Band Protocol Review: Everything You Need to Know About BAND Explained

The cryptocurrency market is known for its price fluctuation. It can be either a decrease or an increase even up to ten times, mostly during a market bull.

Thought, it is relatively abnormal to record a ten times decrease in 30 days when the market is calm. This can only occur when one manipulates the asset value or if the asset is a BAND, Band protocol’s native token.

The Band protocol is a digital project aiming at solving the oracle problem in the crypto space. It creates platforms that source and feeds reliable ‘real-world’ data to smart contracts and Dapps in a decentralized manner.

The Band network has been existing for some years now, but the team has just released the protocol’s revised mainnet.

However, this Band Protocol review contains a lot of information about the protocol’s history, the native token, how it works, and many more.

It is a must-read for beginners and individuals who are inquisitive to know more about the band protocol. After reading it, you’ll get the information that will guide you about the project.

History of Band Protocol

Soravis Srinawakoon, Sorawit Suriyakarn and, Paul Chonpimai are the founders of the Band Protocol. The co-founders worked with the team members to establish the protocol in 2017.

Soravis Srinawakoon nurtured the project vision in his mind before working it out-he is the CEO of the protocol. He was the Ericsson & management consultant’s software engineer at the (BCG) Boston Consulting Group.

While still with the BCG, Soravis discovered many start-ups, including deep-fried Tofu chips, energy drinks, and even coffee.

He later involved himself with crypto in 2014 on hearing that MIT airdropped Bitcoin worth USD 100 to the undergraduates who finished a survey.

Each respondent got 0.3 Bitcoin out of the USD 100, which is equivalent to USD 3,500 currently. The CEO and his friends designed a crypto gambling website that became twice a Bitcoin faucet.

The project gave Bitcoin rewards to users for winning the ‘casino Esque games’ on its webpage.

When the website is at its peak, Soravis sold it and invested the fund on another project known as the Band protocol. The CEO with his team designed the protocol to focus mainly on the ‘Oracle’ element.

They removed the ‘community-focused ethos’ of the ‘Ethereum based’ version from the protocol and started developing new, cheaper, faster, developer-friendly, and specialized oracle protocol that beets others in the crypto market. This resulted in the June 2020 launching of the Band project’s ‘new’ mainnet.

The co-founder Quora Sorawit Suriyakarn was formerly a software engineer at Dropbox. He is the Protocol’s CTO  presently – a gold medalist competitive programmer.

Lastly, Paul Chonpimai was a web developer and an engineer at Turfmapp and Tripadvisor, respectively. He is currently the CPO of the Band Protocol.

Other Band Protocol team members, as listed on their  LinkedIn page, are twenty employees, including developers, engineers, and designers scattered within Asia.

Band Protocol Mainnet (BandChain)

The Band protocol is built using Cosmos SDK; it is also a fraction of the Cosmos Network. The protocol is supported by renowned global investors like Spartan Group Sequoia Capital, Dunamu & Partners, and Binance.

It is designed to offer scalability and guaranteed transaction speed. Scalability means to transfers a large volume of data to many public ‘blockchains’ with less latency, cross-chain compatibility, and data flexibility.

The protocol was initially built on the ‘Etherem blockchain’ in 2019. It later developed its blockchain with the Cosmos SDK to distribute data across various blockchains. The Bandchain’s (not blockchain now) mainnet is fully launched in four phases;

Phase 0: This mainnet was released on the 6^th of June 2020. It is the Bandchain foundational version and allows the staking and transfer of BAND tokens for validators.

Phase 1: The Band protocol migrated to phase 1 mainnet on 15^th October 2020. It supports the permissionless creation of oracle scripts with customizable data for querying public and free data sources.

Phase 2: This mainnet allows the providers of API  to make their data commercialized on-chain in such a trustless manner. Also enabling them to collect their revenue on-chain.

Phase 3: This type of mainnet focuses on supporting identity/ private oracle scripts and increases the system’s payment options. It allows developers to pay or subscribe for any token of their choice.

The release of this mainnet completes the decentralized oracle network of the BandChain. It will enhance the interoperability between traditional enterprise services and smart contracts.

The Bandchain is also known as the Band Protocol V2.0. It recorded exponential growth in 2020 after the upgrade from the ‘bonding curve model and community token in V1.0.

This new development resulted in the integration of fifty planned oracles and fifteen new ‘genesis’ validators for Band Protocol V2.0.

