's zKyoto testnet, an evolution of zKatana, bridging ETH Sepolia and Polygon AggLayer. Let's explore the future of blockchain interoperability!

Welcome to Band Protocol's Community channel aggregated by CoinMarketCap.

🚀 We’re excited to share that #bandprotocol's price feed is now live on @AstarNetwork's zKyoto testnet, an evolution of zKatana, bridging ETH Sepolia and Polygon AggLayer. Let's explore the future of blockchain interoperability!
.
📖 Learn more: https://blog.bandprotocol.com/bandprotocol-astarzkatana-zkrollup-interoperability/ 

According to CoinMarketCap: DeFi Edition

CoinMarketCap's 2020 Round-Up: The Good, The Bad and The Bitcoin

What Is a Smart Contract?

Oracles: The All-Seeing Eyes That Guide Crypto Networks

What Is a Crypto Faucet?

## What Is Band Protocol (BAND)?

Band Protocol is a cross-chain data oracle platform that is able to take real-world data and supply it to on-chain applications, while also connecting APIs to smart-contracts to facilitate the exchange of information between on-chain and off-chain data sources. 

By supplying reputable, verifiable real-world data to [blockchains](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/blockchain), Band Protocol unlocks a range of new use cases for developers to explore — since they can now use any type of real-world data as part of their [decentralized application (DApp)](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/decentralized-applications-dapps) logic, including sports, weather, random numbers, price feed data and more.

Band Protocol initially launched as an [ERC-20](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/erc-20) project on the Ethereum blockchain in September 2019, but transitioned to the Cosmos network in June 2020 with the release of Band Protocol 2.0. The new protocol is built on BandChain using the Cosmos SDK. Oracle nodes on BandChain not only relay data but are also involved in block production/validation, giving them a dual role.

BAND is the native token of the Band Protocol ecosystem and is used as collateral by validators involved in fulfilling data requests, as well as the main medium of exchange on BandChain — being used to paying for private data.


### Who Are the Founders of Band Protocol?

Band Protocol was founded in 2017 by Soravis Srinawakoon, Paul Chonpimai and Sorawit Suriyakarn. 

Soravis Srinawakoon, the current CEO of Band Protocol, is a former software engineer at Ericsson and management consultant at The Boston Consulting Group. Paul Chonpimai, on the other hand, is Band Protocol's CPO, and a former web developer at Turfmapp and engineer at Tripadvisor. Lastly, former software engineer at Dropbox and Quora Sorawit Suriyakarn is Band Protocol's current CTO and a gold medalist competitive programmer.

In addition to the founding team, the Band Protocol LinkedIn page currently lists a total of 20 additional employees, most of which are scattered throughout Asia, and include designers, developers and engineers. The platform is also supported by major global investors, including Sequoia Capital, Dunamu & Partners, Spartan Group and [Binance](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/binance/).


#### What Makes Band Protocol Unique?

Band Protocol is designed to be faster and more efficient than competing oracle solutions and is also compatible with most blockchain and [smart contract](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/smart-contract) development frameworks — ensuring reliable data can be fed to and from multiple different blockchains. 

To achieve its cross-chain data transfer, Band Protocol plans to leverage Cosmos' still in-development Inter Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol. It remains unclear how long it will take until the IBC is operational and ready for use.

Band Protocol is designed to offer permissionless oracle creation, allowing anybody to start servicing data requests. It also offers extremely simple smart contract integration, allowing developers to begin using data from Band Protocol oracles with just a few lines of code by calling on a predefined interface. 


#### **Related Pages**:

Read about [Chainlink (LINK)](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/chainlink/) — a competing Oracle provider built on Ethereum.

Learn about [Cosmos (ATOM)](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/cosmos/) — the blockchain which Band Protocol is built on.

Get up to speed on blockchain Oracles with [CoinMarketCap Alexandria.](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/oracles-the-all-seeing-eye-that-guides-crypto-networks)

Get the latest tips, tricks, and guides at the [CoinMarketCap blog](https://blog.coinmarketcap.com/).


