When we look at the world of exchange between people, we see two main categories of things that we share and trade — Information and Value. While information (content such as texts, images, video, etc.) is replicable by its nature (when you share it, you and someone else both have it), value is not (when you give it to someone, you no longer have it.)

Before the age of the Internet, there were many private information networks, which some of us are even old enough to remember, like BBSs, Prodigy, Compuserve, AoL, to name a few. The rise of the public Internet changed everything and those which survived adopted the new open, global standard for information exchange, which relies on a collection of TCP/IP networks, interlinked through peering agreements.

Until blockchain, all currencies, which represent value, lived in closed silos. Blockchain, the technology pioneered by Bitcoin, is the decentralized value exchange network, the Internet of money. It will eventually replace a large part of today’s private banking networks and allow new players (and the old which adapt) to create new types of value and transact in an open, global system not owned by anyone.

The Bancor team has been building products on the Internet since the late nineties. Some of our companies were Contact Networks, MetaCafe, Mytopia, Particle Code and AppCoin. We bumped into Bitcoin in 2011 and began exploring possibilities in user-generated currencies. Following the release of Ethereum in 2015, we understood that smart-contracts were a game changer and would allow for currency creation and customization at scale. Programmable modules that manage and hold value (represented as tokens) can perform value-related processes for a negligible cost — processes currently handled by various organizations (e.g. escrow services, exchanges, law firms, to name a few). However, the implications of autonomous decentralized code which can manage digital money on an open standard for value exchange are far more profound.

In the Summer of 2016, we started working on Bancor with the goal of creating a hierarchical monetary system (where one digital token holds other tokens in its reserve) to build a new type of standard for cryptocurrencies that would lay the foundation for a decentralized global exchange. One that is autonomous, has no spread, no counterparty risk and provides continuous liquidity for any asset. One that enables the long-tail of currencies as the Internet did for content.

We would like to share with you, the Internet, our draft whitepaper for your review and comments. All feedback is welcome, and much appreciated.

The Bancor Team

http://bancor.network