What is The Band Protocol?

The Band Protocol is a ‘cross-chain oracle platform that runs on Bandchain. It is decentralized and can connect and aggregate the APIs and ‘real-world’ data to smart contracts.

The Bandchain is an ‘independent’ blockchain with the delegated proof of stake (DPoS) developed with the Cosmos SDK. It is customized for computing oracles, including data sourcing, settlement, and aggregation.

The protocol unlocks varieties of used cases for developers by supplying verifiable, reputable ‘real-world’ data for new users to blockchains. The blockchain can now adopt any form of ‘real-world ‘ data as a faction in their Dapp logic.  Such as random numbers, sports, feed data, weather, and more.

The Band Protocol team launched a project known as an ERC-20 on the blockchain of Ethereum in 2019 September. They later upgraded in June 2020 to the  Cosmos network giving birth to the Band Protocol V2.0.

The Band protocol being a cross-chain implies that it can provide data for multiple blockchains, including Ethereum. This is a rare quality in the crypto industry and a major advantage for the protocol.

The Band Protocol was the first firm in blockchain to adopt the API initiative with others like Microsoft, Google, and IBM in 2020 December.

The group wishes to establish a general API standard that will allow easy leverage of data and APIs using blockchain applications.

The native token of the protocol is BAND.  It is the major means of exchange and is used by validators in the Band Protocol ecosystem as collaterals.

They stake the BAND to earn a portion of the transaction fees and as well secure the platform. The BAND is used to fulfill data requests like setting the cost for private data.

How Does Band Protocol Work?

The Band protocol connects Dapp’s ‘smart contract’ based on ‘blockchain’ with a ‘real-world’ data source outside this blockchain. A lot of Dapps depend on this latest and up-to-date data to function and satisfy users as intended.

The Bandchain blockchain is made up of a network of decentralized validators that creates blocks for validating user transactions.

The good news is that the working mechanism of the Band Protocol is easier to comprehend no than before. The Ethereum version of the protocol consists of communities with multiple data having their tokens backed by the BAND token.

These individual token prices fluctuate with data demand in the community. This is an important fact as many secondary sources like YouTube videos and articles use the Band Protocol’s Ethereum version.

The Bandchain consists of a network of delegators and validators, ensuring accurate and consistent external data.

When users request data in the platform, they submit a ‘smart contract’ of the details to ‘Bandchain’ for aggregation. Then, Validators are selected pseudo-randomly based on their average stake weight to supply them data.

They achieve this by sourcing data via smart contract specified sources and aggregate these data in a smart contract specified manner. The aggregated data will be kept on the ‘Bandchain and made available for interested requestors.

In summary, one can take this whole process to be similar to ordering snacks in a restaurant for easy assimilation.

Your first place an order (a smart contract) for a sandwich (the data) and instruct the waiter on the number of sandwiches you want ( the particular way you want the data to be collated).

The waitress (validator) is randomly picked based on his ability to make a good sandwich. Maybe they have like five sandwich makers, and the best among them was absent; the second-best can be picked.

You will be required to pay for the sandwich order ( with BAND tokens), then you receive your packaged sandwich (data).

However, the entire process on the Bandchain, unlike the restaurant, takes 3-6 seconds to finish. The cost is not up to 1 USD.

The BAND Cryptocurrency ICO

The BAND cryptos were first distributed in two forms-the ICO (initial coin offering) and the IEO (initial exchange offering). They are all ERC-20 tokens since the Band Protocol’s first version run on Ethereum. The BAND recorded a total token supply of 100,000,000 tokens.

The first initial coin offering happened between August 2018. It sold a total of 10 million tokens at the unit rate of USD 0.3, raising USD 3 million from its sales. The 2^nd token sale was held in 2019 –May. It sold 5million BAND tokens at a unit rate of USD 0.4 per BAND. It realized a total of USD 2 million.

The IEO happened on ‘Binance Launchpad with the sale following the format of airdrop and lottery. It is the yielding funding round for the protocol and raised close to USD 6million. It sold 12.4 million tokens at the unit rate of USD 0.47 through the Binance Launchpad.

12,368,200 BAND tokens which are 12.3% of the total supply was given to the Binance Launchpad. It was offered for sale to the launchpad participants who used it for lottery draws.

More so, a pool of 631,800 BAND tokens was shared and airdropped to launchpad members without a winning ticket.

