December 21, 2017

Winter is here, and Spring is near…

Its may be the shortest day of the year outside, but inside Bancor the days (and nights) are long. The foundation of the network is taking deep root, allowing us to really sense how strong growth should be when the snow melts.

Here’s the latest:

Happy Half Birthday BNT!

Just 6 months ago, the Bancor Network Token (BNT) was born through one of the industry’s largest Token Generation Events. We marked 180 action-packed days since this historic launch with a neat infographic (also below) that visualizes Bancor’s progression. From the team’s growth to a live product in production, this is how a decentralized network expands.

The milestone received great coverage by some major publications, check out these pieces by Forbes, Coin Telegraph and Huffington Post, or read our complete post on Steemit.

12 Tokens & Counting Now Active For Conversion On The Bancor Network

The Bancor Network is expanding: ETH, BNT, STX, GNO & ENJ tokens are already live and available for conversion, and as of today, please welcome BMC (Blackmoon), IND (Indorse), OMG (OmiseGo), STORM, AIX (Aigang), KIN (Kin) and WISH (MyWish) to the list of tokens you can convert through the Web App.

7 additional tokens have activated the open source Bancor Protocol, creating a burst of new activity in the network via increased conversion volume and new community members. Now, token holders can easily convert ETH, BNT, STX, GNO, ENJ, BMC, IND, OMG, STORM, AIX, KIN and WISH without needing to match buyers and sellers through traditional order books. The Bancor Network offers continuous and autonomous liquidity through an innovative “Connector” method, utilizing smart contracts to formulaically convert any token to any other in the network, outside of exchanges, in conjunction with popular Web3 wallets such as MetaMask, Parity or Mist, or by importing any external Ethereum wallet address (such as MyEtherWallet and others). A bit about some of these early adopter projects:

BMC (Blackmoon)

Blackmoon attracted $30 million in their successful token launch last month.

“The main idea of Blackmoon Crypto is to provide a legal and technical framework for asset managers to create and continuously manage tokenized investment funds. Blackmoon will issue crypto tokens that asset managers can distribute to investors through new vehicles. Blackmoon will provide the legal frameworks to effectively incorporate as legal entities so that they can focus on their products and services” said Oleg Seydak, CEO of Blackmoon Financial Group, in a recent interview with CoinDesk.

IND (Indorse)

Indorse completed a successful token sale in September, attracting $9 million.

Indorse aims to return ownership of data to users, allowing them to benefit from sharing their skills and activities on the platform. Indorse uses an internal tokenized reward system to incentivize users to add their accomplishments and endorse those of others, in order to change the landscape of professional social networking.

OMG (OmiseGo)

Omise was founded in 2013 and the OMG token currently represents a $1.6 billion market capitalization.

Dubbed Vitalik Buterin’s “favorite token,” OMG enables anyone to do financial transactions such as payments, payroll processing, remittances, B2B commerce, loyalty programs and trading, in a completely decentralized and inexpensive way. The company was chosen by McDonald’s Thailand to be the exclusive payments gateway for its website and the McDelivery Thailand mobile app.

Bancor was recently on a panel with OmiseGo at TechCrunch Disrupt:

Bancor’s Eyal Hertzog and OmiseGo’s Jun Hasegawa “Making Sense of ICOs” at TechCrunch Disrupt SF

STORM (StormX)

StormX completed a successful Token Sale in September for STORM with $32 million contributed.

The blockchain-powered adtech and gamified micro-task platform aims to revolutionize and democratize the freelance micro-task marketplace. The Storm Market is an online marketplace for Storm players to be rewarded for completing gamified micro-tasks.

KIN (Kin)

Popular chat app Kik raised nearly $100 million in September from more than 10,000 contributors in its token distribution event, in addition to a $50 million presale which included investors such as Blockchain Capital, Pantera Capital and Polychain Capital. The Kin Foundation was created by Kik Interactive to build out the Kin economy, where the Kin token powers developer and user engagement within the app via the Kin Rewards Engine.

AIX (Aigang)

Aigang Network ran a successful Token Sale this December, attracting $9 million from contributors to build a decentralized insurance blockchain protocol for IoT devices.

A recently launched Proof of Concept on the Ethereum blockchain can detect faults or failure dates in mobile phones and pay out insurance claims to users without requiring human oversight.

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

We’re honored to welcome these tokens to the network and the many that will soon follow to form a new liquidity paradigm — decentralized, continuous, autonomous, low-cost and accessible. As we like to say, innovation is for innovators, and a network starts with nodes :) We’re beyond grateful for the early support and collaboration of some of the coolest projects in the ecosystem.