#### How Many Band Protocol (BAND) Coins Are There in Circulation?

Band Protocol originally released the BAND token following an [initial exchange offering (IEO)](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/initial-exchange-offering) on the Binance Launchpad in September 2019. A total of 27.37% of the total supply was sold across three token sale rounds (seed, private, and public sale).

The total supply of BAND is capped at 100 million tokens. Of this, just over 20% (20.49 million tokens) were in circulation as of November 2020. 

Overall, a total of 20% of the BAND token supply is allocated to the team, plus a further 5% to its advisors. 25.63% is allocated to the Band Protocol ecosystem. Based on the projected emission rate, a total of 100% of the total supply should be in circulation by 2025 at the earliest


### How Is the Band Protocol Network Secured?

Though BAND tokens were previously based on the ERC-20 standard, they were recently relaunched as native BAND tokens on the Band Protocol mainnet (known as BandChain). 

Holders of the older tokens are able to complete a 1:1 swap by depositing their [ERC-20](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/erc-20) BAND tokens to Binance, and then withdrawing them as native tokens. This will be necessary to participate in BAND staking — which is only available for mainnet tokens. 

Based on the Cosmos' SDK, BandChain is secured by a Byzantine fault Tolerance (BFT) [consensus](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/consensus) algorithm, which protects it against [attacks](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/51-attack). This works in combination with a delegated proof of stake (dPOS) setup, which secures the network’s oracles and allows BAND holders to earn staking rewards for delegating their stake to nodes. 


### Where Can You Buy Band Protocol (BAND)?

BAND was first tracked on public exchanges by CoinMarketCap in September 2019. Since then, it has been listed on a wide range of platforms, including several tier 1 exchanges — like Binance, [Coinbase Pro](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/coinbase-pro/) and [OKEx](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/okex/). 

The vast majority of BAND trading pairs are against [Tether (USDT)](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/tether/) and [Bitcoin (BTC)](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/), but BAND can also be traded against several fiat currencies, including GBP, USD and EUR on Coinbase Pro. For more information about buying cryptocurrency as a beginner, read our [comprehensive guide](https://coinmarketcap.com/how-to-buy-bitcoin/).

Binance

Band Protocol

Ledger

Coinbase

Trust Wallet

MetaMask

Binance Chain Wallet

Atomic wallet

BAND

Balancer is an automated market maker (AMM) that was developed on the Ethereum blockchain and launched in March 2020. It was able to raise a $3M seed round by Placeholder and Accomplice. Balancer protocol functions as a self-balancing weighted portfolio, price sensor and liquidity provider. It allows users to earn profits through its recently introduced token ($BAL) by contributing to customizable liquidity pools.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Balancer(https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/what-is-balancer.

The protocol operates a few types of pools:

Private pools give the owner governance over the pool, and make the person the sole contributor of liquidity to the pool. Also, all the parameters are mutable by the owner.

Shared pools are for those who want to become liquidity providers (LPs). The LPs are rewarded with the Balancer Pool Tokens (BPTs).

Smart pools are similar to private pools but are controlled by a smart contract. They also reward using BPTs and allow anyone to contribute liquidity to the pool.

Balancer

Compound is a DeFi lending protocol that allows users to earn interest on their cryptocurrencies by depositing them into one of several pools supported by the platform.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Compound.

When a user deposits tokens to a Compound pool, they receive cTokens in return. These cTokens represent the individual’s stake in the pool and can be used to redeem the underlying cryptocurrency initially deposited into the pool at any time. For example, by depositing ETH into a pool, you will receive cETH in return. Over time, the exchange rate of these cTokens to the underlying asset increases, which means you can redeem them for more of the underlying asset than you initially put in — this is how the interest is distributed.

On the flip side, borrowers can take a secured loan from any Compound pool by depositing collateral. The maximum loan-to-value (LTV) ratio varies based on the collateral asset, but currently ranges from 50 to 75%. The interest rate paid varies by borrowed asset and borrowers can face automatic liquidation if their collateral falls below a specific maintenance threshold.

Since the launch of the Compound mainnet in September 2018, the platform has skyrocketed in popularity, and recently passed more than $800 million in total locked value.