27.37% of the total BAND tokens supplied were bought during the two ICO and IEO. 25.63% for invested back to the system for its development and 20% for the founders and team members.

5% of the BAND tokens are for the advisors, and the last 22% of the BAND tokens were kept for the ‘Band protocol’ foundation.

Where And How to Buy BAND?

The BAND can be purchased from several crypto exchanges, both centralized and decentralized. The centralized ones are Binance, Coinbase, Binance US, and Huobi.

The decentralized ones are Kyber Network and Uniswap. One can follow the steps below to buy the BAND token from the Binance US exchange.

• Find BAND using your browser on the list of supported tokens on the exchange.
• Select the task you wish to perform -sell, buy or exchange with other cryptos you have on the platform
• Then input the amount you wish to purchase from your bank account, taking note of the transaction fee.
• Click on ‘confirm purchase’ to complete the transaction. The transaction takes seconds to complete and poops up with the wallet on the display screen.
• To stake the BAND token, move it to a BAND-supported wallet App like Atokic wallet.

What Makes Band Protocol Unique?

The Band Protocol is developed to be more efficient and faster than normal oracle solutions. It ensures that reliable data are transferred to and gotten from various blockchains. The protocol is compatible with most smart contracts and blockchain development.

It aims at leveraging their developing Cosmos IBC (Inter Blockchain Communication) protocol. We are yet to get information on how long it will take to complete and run this project.

The Band Protocol is featured to offer a very simple ‘smart contract’ integration. This permits developers to use data from the Band’s oracles with a simple code via calling any predefined interface.

Band Protocol’s Technology

The Band Protocol’s blockchain-Bandchain is a Cosmos-based blockchain that uses DPoS (delegated Proof of Stake) to ensure that the network is safe.

The protocol aggregates & connects API and ‘real-world’ data to ‘smart contracts with its ‘cross-chain data oracle feature.

Bandcahin enables developers to create and customize data oracle scripts allowing the smart contracts access to APIs and external sources of data. It gives specific security parameters and aggregation methods.

The Bandchain is handled by a pool of ‘validators’ that are randomly distributed. When a user submits a smart contract, validators are selected to supply the data pseudo-randomly.

This selection is solely based on the average weight of their individual stake. They achieve this by sourcing data from smart contract specified sources.

Validators possess monetary rewards to correctly report data. They don’t mind being slashed if they are caught while manipulating data or did not respond to a data request.

The Validators are also slashed if they go offline for a long time or sign transactions twice. They can fix their transaction fees for all the data they provide. Only the first 100 validators are qualified to act and receive oracle requests on the network.

How Does BandChain Work?

In the BandChain, validators are randomly selected to create new blocks and provide data. They are, in turn, rewarded with BAND tokens for providing valid data. The validators are also capable of placing their desired charges for the data they provide.

Their stake can be affected if they stay offline for a long time, double-sign a transaction, or ignore a data request. Double-signing means a validator charged more than the stipulated price for a data request.

Unlike other DPoS and PoS mechanisms, the minimum stake required to be a network validator isn’t a fixed amount. But rather it’s determined by the size of other validator’s deposited stakes.

To be a validator, you must be a part of the 100 top stakers in the BandChain network. You can ascend to this leaderboard by either asking people to delegate their BAND tokens to you or selling out the BAND tokens needed for it.

Delegators donate their tokens to desired validators as a tradeoff for some commissions from the validators block rewards and data request fees.

As there are no rules constraining delegators to support validators and their data, they are rewarded in doing so. Should the validators act questionably, the delegators will also be affected by the stake slash of their staked validator.

Validators and Delegators can utilize the Lite Client protocol to authenticate the data given by the validator.

Conclusion of Band Protocol Review

The Band Protocol is an interesting project with many potentials.  It offers a fast, reliable, and user-friendly platform for buying, selling, or staking its native token BAND.

Image Credit: CoinMarketCap

Srinawakoon rightly describes the blockchain oracle problem as worth “billions of dollars.” This is an advantage for the Band Protocol since it aims at bringing a solution to this via its Bandchain.

Oracles similar to the Band Protocol are just the ‘internet connection’ that makes the world computer  ‘blockchains’  like Ethereum valuable and useable.

This Band Protocol review analyzed the protocol and x-rayed its unique features in a manner very easy to read and understand.

The good news is that from a long-term perspective, it is not too late to invest in BAND. We hope that with this Band Protocol review, you’ve discovered every vital aspect of this project.

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