The first quarter of 2019 was another busy one for the Bancor team & community. In the last three months, we:
- Unified Bancor’s Ethereum and EOS networks into a single interface — Bancor’s new Unified Wallet — enabling one-click conversions and seamless token management between the two blockchains.
- Added functionality to Bancor’s Web App including new token analysis tools, Ledger support, Free EOS Accounts & more.
- Saw popular ERC20 & EOS tokens added to the Bancor Network & major integrations of Bancor Protocol including in the Samsung S10 smartphone via Enjin Wallet & the EOS Resource Exchange (REX).
- Hit 1,500+ users in Bancor’s Kenya community currency pilot (Sarafu Network) and reached 70% usage in target villages.
This report is a closer look at Bancor’s Q1 progress across:
Development
Unified Wallet
Bancor’s intensive work on inter-chain infrastructure paid off in Q1, with the long-awaited release of the unified wallet connecting the Ethereum and EOS blockchains. The new wallet gives users:
- A free EOS account, free EOS resources (RAM, CPU & NET) and the ability to manage blockchain resources directly from your wallet.
- Seamless management of 500+ ERC20 & EOS tokens in one non-custodial wallet.
- One-click conversions between ERC20 and EOS tokens across 9700+ token pairs.
- Available on any mobile or desktop device.
- Airdropped ERC20 + EOS tokens directly to your wallet, & much more.
Open a new Bancor Wallet or upgrade an existing Bancor Wallet today.
This release has laid the groundwork for future blockchain integrations — which we expect will take less time to ship thanks to Bancor’s extensible cross-chain bridge, BancorX. We deeply appreciate the community’s support and continued feedback as we improve the unified wallet and web app.
Media Highlights: Cointelegraph, CryptoGlobe, Bitcoin Exchange Guide, Coinspeaker.
Other Q1 Additions to Bancor Web App:
- Ledger Support — you can now use Bancor with your Ledger (along with existing options Trezor, MetaMask, Scatter.)
- New Token Pages — interactive price history charts displayed in ETH, USD & EUR.
- Enhanced Portfolio Management — filter tokens by blockchain, view your token holdings in-line on the discovery page.
Q1 Bancor Network Statistics (as of 3/31/2019):
- Tokens on Bancor Network — 138
- Token pairs on Bancor Network — 9,591
- Liquidity staked to Bancor Network — $12.7M+
- Active wallets on the Bancor Network in Q1 — 11,032 (+40% from Q4 2018)
- Blockchains supported: Ethereum, EOS, POA
- Employees at Bancor Network R&D office — 50
Ecosystem
Samsung & Enjin
The announcement that Bancor will be featured in the new Samsung Galaxy S10 smartphone highlighted two major areas of growth for the Bancor Protocol:
- Mobile Hardware: As blockchain-enabled services make their way onto smartphones and other devices, Bancor Protocol enables seamless usability of tokens in consumer facing products and ecosystems.
- Gaming: Automated liquidity is allowing gaming platforms to create an entirely new segment of e-commerce ecosystems with open liquidity channels. Thanks to Bancor’s integration with Enjin, users are now able to convert in-game items and other tokens on the Bancor Network without leaving the Enjin app. Enjin users have already created hundreds of thousands of in-game items which are instantly transferable for ERC20 tokens.
Watch Youtuber Boxmining demo Enjin & Bancor on the Samsung Galaxy S10.
EOS Resource Exchange (REX)
EOSIO announced it will use the Bancor Protocol in its EOS Resource Exchange (REX). REX allows users to earn fees renting out CPU and NET, resources which are needed by users to interact with the EOS blockchain. Block.one CTO Dan Larimer described how REX works last August:
“A EOS holder can lend their tokens to the Resource Exchange and will receive REX tokens for their EOS at the current book value of the Resource Exchange. The REX will generate fees by lending the EOS which will increase the book value. At any time the holder of REX tokens can convert REX back to EOS at book value.”