Compound

Synthetix is building a decentralized liquidity provisioning protocol that any protocol can tap into for various purposes. Its deep liquidity and low fees serve as a backend for many exciting protocols on both Optimism and Ethereum. Many user-facing protocols in the Synthetix ecosystem, such as Kwenta (Spot and Futures), Lyra (Options), Polynomial (Automated Options), and 1inch & Curve (Atomic Swaps), tap into Synthetix liquidity to power their protocols. Synthetix is built on Optimism and Ethereum mainnet. The Synthetix Network is collateralized by SNX, ETH, and LUSD, enabling the issuance of synthetic assets (Synths). Synths track and provide returns on the underlying asset without requiring one to directly hold the asset. This pooled collateral enables an array of on-chain, composable financial instruments backed by liquidity from Synthetix. Some of the most exciting upcoming releases from SNX are Perps V2, which hopes to enable low-fee on-chain futures trading through the usage of off-chain oracles, and Synthetix V3, which aims to rebuild the protocol to achieve its earliest goal, being a fully permissionless derivatives protocol. Learn more about Synthetix on their blog or by joining the SNX Discord.

The platform aims to broaden the cryptocurrency space by introducing non-blockchain assets, providing access to a more robust financial market.

Synthetix

UMA was founded in 2018 by Allison Lu and Hart Lambur, two ex Goldman Sachs traders, with the goal of making global markets universally fair, accessible, secure and decentralized.

The team drew inspiration from traditional finance derivatives to define an open-source protocol to allow anyone, anywhere, to design and build trustless financial contracts.

0x is an infrastructure protocol that allows users to easily trade ERC20 tokens and other assets on the many different blockchains (including Ethereum) without relying on centralized intermediaries. It is a protocol for decentralized exchange.

0x achieves this decentralized exchange functionality using a collection of open-source, publicly auditable smart contracts that work together to produce a flexible, low-friction trading protocol that developers can easily weave into their products.

The protocol is used by companies building web3 apps such as wallets, DEXes, portfolio trackes, and others. It is a used by hundreds of developers for their projects. The protocol has facilitates over $200B in trading volume since its inception. One can track its usage in its dedicated https://explorer.0x.org/.

The protocol is powered by an ERC20 governance token known as ZRX. ZRX holders can participate in protocol governance, having direct power over protocol changes and its community treasury.

0x Protocol

Ren (REN) is an open protocol built to provide interoperability and liquidity between different blockchain platforms.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Ren.

Formerly known as Republic Protocol, Ren launched RenVM, its virtual machine mainnet, in May 2020, having completed a $34 million initial coin offering (ICO) in 2018.

The protocol’s native token, REN, functions as a bond for those running nodes which power RenVM, known as Darknodes.

Ren aims to expand the interoperability, and hence accessibility, of decentralized finance (DeFi) by removing hurdles involved in liquidity between blockchains.

Storj, pronounced as “storage,” is an open-source cloud storage platform. Basically, it uses a decentralized network of nodes to host user data. The platform also secures hosted data using advanced encryption.

In a white paper published in December,2014, Storj was first introduced to the world as a concept. It was to be a decentralized peer-to-peer encrypted cloud storage platform.

Two years later, an updated white paper was published. Here, a decentralized network  — connecting users who need cloud storage space with those who have hard drive space to sell — was described. The platform was launched in late 2018.

People with hard drive space and good internet connectivity can participate in the network. They become a unit in the network, called a node. Space providers are rewarded by Storj tokens.

Storj

Curve is a decentralized exchange for stablecoins that uses an automated market maker (AMM) to manage liquidity.

Launched in January 2020, Curve is now synonymous with the decentralized finance (DeFi) phenomenon, and has seen significant growth in the second half of 2020.

In August, Curve launched a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), with CRV as its in-house token. The DAO uses Ethereum-based creation tool Aragon to connect multiple smart contracts used for users’ deposited liquidity. Issues such as governance, however, differ from Aragon in their weighting and other respects.

