CryptoAcademy Season 3 Week 7/ Home Work Post for Professor @allbert / Blockchain Oracle
Introduction
Dear Steemians,
I welcome you to another day in CryptoAcademy. I am Kehinde Micheal, and my username is @msquaretwins. I am happy to be submitting my homework task for Professor @allbert who has introduced us to "Blockchain Oracle" a topic which is not commonly discussed or known in the world of crypto. He has extensively discussed the concepts behind blockchain oracle. Therefore, I also will be developing a post explaining a Blockchain Oracle. Follow me closely as we take the journey together.
QUESTION
Develop in a detailed and extensive way a post explaining some other Blockchain Oracle. (Chainlink will not be allowed)
What are the topics you should cover as a minimum?
1- History and Description. Does it have any token or cryptocurrency associated? Explain.
2- Functionalities and real-life applications.
3- Pros and Cons.
4- Future developments and new projects
I will be explaining Band Protocol Blockchain Oracle.
Before we discuss Band Protocol, let's first explain the word "blockchain oracle".
Blockchain oracles are services that stand as intermediary between decentralized system and the real world. Blockchain is a decentralized system and cannot relate with the data from outside world directly, it therefore needs a system that will convert real data from external system to the language it understands. The system that process this data and send it to blockchain is called blockchain oracle. Blockchain oracle attests, certifies and testifies the reality and originality of every external data
Band Protocol
What is Band Protocol ?
Band Protocol is a blockchain oracle that relates information from outside world to smart contract. The information gotten from external source and APIs are processed and verified by Band Protocol before sending it to blockchain. Band protocol also aggregate information from external source thereby making it compatible with diverse blockchain. Additionally, this oracle makes it easy for smart contract developer to request for data like numbers, finance information, sport, weather etc.
History and Description of Band Protocol
Band Protocol, otherwise known as Band Oracle or Band Chain is a project that was founded in 2017 with the aim of aggregating and connecting real world data and APIs to smart contracts. It was also developed to provide quick and reliable transaction why also improving scalability.
It was initially released on ethereum blockchain but band protocol later developed its blockchain by using Cosmos SDK.
Three people partnered together to found this project. Thd project was launched in Thailand by three individuals. The names of the founders are Paul Nattapatsiri, Soravis Srinawakoon, Sorawit Suriyakarn.
Soravis Srinawakoon
Soravis Srinawakoon went to Standford university where he graduated as Computer scientist. His second degree was in the field of management science and engineering from the same school. He has worked as software engineer, teaching assistant at Standford University, and Management Consultant at Boston Consulting group. He is currently the Co-founder and CEO of Band protocol.
Sorawit Suriyakarn
Sorawit Suriyakarn studied Computer engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Currently he is the CTO of the Brand Protocol.
Paul Nattapatsiri
Paul Nattapatsiri holds Bsc in Computer science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. During his undergraduate days, he worked as a web developer for Turfmapp in Chicago, Illinois. Paul is a Co-founder of Band Protocol and currently works as a Chief Product Officer (CPO).
Band protocol launched ERC-20 on Etherum in September 2019 but released another updated version in 2020 and which is called BandChain. This new version was released in four phases, phase 0 to 3. The phase 0 was the ground phase of BandChain which allow the transfer of BAND. This phase was launched on June 2020. Phase 1 was the creation of data and this was achieved on 15th of October 2020. The phase 2 was about the APIs provider. This enable the providers to give out quality information while earning on chain. The last phase was about the verification of identity and payment options of the oracle.
Band protocol raised about 3 million dollar in the year 2019 from different capital firms. Also, about 6 Million dollar was raised during the initial coin offering.
Band Protocol Token
Band Protocol Token is called BAND. This is the native token of Band protocol. This serves as a fee used by node to authenticate the external data sent to blockchain. The initial coin offering was done for this Token in 2019 and about 6 Million was generated during this offering. The medium used for ICO was Binance Launchpad and about 12 Million BAND was sold.
The initial supply for this token was 100 million BAND and the circulating supply is 35 Million BAND
The All-Time Low of this coin is $0.203625 which happened in Nov 25, 2019, and the All-Time High was made on 15th April 2021 with $22.83.
According to coinmarketcap, the price of BAND is $8.04 with Market cap of $1,949,064,755,298.
Functionalities and real-life applications of Band Protocol
Let's first go to band protocol website to see how it looks like.
• Type band protocol on google search bar and click the first result as seen in the image below.
• The band protocol home page will appear for you as we have it in the right screenshot below.
• Then scroll down to see some features of band protocol, like connect smart contract, oracle scripts, band protocol compatibility etc.
• You can click the horizontal icon at the top right corner of the page to see about band protocol, Bandchain oracle problem etc.