Behind the scenes, derivations of the Bancor Protocol manage conversions and pricing of REX tokens via Bancor relays. We are thrilled that the protocol is being used as a fundamental building block in one of the world’s most widely-used blockchains.
More Integrations of Bancor Protocol:
- Japan-based Financie is a social network built with the Bancor Protocol, allowing users to support the skills and dreams of other users on the platform. Users support “heroes” by purchasing their “hero cards”, which are tradable in Financie’s marketplace. Press coverage of Financie (in Japanese): The Bridge, Note
- EOS-based game Asteroid Rush uses the Bancor Protocol to “make its in-game economy function like a real one. That is, the market value of resources and goods sold at auction is determined by the correlation of supply and demand.”
Are you building with Bancor? We’d love to learn more — share your project with us at contact@bancor.network
New Tokens on the Network
Twelve new tokens were added to the Bancor Network in Q1 2019, ranging from stablecoins to dApp developer tools. That brings the total number of live tokens to 138, creating more than 9,500 token pairs across EOS & Ethereum.
- CoTrader (COT)
- EQUA (EQUA)
- ZOS (ZOS)
- Constant (CONST)
- Kuende (KUE)
- Rabbit Exchange (RB)
- Success Life (SXL)
- Raiden Network (RDN)
- Aragon (ANT)
- Santiment Network Token (SAN)
- Carbon (CUSD)
- pEOS (PEOS)
Upcoming New Tokens:
Community
Explanations of Bancor Protocol
Bancor witnessed a surge of interest in decentralized liquidity protocols in the beginning of 2019 and we were thrilled to see the crypto community meet this growing demand for knowledge and information with powerful explanations of Bancor’s underlying mechanics:
EOS Weekly:
- Max Dapp: Bancor Wallet Review
- Cypherglass: Bancor Functionality in Samsung S10
- CryptoDaily: Why Liquidity Networks Are the Future of Decentralized Exchanges
- Block.one: Analysis of Bancor Equations Supporting REX
- CryptoLark: Monetary Freedom & Unleashing Blockchain’s Power with Galia Benartzi
- Meet the Block Producers: Episode 1 w/ Eyal Hertzog
Bancor also published a number of articles on our vision for the network, the protocol and issues affecting the industry:
- Balancing Openness vs. Safety in DeFi: Mitigating Front Running on Bancor — an explanation of how the abusive practice of front running harms open financial networks, and how Bancor tackles the problem.
- Why BNT is Crucial to the Bancor Network — explains why Bancor used a custom token as its network token, instead of a blockchain-level token like ETH or EOS.
- Bernard Lietaer: A Financial Justice Warrior Who Fought for Freedom of Currency — a tribute to Bancor Foundation’s former president and Chief Monetary Officer, whose ideas are the driving force behind the Foundation’s vision for monetary diversity.
To round out an action-packed quarter, Bancor was recognized by Dapp.com as the #1 ranked dapp with the most active community.
Sarafu Network
After 6 months testing and deploying community currencies across various urban and rural areas in Kenya, with 9 village-level tokens live and thousands of weekly transactions, we have identified specific regions in Kenya that are adopting the currencies at a rapid rate, with upwards of 70% penetration in certain target villages.
These communities are teaching us how cryptocurrencies can be used as a means of exchange as they continue to grow and show extremely promising usage patterns. In early March, Sarafu Network surpassed 1000 wallets on the network, and today, just a few weeks later, more than 600 new wallets have been added to the network!
Much of the success is a direct result of on-the-ground growth strategies & technical developments including:
- Anchor Businesses — Grassroots Economics “airdrops” tokens on anchor businesses within a community — such as a maize mill or school — funding capital improvements and incentivizing new users who receive discounts at the business when using Sarafu tokens. This generates trust in the system and forms monetary links from a central source of commercial activity.
- Demurrage — Village level token systems include a “demurrage” tax on users who hold their tokens, preventing wealth from accumulating in the hands of a few sellers and increasing the circulation of currencies flowing through the network. Tokens generated from demurrage are deposited into a fund that is regularly dispersed to the community. Voting systems to disburse the community fund as a basic income and other social services are being piloted.