Curve DAO Token

Kava is a Layer-1 blockchain that combines the speed and interoperability of Cosmos with the developer power of Ethereum.

Kava was built from the ground up to optimize its resources for protocol growth, strengthened by its Cosmos EVM technology that enables maximum scalability, speed, security, and developer support.

Builders on Kava earn a share of Kava Rise's $750M developer incentive fund via the program's blockchain-based distribution method, designed to reward the top protocols every month based on usage.

Kava

Bancor is an ecosystem of decentralized, open-source protocols that promote on-chain trading and liquidity.

Its main protocol, Carbon, is a decentralized trading protocol allowing users to perform automated trading strategies using custom on-chain limit orders and range orders, with the option of combining orders together to create automated buy low, sell high strategies.

By design, Carbon orders are irreversible on execution, easily adjustable directly on-chain, and resistant to MEV sandwich attacks. These capabilities give users an unprecedented level of control and automation to perform novel trading strategies on-chain.

Fast Lane, a separate open-source arbitrage protocol, allows any user to perform arbitrage between Bancor ecosystem protocols and external on-chain exchanges and redirect arbitrage profits back to the Bancor ecosystem.

All Bancor ecosystem protocols are governed by the BancorDAO via staked BNT.

Bancor

Basic Attention Token, or BAT, is the token that powers a new blockchain-based digital advertising platform designed to fairly reward users for their attention, while providing advertisers with a better return on their ad spend.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Basic Attention Token.

This experience is delivered through the Brave Browser, where users can watch privacy-preserving adverts and receive BAT rewards for doing so. On the other hand, advertisers can deliver targeted ads to maximize engagement and cut down losses due to ad fraud and abuse.

The Basic Attention Token itself is the unit of reward in this advertising ecosystem, and is exchanged between advertisers, publishers and users. Advertisers pay for their advertising campaigns in BAT tokens. Out of this budget, a small portion is distributed to advertisers, while 70% is distributed to users — whereas the intermediaries that typically drive up advertising costs are cut out of the equation to improve cost-efficiency.

Basic Attention Token launched in 2017 following one of the fastest sell-out initial coin offerings (ICOs) of all time, with the platform raising a total of $35 million in under a minute. Since then, it has rolled out its attention-based advertising experience to users in most countries through its Brave Rewards program.

As of November 2020, the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada had the most active advertising campaigns.

Basic Attention Token

The 1inch Network unites decentralized protocols whose synergy enables the most lucrative, fastest, and protected operations in the DeFi space.

The 1inch Network's first protocol is a decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator solution that searches deals across multiple liquidity sources, offering users better rates than any individual exchange. The 1inch Aggregation Protocol incorporates the Pathfinder algorithm for finding the best paths across over 400+ liquidity sources on 12 chains: Ethereum, BNB Chain, Polygon, Avalanche, Optimism, Arbitrum, Fantom, Gnosis Chain, Klaytn, Aurora, zkSync and Base.

In just over two years the 1inch DEX aggregator has reached 1M users and surpassed $150B in overall volume on the Ethereum network alone.

The 1inch Limit Order Protocol facilitates the most innovative and flexible limit order swap opportunities in DeFi. The protocol’s features, such as dynamic pricing, conditional orders, and extra RFQ support, power various implementations, including stop-loss and trailing stop orders, as well as auctions.

The 1inch Wallet is a multichain mobile platform that provides an easy-to-navigate interface with secure storing, transaction, and staking capabilities. This versatile wallet was built from the ground up to streamline interacting with 1inch’s features.

The 1INCH token is the governance and utility token of the 1inch Network. 1INCH holders can stake their tokens to participate in the 1inch Network's DAO governance, including the 1inch DAO Treasury management. Also, holders can choose resolvers and earn a part of their fees.

With the 1inch Fusion, users can stake 1INCH tokens to receive Unicorn Power (UP), then subsequently delegate their UP to any 1inch Fusion Resolver to start receiving rewards from them. When staking, there is the option to set a custom or preset lock period. User’s st1INCH tokens cannot be unstaked/withdrawn without penalty until the designated lock period expires.

