Band Protocol 2021 Recap and Vision: Rapid Expansion, BandChain V3, and Beyond Oracle
2021 has proved to be a year of leap in development for both the overall web3 ecosystem and Band Protocol.
2021 has proved to be a year of leap in development for both the overall web3 ecosystem and Band Protocol. During this year, the Band Protocol team has solved many technical and business problems to deliver unique solutions such as BandChain Phase 2 and IBC Oracle service. All the while keeping our focus on improving internal processes to confidently embark into new ecosystems both Layer 1s and Layer 2s that present a heightened demand for oracle integration.
With tremendous excitement, we are proud to recap 2021, share our 2022 roadmap and our vision for the future beyond oracle.
2021 Recap — Rapid Expansion
With the priority to serve the DeFi market, our main goals for the year were to grow the usage of BandChain, and introduce BandChain Phase 2 to enable a more scalable infrastructure for both the data providers side and user side. With these missions in mind, we have improved monitoring processes and deployment operations that have helped us to hold a strong position in the oracle competitive landscape.
The current BandChain has served as a reliable platform for data solutions as expected. We saw a growth in the number of requests over the past year, with the current request number at over 16.1 million requests when accounting for both Phase 1 and Phase 2.
We have also acquired many power users in different ecosystems. As of date, we have a total number of 22 official integrations, of which 17 are on mainnets and 5 on testnets. Our integration spans across 12 ecosystems including the nascent ones such as Avalanche, Celo Network, Oasis Network, Optimism and more — thanks to our highly scalable infrastructure and procedure which allows us to be the first live oracle on many of these platforms and claim the first-mover advantage.
With the integration acquisition, BandChain has seen up to $16.73 Billion in Total Value Secured (TVS) during the peak of market activity in 2021. Our integration include (but not limited to) Mirror Protocol (Terra Ecosystem), Alpha Finance Labs (Ethereum, Avalanche, BSC), C.R.E.A.M. Finance, and more.
On the data provider side, we have secured over 70 numbers of data sources, supplying over 5 different types of data to our users with categories ranging from stock, index, foreign currency, commodities, to cryptocurrency asset prices.
Extending the Oracle Service Reach
After the launch of BandChain Phase 2, the Band Protocol team submitted proposals to enable IBC-token transfer and IBC-oracle. With the help of the Tendermint (now Ignite) team to include our IBC-oracle module with Starport, these IBC features have allowed us to realize our goals of becoming more cross-chain compatible and increasing data distribution channels.
We successfully launched this feature with Injective Protocol who requests data through IBC Oracle and pays for requests with Band token. Combined with the already growing traffic from our aggressive integration with new protocols, this IBC strategy brought us even more volume that filled up to 80% of block capacity during peak period — displaying a strong sign of growth and demand for usage. This compels us to work heavily on expanding our service capacity.
Expanding Capacity
Chain Capacity:
To address the increase in requests and block traffic, the Band Protocol team has taken the following measures:
- Introduced dynamic gas in Phase 2 which improve gas utilization when requesting more computational-heavy requests (eg. many sources and asset feeds)
- Proposed to reduce gas parameter which increases block capacity by approximately 25%
Integration Capacity:
Moreover, the team has worked in improving many internal toolings such as monitoring dashboard, operating procedures to add support for new feeds and data sources to ensure the speed of our integration. This has allowed us to be the first to launch on new Layer 1 and Layer 2 networks such as Celo Network, Oasis Network, Godwoken (Testnet) and more.
Our Vision
BandChain Phase 2 Laozi
As we continue to iterate on BandChain, our flagship product with a proven product-market fit, we will be launching auxiliary services to enhance its usage. This includes products such as:
Band Standard Dataset — a starter product for most developers that grant them access to more than 250 feeds in different asset classes. We will continue to improve the service of this product.
BandChain Phase 2 Gateway — a product for data providers to easily participate in supplying data on BandChain and receive on-chain revenue in Band tokens. This helps enhance the decentralized marketplace of BandChain
VRF (Verifiable Random Function) — a product to capture the need of the fastly growing NFT and GameFi space. The Band Protocol team has been fine-tuning the designs to offer a highly secure and reliable product.
Band Oracle v3
With the ongoing aggressive growth of both Layer 1 and Layer 2 ecosystems, DeFi, and new sprouting sectors such as GameFi — we are actively working to get ready for the future, and not only to follow the trend passively.
With this outlook of fast-growing demand for data, we will be building Band Oracle v3 along with the Band Protocol’s BandChain Phase 2 which is the current flagship product later in 2022.
This next-generation oracle will be built as an extension on top of the existing BandChain Phase 2 (Laozi) with multiple distinct features:
- Higher throughput
- Lower latency
- Cheaper base fees
- Extreme portability
We are in the early design process of Band Oracle v3 which incorporates feedback from working with our integrations. One main design goal is to reduce the reliance on data settlement (Oracle Script and Data Source script) on Bandchain which requires domain-specific knowledge to deploy. This corresponds to our mission of making Band Oracle easier to adopt in a self-serving manner, serving data to all. We will be showing you the design and development of Band Oracle v3 in the upcoming quarters.
Beyond Oracle: The Expanded Vision Over the Next 3–5 Years
Throughout the years of working with multiple blockchain projects and providing an oracle solution that secures $10B+ in value on-chain, we have been privileged to be working with some of the most incredible builders in the blockchain space. Along the way we have learned how they shipped some of the most high-quality products and optimizations to their users, as well as the obstacles they face in the process.
Such insights have inspired the team to think more deeply into blockchain technology beyond oracle, especially from the developer’s perspectives and how we, as an infrastructure builder, can contribute to better security and scalability for the industry as a whole.
Staying true to our initial vision centered around providing reliable data to the open internet has served us on a journey thus far. The Band Protocol team’s vision has now grown into advancing the growth of web3 through high-quality infrastructure, leveraging our oracle product as our stepping stone.
BandBuilderVerse (BBV)
The Band Protocol team will take on the next mission of building a universe of high-quality development tools for Web3 builders to serve our developer community. In the next 3–5 years after mastering the oracle business as the first stepping stone, we will work to expand our line of products to a more complete suite of development toolkit blockchain developers can rely on and leverage to thrive in web3.
The details of the strategy on product launches will be subjected to the future’s web3 demand and industry landscape. As of now, the suite of products that we have identified potentially includes:
- Band L2 Scalability Solution
- Band Asset Bridge
- Band Data Indexer
- Band DApp Operation & Security Monitoring
- Band Training & Certificate Program
This is a challenging mission that the band protocol team is poised to take on. Leveraging our resource of highly technical teams and web3 infrastructure-focused knowledge from building in web3 space since 2017, we are one of the most equipped teams in the space to take on infrastructure problems.
Closing Remarks
We have been on a trajectory of growth but our journey has barely begun! Stay tuned to see Band Protocol continue to capture more adoption, expand to different ecosystems with the BandChain Phase 2 products in the pipeline. But better yet, stick around to see how we continue to grow to accomplish a bigger vision to contribute to the web3 community and bring value back to the Band community.
2022 is set to a high tone with renewed vision and knowledge. We will continue to be a leading decentralized oracle project, and set ourselves apart with the dedication that we have for the developer’s community. We are grateful for all the community support and we are looking forward to a great year ahead.
About Band Protocol
Band Protocol is a cross-chain data oracle platform with the aspiration to build high-quality suites of web3 development products. The flagship Oracle solution aggregates and connects real-world data and APIs to smart contracts, enabling 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.
More about Band Protocol: https://linktr.ee/bandprotocol