Product Updates

This month has been about discovering new limitations in the Ethereum network and the associated problems Bancor users face when congestion increases. We’ve made changes to address a sequencing issue when multiple transactions are pending, a gas fee increase adaption and better alerts throughout the site and product to help users understand how instabilities may affect them.

Of course, thousands of incremental fixes, features and improvements occur in parallel throughout the server, website, front-end, widget and contracts, such as hiding data that is not yet available, improving number formatting, reorganizing navigation, and more. Here are some you will notice:

Added support for the Mist browser and wallet

Token Relays now visible in search and drop down menus

Widget and Relay alerts around gas fees and price balances

A rotating banner on Discover page to share relevant information

Rotating Banner on the Bancor Web App

Refund program

Due to the CryptoKitties overload on the Ethereum blockchain, and the specific sequencing issue this triggered in Bancor Network contracts, users experienced approximately 4.55 ETH (about $3640) worth of blockchain gas fees lost in failed transactions. We’ll be contacting users directly over the next weeks to initiate a one-time courtesy refund program for these lost blockchain fees, and sincerely appreciate the patience and support of our early adopters in this new and developing space. The transaction failure rate is now down to under 2%, and a gas estimation alert has been put in place to help users easily understand the parameters of their transactions in advance.

Another Website Integrates the Bancor Widget

You can now use the Bancor conversion widget on the MyWish website, one of the newest tokens to activate in the Bancor Network. Another step in achieving truly decentralized liquidity is allowing users to convert their tokens from anywhere, directly from their Web3 wallets.

About MyWish:

MyWish is on a mission to bring common money-related practices into the cryptocurrency world by offering simple self-service smart contract templates, such as wedding, lost key, will and deferred payment contracts. Over 850 users are already trying the service and over 200 contract types have been created.

Partnerships

Naga

Naga Group, the $200M Frankfurt Stock Exchange fintech company, announces Bancor’s Co-founder Guy Benartzi to join their advisory board. Here’s to live blockchain products and their decentralized liquidity in the Bancor Network.

Guy Benartzi joins the Naga Group Advisory Board

Sirin Labs

Finney, by SIRIN LABS, is the first open-source secure smartphone and all-in-one PC designed on a fee-less blockchain, and supported by Leo Messi. Check out their live bounty program on the Bancor Web App, and congrats on raising $110M in the first 24 hours of their token sale, which is still ongoing.

FCFL + IndiGoGo

Our friends at FCFL have partnered with IndieGoGo to be their first ever token sale campaign! The FANToken presale has officially kicked off 🏈

Check out their live bounty program on Bancor’s Web App and read the NYT article announcing the groundbreaking launch.

Hack Me

In preparation for the upcoming Bancor Wallet launch, which allows on-chain conversion between any token in the Bancor Network with browser-based access from anywhere, anytime — we are leaving the final security audit…to YOU.

To make sure we’ve thought of everything, we’re challenging the community at large to hack a Bancor account in our demo environment, where we’ve stashed a secret (and worthy) amount of ETH. We’ll also offer additional BNT bounties for the winner and contributors.

The challenge is open until Jan 8, 2018. Join the Hack Me Bounty Challenge today and break it to make it!

Events

Last month we continued to participate in industry events around the world, hosted our first happy hour in Berlin after TechCrunch Disrupt and lectured to Bernard Lietaer’s monetary innovation course at the Sorbonne in Paris.

Eyal at CryptoFriends in Singapore, Guy at CryptoSpace in Moscow and Galia at The Next Web in NYC

Next month we’re planning to be at:

User-Generated Articles

Check out these great and diverse crowd-sourced pieces by active members of the Bancor community. Want to get more involved? Browse our on-going bounties to find ways to contribute.

From the Media

We’re starting to gear up a more high octane and consistent press outreach strategy to make sure the right audiences are hearing the right things about Bancor at the right time.

New Year Bounty Contest

Join the growing number of users who’ve submitted graphics to the New Year’s bounty contest, for a chance to win 50 BNT! Get creative with us.

The 2018 Bancor Bounty Program will Distribute up to $1million in BNT to the Community

Its been a truly epic year for Bancor and the industry at large, with all signs pointing to a breakout 2018. We couldn’t be more grateful to share these seasons with our passionate and growing community, and look forward to watching the sprouts break ground soon.

Wishing happiest holidays and a healthy new year, full of love and liquidity for all,

The Bancor team