As you know, smart contracts are one of the most important achievements of blockchains and cryptocurrencies. However, not being able to have efficient interoperability with off-chain resources has always been their main challenge. If smart contracts and decentralized applications want to gain mass adoption, they have to interact with off-chain resources and receive the required data. Projects like Chainlink and Band Protocol are here to overcome this challenge. We have previously gone through Chainlink, and in this article, we want to go through its most serious rival, Band Protocol. Stay with us.

What is Band Protocol?

Band Protocol is a “decentralized oracle” that transfers off-chain data into blockchains and smart contracts. Decentralized oracles are protocols that consist of a number of nodes. When requiring a specific piece of data, all these nodes gather data from different resources. They then share the obtained results and reach a consensus over the most valid answer. Finally, they report the valid answer to the smart contract.

Using this decentralized method has two benefits:

• First, smart contracts don’t need to rely on centralized sources, and they follow the ethics of decentralization;
• Second, since data is gathered from different resources, the possibility of errors is minimized, and the final answer is more reliable.

Chainlink is another popular decentralized oracle. However, there are some differences between Chainlink and Band Protocol. The first difference is that Chainlink is based on Ethereum, but Band Protocol has an independent blockchain called Band Chain. The second difference is that Band Protocol is faster, and it requires lower fees, in comparison with Chainlink.

How does Band Protocol work?

As you have figured out, Band Protocol’s final aim is to gather real-world data, and transfer it into blockchains. This protocol also relates APIs to smart contracts, and enables fast, cheap, and efficient exchange of data. To better understand how Band Protocol works, we can use an example. Imagine a decentralized exchange (DEX) needs the price of a cryptocurrency in a centralized exchange. This DEX has to first send its request to Band Protocol. Band Protocol nodes connect to that centralized exchange using API. They gather the required data, share it with each other, reach a consensus, and send the final report to the DEX. So, we can say that Band Protocol acts like a bridge between decentralized applications and the off-chain world.

Who created Band Protocol?

Band Protocol was cofounded by Soravis Sarinawakoon, Paul Chonpiami, and Sorawit Suriyakam in 2017. Soravis Sarinawakoon is now the CEO of Band Protocol. Before Band Protocol, he worked as a software engineer at the Ericson company. Chonpiami also worked as a web designer, and as an engineer at Trip Advisor. Suriyakam is the third person of the group who was formerly a professional engineer at Dropbox and Cora. He now works as the CTO of Band Protocol. These three form the main team of Band Protocol, but we have to mention that Band Protocol consists of a lot of other skillful engineers and developers. Besides, it has strong investors, including Sequoia, Spartan Group, and Binance.

The BAND token; market cap and price history

At the time of writing, each unit of BAND is being traded at $1.77. Its all-time high goes back to April 2021, when its price went above $20. Band Protocol has the rank 362 among world’s largest cryptocurrencies by market cap. Its market cap (at the time of writing) is more than 62 million dollars. More than 35,000,000 BAND tokens are now in circulation. This token has a total supply of 100,000,000 units, but it hasn’t determined a max supply.

BAND wallets

BAND is an ERC-20 token. So, it’s obvious that you can use all Ethereum-supporting wallets to store BAND. Some of the best options you can consider include:

• Ledger (hardware)
• Trezor (hardware)
• Trust Wallet (software)
• SafePal (software)
• Atomic Wallet (software)
• MyEtherWallet (software)
• MetaMask (software)

Conclusion

Band Protocol is a fascinating blockchain project with a real purpose. Oracles are of great importance in the world of blockchains. With the ever-growing popularity of smart contracts and decentralized applications, we can claim that oracles are even as important as blockchains. Without oracles, blockchains can’t access off-chain, real-world data, and this means that decentralized applications can’t work properly. Do you think Band Protocol will surpass its strong rival, Chainlink, in terms of popularity? Share your opinions with us.