Exchange Band Protocol (BAND)

Band Protocol (BAND) is a token powering the eponymous network, built on an independent blockchain (BandChain) to provide blockchain-agnostic oracle services. Band Protocol was founded in 2017, and the BAND token became available for public trading in September 2019 through an IEO.

Band Protocol is designed to solve the same problem as all the blockchain oracles, which is the lack of access to the real-world data on the blockchain. There’s a growing demand for this kind of data following the expansion of the DeFi space, as well as the popularity of dApps in general, since staying inside the closed system of blockchain severely limits their use cases. Using oracles to bring this data to the chain carries its own problems, though: as a “middleman” layer, an oracle may slow down dApps using it or even become a point of security failure. Band Protocol overcomes speed and scalability issues by using its own blockchain to handle data requests in combination with Cosmos-developed Inter-Blockchain Communication Protocol (IBC), which brings the results to any blockchain for further use. The network is secured by a Byzantine fault tolerance (BFT) mechanism and Delegated Proof-of-Stake (dPoS) consensus protocol as an additional safety boost. Users must stake their BAND tokens to become validators to earn rewards, or they may delegate their tokens to an existing validator. The token is also used for governance.