Band Protocol August 2021 Community Update
By: Kevin Lu
Tags: Blockchain, Community, Oracle, Bandprotocol, Defi

Dear Band Community,

August has marked another month of significant progress for Band Protocol with rigorous migration tests in the lead-up to the BandChain Phase 2 Mainnet launch. During this time, we have also partnered with six major DeFi and blockchain platforms that are using Band Protocol oracles in production to secure hundreds of millions of dollars in value locked in smart contracts.

Congratulations to Beta Finance, Omm Finance and Eden Network who have launched on the Mainnet in August!

Tech Updates

In August, the total number of oracle requests on the BandChain decentralized oracle network continued to grow and surpass 9,992,860, less than ten thousand short of 10M fulfilled data requests in production without any oracle incidents or failure.

Notable BandChain Update

We released v2.2.0 which includes various upgrades and features in the BandChain codebase such as:

Upgrade BandChain to Cosmos-sdk v0.43 and ibc-go v1.0.1.

Use Grant in authz module to manage authorization of reporters instead of MsgAddReporter/MsgRemoveReporter.

Remove request pool for IBC oracle request and use a given relayer account instead.

Add oracle script features — GetPrepareTime() and GetExecuteTime() — for retrieving prepare and execute blocktime respectively.

Improve yoda retrying logic when unable to connect to a node.

We have a new BandChain Phase 2 (Laozi) Testnet (#3) with the new candidate release for the Mainnet migration and announced it to validators to support. Alongside our validators, our team has also completed rehearsal migrations on mock networks with the new Laozi candidate using the same procedure and set up to simulate the migration in production — both internally and in another instance with our Mainnet validators.

Discovering a Critical Issue in Cosmos SDK v0.43

Our team has also discovered and investigated a vulnerability issue in ibc-go v1.0.0, once identified our engineers promptly relayed to the Cosmos/ibc-go team to release a new version with the patch for the attack vector.

If this issue were to arise on any production chain, the chain will be vulnerable to an attack vector resulting in a consensus break causing the chain to stop. Our team has prepared full summary of the bug which was released to the public once the fix was deployed.

Security is very important to us and we go above and beyond to make sure our partners’ tech is safe.

Notable CosmoScan Update

Our CosmoScan update begins with patching the new Cosmos-sdk v0.43 to be supported on the block explorer, this is currently live on the Laozi Testnet 3. There is also support for new two new messages — grant (for grant account to report data) and exec (to report data for validators).

The time format on the request graph has also been updated to be displayed by DD-MM-YY. Our team is currently migrating from Reason to ReScript for supporting the upcoming libraries.

Partnership Developments

Eden Network Partnership

Eden Network, a non-consensus breaking transaction ordering protocol designed to minimize miner extractable value (MEV) on Ethereum, has collaborated with Band Protocol to provide front-running resistant oracles for developers and DApps.

We are proud to share that one of the Tenant Slots upon launch has been secured by $BAND to deliver an even higher degree of price security and reliability in our oracle solution that is used to secure billions of dollars in value with additional frontrunning resistance.

While the scalability of the BandChain decentralized oracle network can provide updates at an extremely tight frequency, there is always the potential for malicious frontrunners to siphon value during times of network congestion.

With Eden’s transaction ordering network, Band Protocol is able to provide unparalleled security as a decentralized oracle for the leading blockchain applications. Using Band Oracles ensures that value accrual to protocol users of our partners are optimized.

As one of the owners of the Tenant Slots on Eden Network, Band Protocol has a maximum transaction gas limit of 1.5M which will be shared with Alpha Finance Lab, a close partner using $BAND Oracles to secure billions of dollars, to fill out the remaining gas capacity.

Alpha Finance is exploring using Eden Network’s priority queue to operate a community liquidation bot for Alpha Homora v1 and v2 which may potentially redistribute liquidated assets back to ALPHA stakers — further enhancing the value accrual in the Alpha Ecosystem.

Together with Eden Network, Alpha Finance Lab — Band Protocol is setting a new oracle update and security standard for the entire blockchain industry.

Fantom Partnership Update

Band Protocol has reinforced the strategic partnership with DeFi platform Fantom. We are proud to announce that $BAND has deployed a validator node on the Opera Mainnet which has rallied 1.46M FTM in the delegation from the $FTM community.

We are excited to further our relationship with their Fantom team as we continue to collaborate on the integration of Band Oracles and introduce new products into their ecosystem including Verifiable Random Function (VRF) in the future.

We look forward to bringing more decentralized price feeds to the Fantom Opera Mainnet and expanding the pathway for scalable, secure DeFi applications to be built. Stay tuned as we share more progress within the Fantom ecosystem in DeFi, gaming, and more!

Cronos Partnership

Band Protocol is proud to share an integration with Cronos Chain, the scalable EVM-compatible chain developed by the Crypto.com team, to integrate Band Oracles for decentralized and end-to-end customizable oracles for all applications on Cronos.

The Crypto.org chain is also built based on the Cosmos-SDK which will be able to relay Band Oracle data via IBC. This enables a seamless transition for DeFi DApps built on Cronos using Band Oracles to function on a cross-chain level.

The collaboration also extends into creating a custom oracle script for the Cronos price feed and having the Band Standard Dataset integration-ready for Cronos developers to access over 230+ price oracles.

Band Protocol is always excited to support and provide engineering resources to assist developer teams. If you are a developer excited to build with secure and decentralized oracles, we encourage you to connect with our team.

Beta Finance Partnership

Band Protocol is proud to work alongside BetaFinance for their upcoming launch in 2 days! $BAND oracles have been integrated for users to lend, borrow, and short assets on Beta Verified Markets — expanding later to support user-defined money markets.

Beta Finance is the first Alpha Finance launchpad project and is backed by Spartan Group, DeFiance Capital, Delphi Ventures, Multicoin Capital and Parafi Capital.

Stay tuned for more details on the integration and strategic partnership to support Beta Finance.

Beta Finance will be supporting Verified Market for $BAND on Thursday August 19! This means users will be able to borrow and lend ERC20 $BAND on Ethereum while earning additional rewards from Beta_Finance as an incentivized market.

0Chain Partnership

0Chain, a high-performance decentralized storage network, has partnered with Band Protocol to enable metadata mapping, token price feeds, and more through secure and customizable decentralized oracles.

0Chain enables scalable storage on a distributed level that allows for high transaction throughput as well as high data availability and now higher security through Band Oracles for which enterprises can leverage for real-time external information.

Through this integration, Band Protocol and 0Chain will collaborate to provide a secure Storage layer, connecting smart contracts to safe, verifiable data that also decreases the risk of data breaches while simultaneously enhancing availability and privacy.

Band Protocol is designed to be customizable for any developer’s need. While our main user base is composed of decentralized financial projects, Band Oracles can be used to secure virtually any project with a need for reliable, trusted external information.

Closing Remarks

With the BandChain Phase 2 Mainnet migration rehearsals completed, our next steps are to submit a formal governance proposal before moving forward with the upgrade in production. Stay tuned for the proposal, we look forward to receiving your feedback and participation in the voting process!