In December 2020, 1inch raised $12 million in Series A funding, led by Pantera Capital, with others including ParaFi Capital, Blockchain Capital, Nima Capital, and Spartan Group. The funding round was conducted through a SAFT (simple agreement for future tokens) sale.

In December 2021, 1inch has closed a $175 million Series B round, led by Amber Group. Among about 50 investors that participated in the funding event are Jane Street, VanEck, Fenbushi Capital, Alameda Research, Celsius, Nexo, Tribe Capital and Gemini Frontier Fund.

1inch Network

LRC is the Ethereum-based cryptocurrency token of Loopring, an open protocol designed for the building of decentralized crypto exchanges.

In 2020, the average daily trading volume of the entire cryptocurrency market fluctuated in the approximate range of $50-$200 million. Most of that trading is conducted on centralized cryptocurrency exchanges — online platforms operated by private companies that store users’ funds and facilitate the matching of buy and sell orders.

Such platforms have a number of downsides common to all of them, so a new type of exchange — decentralized— has emerged to try to alleviate these disadvantages. However, fully decentralized exchanges are not without their own flaws.

Loopring’s purported goal is to combine centralized order matching with decentralized on-blockchain order settlement into a hybridized product that will take the best aspects of both centralized and decentralized exchanges.

LRC tokens became available to the public during an initial coin offering (ICO) in August 2017, while the Loopring protocol was first deployed on Ethereum mainnet in December 2019.

Loopring

Origin Protocol develops web3 technologies with the intention of bringing non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and decentralized finance (DeFi) to the masses. The protocol’s unique tooling and diverse partnerships help in realizing these goals. Origin Protocol has two flagship products: Origin Story (governed by OGN), and Origin Dollar (governed by OGV).

Origin Story is a white label NFT marketplace solution that works with disrupters in various sectors by leveraging non-fungible tokens. The platform hosts NFT marketplaces and tooling in various industries, including the real estate, profile picture, music, art and entertainment industries.

Some of Origin Story’s partners include Roofstock onChain, Pudgy Penguins, Sappy Seals, Paris Hilton, 3LAU, BT, Inspiration4, and The Doge Pound. Origin Story Marketplaces seek to cast a wide net in various industries being impacted by NFTs, rather than focusing on any one area in particular. Investors may see OGN as the ‘picks and shovels’ approach to investing in NFTs.

Origin Protocol

Self-described as "Polkadot's wild cousin," Kusama is an experimental blockchain platform that is designed to provide a massively interoperable and scalable framework for developers.

Kusama is built on Substrate — a blockchain building kit developed by Parity Technologies. Kusama has almost the same codebase as Polkadot — one of the most successful interoperable blockchains.

By deploying on Kusama, fast-paced projects gain access to a highly scalable, interoperable sharded network, with features that are not yet available on Polkadot. To that end, Kusama describes itself as a “canary network.”

The platform is designed to provide a testbed for developers looking to innovate and deploy their own blockchain and can be used as a preparatory network before launching on Polkadot — though many projects opt to stick with Kusama for their final product.

Kusama benefits from a low barrier to entry for deploying parachains, low bond requirements for validators, and is most commonly used by early-stage startups and for experimentation.

Kusama

SushiSwap (SUSHI) is an example of an automated market maker (AMM). An increasingly popular tool among cryptocurrency users, AMMs are decentralized exchanges which use smart contracts to create markets for any given pair of tokens.

SushiSwap launched in September 2020 as a fork of Uniswap, the AMM which has become synonymous with the decentralized finance (DeFi) movement and associated trading boom in DeFi tokens.

SushiSwap aims to diversify the AMM market and also add additional features not previously present on Uniswap, such as increased rewards for network participants via its in-house token, SUSHI.

SushiSwap

OMG Network, formerly known as OmiseGo, is a non-custodial, layer-2 scaling solution built for the Ethereum blockchain. As an Ethereum scaling solution, OMG Network is designed to allow users to transfer ETH and ERC20 tokens significantly faster and cheaper than when transacting directly on the Ethereum network.