- Auto Conversion — A user can receive payments from other villages in their own village-level token thanks to automated conversion between multiple village-level tokens powered by Bancor Protocol.
- Directory — Users on any phone (feature or smartphone without internet) can now advertise on and access a simple directory for community currency users in their area. Space is limited using SMS so marketing on the directory is prioritized based on how much the business trades within the network, further incentivizing local participation. (Video Demo)
- Rewards & Gamification — Sarafu is creating virality among target populations through gamification & incentives which reward usage of the currencies and the on-boarding of new users (e.g., “trade with at least 6 different users a week” or “invite friends to Sarafu” and receive additional tokens.)
In the next few months, the Grassroots and Bancor teams are focused on technical developments, adoption in target villages and organic expansion to new village clusters, as well as continued partnership talks with NGOs, humanitarian aid organizations, governments, private corporations, blockchain projects, as well as existing and potential community currency operators.
Ultimately, the vision for the Sarafu Network and Bancor is to create a common infrastructure for local commerce — a decentralized, public good which requires no fees, no central authority, and can be seamlessly and affordably customized, operated and accessed by any community in the world — to turn scarcity into prosperity.
To learn more about these ideas, check out articles & books by Bernard Lietaer, including:
“Let A Thousand Currencies Bloom” (GreatTransition.org)
Events
Bancor in Hong Kong
The Bancor team attended Token2049 where we met with a broad set of industry players, hosted an event with cryptocurrency wallet Abra, and Bancor co-founder Galia Benartzi was featured on a panel about mainstream crypto adoption:
Afterwards, Galia spoke with CNBC, which covered the Token2049 event.
AWS Blockchain Day
Eyal spoke about the shift to “open-source services” and decentralized databases at Amazon’s AWS Blockchain Day:
UNICEF Innovation Fund Kick-Off
Galia served as a mentor, alongside Aya Miyaguchi from Ethereum Foundation, at UNICEF’s inaugural blockchain portfolio workshop in NYC, where she provided hands-on consulting to the program’s first cohort of startups using blockchain to solve global challenges.
Upcoming Events:
Horasis Global Meeting (Portugal, April 8) — Galia will be speaking about catalyzing the benefits of globalization alongside co-chairs from Goldman Sachs and The United States Council on Competitiveness.
TNW Conference (Amsterdam, May 10) — Galia will be giving the opening keynote in the Crypto Track, where Larry Singer (Wikipedia Co-founder) and Jackson Palmer (Dogecoin Creator) will also speak.
DeFi Rising
In recent months, we’ve seen the world awaken to the power of “DeFi” or decentralized finance. From collateralized lending to continuous liquidity, more developers and users are embracing the power of permissionless protocols to eliminate rent-seeking intermediaries from financial services and reduce costs on all sides through smart contract automation.
Today on Bancor, more than 140 liquidity providers serve as nodes in the world’s first and largest decentralized liquidity network — with $12.7M+ in ERC20 and EOS liquidity staked to the the Bancor Network, providing users with cheap, fast and predictable token conversions in any environment.
We are thrilled for the year ahead, and to continue developing on the bleeding edge of blockchain and across the Bancor Stack — from the Protocol & Network to the Bancor Wallet, alongside and in service of Bancor’s growing community of ecosystems, token projects and users.
To Spring and beyond,
The Bancor team
About The Bancor Protocol
Bancor is an on-chain liquidity protocol revolutionizing the way people create and share value by ensuring constant convertibility between tokens. Conversions via Bancor are executed against on-chain liquidity pools using automated market makers to price and process transactions without order books or counterparties, enabling faster, cheaper and more predictable conversions across 9700+ ERC20 and EOS token pairs, including non-custodial conversions between blockchains.
How to get involved with Bancor
- Add your token to the Bancor Network.
- Checkout Github, jump in and contribute code.
- Build a dApp with the Bancor APIs.
- Support us on social media.
- Join our team. We have new positions posting all the time.
