February 21, 2018

Eat, Convert, Love

Bancor is firing on all cylinders as product-market fit comes into view and our community continues to spread the love (and liquidity). In the last few weeks, the team completed a number of technical and operational milestones, including a revamped Web App, reduced gas costs and the first step towards cross-chain liquidity.

Network Update: 42 Live Tokens!

More than a dozen new tokens are live and instantly convertible on the Bancor Network, bringing the total number of active tokens to 42! Newly active tokens include:

To mark Bancor’s 40th live token, we wanted to zoom out and shine a light on what has been a truly epic period of growth for the Bancor Network. Last month, more than 140,000 unique users from 169 countries visited the Bancor Web App, pushing conversion volume on the network to more than $37 million per week. That’s up from just $3 million per week in November.

Launching a Token? If you’re launching a new ERC20 token or have an existing one, contact us to learn more about the Bancor Protocol for continuous, on-chain liquidity: contact@bancor.network

EOS Partnership

We have long discussed Bancor’s intention to build a decentralized liquidity network that functions across various blockchains, enabling the long-tail of user-generated economies to emerge wherever innovators are building. As a first step towards cross-chain liquidity, we are excited to announce our collaboration with Block.one, creators of the EOS blockchain. EOS will integrate the Bancor Protocol with a scheduled release of June 2018, bringing the benefits of Bancor’s automated, low-cost liquidity to the EOS community. Sample code has been released to the public to demonstrate the direction of the Bancor Protocol native to EOS blockchains.

Product Update

As more and more tokens join the Bancor Network, we’ve made it easier to discover and analyze tokens on the Web App. Bancor’s revamped Discover Page allows you to search for tokens by name and features a list view displaying each token’s growth chart, liquidity depth and 24-hour volume, along with the ability to sort tokens by each metric.

Chipping Away at Gas Costs

The Bancor Network for decentralized liquidity is fundamentally different than traditional and decentralized exchanges. Whereas trading on exchanges requires matching between buyers and sellers, the Bancor Protocol enables users to convert tokens without a counterparty. Another key differentiator is the Bancor Protocol doesn’t rely on added fees, but rather on the growth of BNT (and thus network usage) for its expansion. The only fees incurred by users are those required to transact with the underlying blockchain (e.g., gas on Ethereum). That said, the smart contracts Bancor uses to enable on-chain liquidity (matching users to smart contract-owned liquidity pools, rather than each other) are computationally intensive and can cause the cost of gas to be relatively higher than other services which simply swap tokens between buyers and sellers (and usually charge added fees).

To combat this, we’ve recently released several solutions that cut average Ethereum gas prices on the Bancor Network by over 80%. The response from the community has been extremely encouraging as we continue to invest resources in optimizing our network to provide the most efficient, low-cost on-chain conversions. Read more about these exciting new updates.

Community Update

We’ve created a new Product Roadmap showing major milestones completed as well as the road ahead. As with any development cycle, things may change as we learn from and adjust to the dynamic blockchain landscape. These are the big product milestones that the Bancor team is currently targeting, alongside hundreds of incremental and backend improvements that make it all possible. We can’t wait to evolve with the industry and our community.

Video Tutorial: How to use the Bancor Web App

We’ve produced a step-by-step video guide for converting tokens on the Bancor Network, using your ERC20 supported wallet. This wallet will be linked to the network with a Web3 service (such as MetaMask), allowing you to convert tokens on Bancor’s platform without having to login or create a profile. Let us know if you have questions.

New Help Center

We’ve released a new Help Center where you can find the latest how-to guides and deep dives explaining different components of the Bancor Protocol. We’re adding new articles regularly and could use your feedback on content you’d like to see, whether it is product tutorials or specific information on the protocol itself. Submit a content request here.

Women’s Day Bounty Contest

Bancor’s International Women’s Day bounty contest is still on and you can help us choose an inspirational female leader to win over $8K. Vote for your favorite nominee or nominate someone new now.

Upcoming Events

Events continue to be one of the best ways for the team to keep up with the latest, meet other great folks in the industry and spread the word about the Bancor Network. Next month we’re planning to be at:

Bancor in the News

Kevin Rose interviews Eyal Hertzog

CoinDesk covers Bancor’s 8-month progress

Bankless Times interviews Eyal Hertzog

As always we’d love to hear your thoughts on the product, progress and our plans. For an ongoing discussion with the community and team, please join our Telegram group, and join our recently launched Telegram News Channel, where we’re posting the latest news and announcements from Bancor. We’re looking forward to Springing into hypergrowth in March.

With liquid love,

The Bancor Team