The network is based on a novel scaling solution called MoreViable Plasma, which uses a sidechain architecture to group several transactions off-chain into a batch, which can then be verified as a single transaction on the Ethereum root chain. According to OMG Network, this technology has the potential to scale Ethereum to thousands of transactions per second (TPS) — instead of the 10 to 14 tps Ethereum 1.0 is currently capable of.

The network is powered by the OMG utility token, which can be used as one of the payment methods for fees on the OMG Network, and will eventually be stakable — helping to secure the network in return for rewards.

OMG Network

Yearn.finance is an aggregator service for decentralized finance (DeFi) investors, using automation to allow them to maximize profits from yield farming.

Its goal is to simplify the ever-expanding DeFi space for investors who are not technically minded or who wish to interact in a less committal manner than serious traders.

Launched in February 2020, the service, formerly known as iEarn, has seen huge growth in recent months as new products debuted and developers released in-house token YFI.

yearn.finance

Enjin Coin is a project of Enjin, a company that provides an ecosystem of interconnected, blockchain-based gaming products. Enjin's flagship offering is the Enjin Network, a social gaming platform through which users can create websites and clans, chat, and host virtual item stores.

Enjin allows game developers to tokenize in-game items on the Ethereum blockchain. It uses Enjin Coin, an ERC-20 token, to back the digital assets issued using its platform, meaning that items can be bought, sold and traded with real-world value.

Enjin Coin was first announced in July 2017, and it launched on the Ethereum mainnet in June 2018.

Enjin Coin (ENJ) is a digital store of value used to back the value of blockchain assets like non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
Every asset minted with the Enjin Platform contains ENJ, a minting resource which is locked inside NFTs and removed from circulation. Minting blockchain assets with ENJ provides a variety of benefits to creators and users:

Infuses them with a reserve value

Ensures their transparency and scarcity

Gives them instant liquidity

Provides utility in games and apps

Anti-inflationary

Enjin's "melting" functionality allows users to destroy their blockchain assets at any time to retrieve the ENJ value from within.

The Enjin blockchain ecosystem aims to offer software products that make it easy for everyone to develop, trade, monetize, and market with blockchain.

Founded in 2009, Enjin has roots in the gaming industry, with the company’s first product, a gaming community platform called the Enjin Network, growing to 20 million users over the course of a decade.

In 2017 following an ICO, Enjin established itself as a leading blockchain ecosystem developer, building a suite of software products that enable anyone to easily mint, manage, trade, distribute, and integrate blockchain assets.

Enjin’s co-founder Witek Radomski wrote the code for one of the first ever non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and is also the co-author of the ERC-1155 Ethereum token standard.

Built on top of an on-chain infrastructure, the Enjin ecosystem enables game developers and businesses of all sizes to use tokenized digital assets as part of their acquisition, retention, engagement, and monetization strategies. The Enjin ecosystem is fueled by Enjin Coin (ENJ), a cryptocurrency used to back the value of blockchain assets.

Enjin Coin

Tezos is a high-performing blockchain and open-source platform for assets and applications, with a strong focus on code security, on-chain governance, and decentralization. Tezos 2.0, the upcoming step in the evolution of Tezos, aims to improve scalability (via layer 2s), composability, and to implement support to mainstream programming languages (like Javascript, Typescript, Python, and many others).

Initially built with formal verification in mind, the Tezos protocol enables builders to avoid bugs when developing smart contracts, making it particularly suited to applications that require a high degree of security and certainty.

Tezos’ LPoS (Liquid Proof-of-Stake) consensus mechanism enables any stakeholder to take part, directly or by delegation, in the consensus process, and to be rewarded for securing the network. Rather uniquely, Tezos’ on-chain governance system also enables stakeholders to create and vote on protocol upgrade proposals. This pioneering system allows the protocol to self-amend and upgrade itself without leading to a split (or fork) in the blockchain, empowering the community without slowing down innovation.

First proposed in 2014 and launched in 2018, the Tezos Mainnet has a proven track record of running uninterrupted ever since, having earned a strong reputation for technical excellence and a supportive community.