smart contract and aggregating the requested information.

Validators have monetary incentives to report data correctly, as they risk getting slashed if they get caught manipulated data entries or are unresponsive to data requests. Validators also face slashing penalties if they are offline for extended periods or double-sign transactions. Validators can set their own fees for the data they are providing. Only the top 100 validators on the network (determined by stake weight as in the number of self-staked BAND plus delegations) are eligible to receive and act on oracle requests.

Tech Knowledge

Oracle Binary Encoding (OBI)

Oracle Binary Encoding (OBI) is a standard method for serializing and deserializing binary data in the BandChain ecosystem. Under the concept of Ethereum’s Contract ABI Specification and Google’s ProtoBuf, an OBI schema explains how a data object in any supported programming language can be encoded to and decoded from plain bytes.

OBI is designed with the following properties in mind:

Compactness: OBI schema will be stored on-chain and passed around between blockchains. Thus, it is essential to keep the size of the schema specification tiniest.

Simplicity & Portability: As a blockchain-agnostic protocol, OBI serialization and deserialization must be easy to implement in any environment. Consequently, complex platform-specific features are not supported.

Readability: Lastly, OBI is intended to be used as a communication tool between oracle script creators and smart contract developers. It must be intuitive for readers to understand the OBI underlying objects from reading the schema.

Oracle WebAssembly (Owasm)

Oracle WebAssembly, or Owasm for short, is Band Protocol’s Domain Specific Language (DSL) for writing oracle scripts to be used in the BandChain ecosystem.

Remote Data Source Executor

The remote data source executor executes the various data sources stored on BandChain in order to retrieve data from the data providers. The executor itself is a function-as-a-Service hosted on a cloud service provider.

Band CLI & REST Endpoints

Yoda

Yoda is a program that is used by BandChain’s validator nodes to automatically fulfill data for oracle requests.

More information can be seen at Band Protocol Official Documents.

Ecosystem

Governance Type: Direct On-Chain Vote, Delegated On-Chain Vote

Both validators and delegators can vote for or against proposed changes to the protocol, where 1 BAND token is equal to 1 vote. Delegators don’t have to vote in the same manner as the validator they are staking on. The votes from delegators can even override the votes cast by the validators to “counterbalance” the protocol’s governance. If a delegator does not cast their vote, their would-be votes are automatically cast in the same manner as the validator’s votes.

On-Chain Governance Details

Economic Model

Token Functions

Token Type: ERC-20, Native

Token Uses: Access, Dividends, Payments, Vote

BAND is the native token of BandChain and is the sole token on its network. Originally created as an ERC-20 token, BAND is available as both an ERC-20 and BandChain native token. BAND is used to secure and power the decentralized oracle network. Its use cases include:

Collateral/Stake for Validators: All validators are required to stake BAND, with a higher stake equating to a high probability of being selected to fulfill data requests. Underperforming or malicious actors will result in having their tokens slashed.
Transaction and Access Fees: BAND tokens are used to pay as a transaction, query fee, and also for data access behind paywall (private APIs).
Participation in BandChain Governance: Token holders are able to vote for the protocol upgrades and parameter changes on BandChain. The governance process allows the token holders to have decision-making power in shaping the direction of the network.

Launch Distribution

BAND tokens were initially distributed in the form of two initial coin offerings (ICOs) and an initial exchange offering (IEO).

The first ICO sale took place between August and October 2018. It sold 10 million BAND tokens at a price of $0.3 per BAND, raising $3 million in the process. The second token sale took place in June 2019 and sold five million BAND tokens at a price of $0.4 per BAND, raising $2 million.

The IEO was held on Binance Launchpad, and the sale followed a lottery and airdrop format. A total of 12,368,200 BAND (12.37% of total token supply) was allocated to Binance Launchpad and was sold to Launchpad participants who drew and claimed winning lottery tickets. In addition, a pool of 631,800 BAND tokens were split and airdropped to all launchpad participants that do not have a winning ticket.

Supply Schedule

General Emission Type: Inflationary

Precise Emission Type: Dynamic Emission

Capped Supply: Yes

Inflation

BandChain applies an inflationary model on the BAND token to incentivize network participation by the token holders. The desired outcome of this model is that token holders will opt to stake their coins on the network, rather than solely focusing on trading, or doing nothing with it at all. The specific inflation parameters currently mirror that of the Cosmos network; namely, the annual inflation rate ranges from 7% to 20%, and is adjusted to have 66% of the total supply of BAND token staked.

To illustrate how inflation incentivizes staking, imagine we have a network participant with a certain amount of holding. With inflation, if they choose to not use their coins to participate in the network’s activities, they will find that the percentage of their holding with respect to the total supply decreases over time. However, if they decide to stake their coins, they will be given a share of coins proportional to the inflation, meaning their total token holding ratio will now remain relatively unchanged.

Validator

Original Source

As of 2022–5–17, the last verified BAND number of active nodes is 1 (US$1.72/BAND).

https://www.mintscan.io/sifchain/validators

Top 10 addresses

Last 10 addresses

Some actions that a delegator should perform are:

Perform due diligence on the validators you wish to stake on before committing: If a validator you staked on misbehaves, a portion of the validator’s staking, including those of their delegators, are slashed. Therefore, it is advisable for delegators to carefully consider their staking choices.

Actively monitor the validators you’ve committed to: Delegators should ensure that the validators they delegate behave correctly, meaning that they have good uptime, do not double sign or get compromised, and participate in governance.

Participate in network governance: Delegators are expected to participate in network governance activities. A delegator’s voting power is proportional to the size of their bonded stake. If a delegator does not cast their vote, they will inherit the vote of the validators they staked on. If they do vote, they instead override the vote of those validators. Delegators therefore act as an important counterbalance to their validators.

Competitors

About BlockPower

Our Staking Services

Why Choose Us to Manage Your Assets

We have started 7/24 staking services since 2018, and have managed over $100 million assets.
We run highly available and redundant nodes in different data centers to achieve continuous operations.
We are actively participating in community and governance, disclosing information frequently.

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【Network Introduction】Band Protocol