Band protocol is a decentralized blockchain oracle that connect decentralized application and Smart contract to external data. The advantage and functionalities of this blockchain oracle can never be overemphasized. Band protocol is not only available on ethereum blockchain, it was also built on Cosmos network which allows interoperability of the oracle.
The new version of band protocol is called BandChain and it is reliable, faster, and user friendly. The interoperability of BandChain makes it possible for Band protocol support most smart contracts. This is unlike Chainlink oracle which only support Ethereum decentralized application or contracts that are agreed upon on the Ethereum smart chain.
Band protocol achieves it function by sourcing data and scripting. Data sourcing is the recoverable of data or information from external source. The scripting is the oracle scripts. What this does is to execute the sourced data and aggregate it a manner presentable to decentralized application or smart contracts.
Network participants who hold the Band native token help in the verification of data via Delegated Proof-of-Stake in band protocol. Validators propose on new blocks and then vote on the authenticity of data. Validators used in band protocol is similar to other blockchain. As they do this work, they also earn a fee. Upon data request from Smart contract, the validators are selected randomly to verify data and the submit a detailed report to Bandchain. Each validator report is then grouped together as a whole as a final result. This result is then stored in the band protocol and then becomes available and is sent to smart contracts and other blockchain. Reference Article
The Aim of Band Protocol
The surety of data or information in the market can not e vouched for. There are many of them that needs to be authenticated and affirmed as real and genuine ones. Decentralized application get data from decentralized oracle. The core function of Band protocol is the resolution of real world data from external source for the use of blockchain and smart contracts. Band protocol therefore sends the data or information to decentralized application and the integrity of this data is verified through BAND tokens.
Pros and Cons of Band Protocol
Pros
Scalability and Speed: Band protocol was developed to improve speed and huge amount of data at the same time to many decentralized application with minimum latency.
Compatibility: Ability to serves many decentralized application and smart contracts is also another goal of creating band protocol. The verification and authenticity of data is also part of its compatibility.
Flexibility:- Ability to support many means of data collection from external source.
Decentralized Nature: Band protocol is a decentralized oracle which used the consesus mechanism called Delegated Proof of Stake (DPOS) and this helps the security of the system.
Cons
Dependent of Operation: The continuous function of Band protocol oracle depends on the data providers. Therefore its operation is affected by the data providers.
Validator:- Band protocol oracle depend solely on the operation of validators. Without the input of validators, band protocol can not function.
Holding Band token is a liquidity token, it can not be held. I.e the token is not exchangeable, it can only be staked or delegated to the validator.
Level of Input Selection of validators is independent of the investment made in form of capital to the system but participation.
Band Protocol Investors
Band protocol has many investors who are consistently supporting the band project. The list of these investors are listed below.
Band Protocol Partnered Exchanges
As a result of growth achieved by Band protocol and the difference it making in the world of blockchain and decentralized system, a number of exchanges have partnered with band protocol. This exchanges are listed in the screenshot below.
Future developments and new projects
In April this year, Band Protocol announced their incorporation with google cloud public data to allows immediate analysis of data. With this, cloud service, blockchain or smart contracts can leverage on data from band oracle.
Part of it new project for the year 2021 is the expansion of engineering team and monitoring tool which will allow the oracle feed to detect any abnormality in the dataset and fixed this every 24/7. This would be the work of Band protocol engineer. They would keep testing and developing fault equipment which will help in the fixation of data abnormality.
Band protocol also have it as their goal to get more validators through campaigns and documentation. Also the cross chain used for band protocol is manually monitored, but with the release of stargate by band protocol, there will be easy integration of bandchain to other blockchain.
Additionally, commercialization of on chain data is another topic of interest for band protocol project. This would be under the release of Bandchain phase 2 which will help both data and APIs provider to earn reward as they supply quality information or data. Band protocol is working with CoinGeco, Brave new coin etc to start the revenue generation which will the provider to earn their reward.
Apart from this Band protocol has completed the deployment of opera mainet to better reinforce its partnership with Fantom.
Conclusion
The result of blockchain technology has given rise to many developments which incluse and not limited to the development of decentralized apps, blockchain oracles among others. Blockchain oracle is therefore one of the major frame of blockchain that helps in the interaction of smart contracts or decentralized applications with the external information or data and APIs.
Band protocol has proven to be best of all oracle because of it flexibility and compatibility. It ability to relate external information to other blockchain apart from ethereum blockchain make it suitable for many decentralized applications. Many development has been proposed and establish within the short period of its existence. Therefore, the future of band protocol is as glitters as anything you can think of.
My appreciation goes to our amiable professor @allbert who has introduced us to this great topic. Thank you prof.
Thank you for reading
Written by: @msquaretwins
Cc:- @allbert
Hello, @msquaretwins Thank you for participating in Steemit Crypto Academy season 3 week 7.
Thank you professor @allbert.