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and Protocol is a decentralized, cross-chain data oracle that acts as a bridge between smart contract platforms and real-world data sources to ensure secure and scalable interoperability.

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Oracles played a crucial role in ancient Greece and Rome. They were the supernatural link between the gods and humans. If you’ve heard of 

, the concept isn’t far from the above description — minus the deity drama!

, with their immutable storage and ability to verify transactions, are at the core of blockchain technology. However, their scalability has been limited by access to real-time data and accurate price feeds from off-chain sources.

 and Band Protocol come in — to connect real-world data to blockchains. While Chainlink may have gotten a head start in this niche, Band Protocol has risen as its worthy competitor. 

Let’s explore the Band Protocol ecosystem and its role in the decentralized economy.

Part of the reason why blockchain as a technology has caused such a stir around the globe is due to its closed data system. Each blockchain ensures its security and operational efficiency by creating in-house data silos.

While such a design has its merits of privacy and anonymity, challenges arise when there’s a need to communicate with other blockchains or receive external data.

Let’s look at smart contracts briefly. One of their strengths is that they automatically execute, based on the code fed into them during deployment. Such programmable functionalities have opened a world of opportunities, such as 

However, these smart contract–powered applications have to depend on third-party sources to obtain real-world data. For example, a DeFi application such as 

 needs accurate data for users to engage with its crypto lending platform.

Most of this data needs to be sourced from traditional web sources and 

. Unfortunately, the majority of these data solution providers are faced with the limitations of centralization, network congestion and high operation costs. Such limitations pose a threat to trustlessness and decentralization, which are the pillars of blockchain.

 Fortunately, oracles such as Band Protocol were created to fill that void of precise, accurate and reliable data exchange between blockchains. As a decentralized oracle network, it leverages consensus to provide a middle layer that links blockchain applications with external information sources.

Band Protocol is a decentralized, cross-chain data oracle that acts as a bridge between smart contract platforms and real-world data sources to ensure secure and scalable interoperability.

 It plays a critical role in sourcing and aggregating data from multiple blockchains, cryptographically verifying it, and then packaging it into an easy-to-use format.

Founded in 2017 by three experienced MIT builders — Soravis Srinawakoon (CEO), Sorawit Suriyakarn (CTO) and Paul Nattapatsiri (CPO) — Band Protocol is on a mission to provide a decentralized oracle framework for 

With features such as monetized data provision, verifiable random function and real-time price information, Band Protocol is at the forefront of the decentralized oracles powering blockchain.

Initially built on the Ethereum blockchain, Band Protocol migrated to Cosmos in 2020 using its 

 to leverage the network’s low gas fees and optimized costs. Through the integration with 

, developers can unlock cross-chain functionalities using the Cosmos Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol.

Using its native token, BAND, to incentivize and secure the protocol, Band Protocol seeks to provide a high-performance and dependable blockchain oracle for smart contract platforms. Some of the notable DApp projects that have partnered with Band Protocol include Celo, Moonriver, Astar, Oasis and Cronos.

 is a data oracle public blockchain built on Cosmos SDK that acts as a medium between data sources and smart contract platforms powering DApps. Its blockchain is operated by over 72 validators, who ensure the chain remains decentralized. It relies on the 

 BFT consensus algorithm to ensure immediate block finality. 

The roles of BandChain are to handle requests raised by DApps and to query data from respective providers, then relay the results back to the DApp as shown below:

Let’s look at some of the unique features that make BandChain stand out.

BandChain’s design uses two separate layers of decentralization to ensure maximum 

. First, the data oracle is operated by a pool of validators distributed around the globe. Their performance can be easily monitored and verified.

(DPos) mechanism ensures that validators are incentivized to report data properly and accurately. The flow of data from request to submission is available to be viewed and audited by the public.

BandChain’s oracle scripts are customizable in multiple programming languages, and flexible for the user to curate the data feed they desire. BandChain’s data source scripts allow validators to freely determine where they’ll source their data.

Unlike other mainstream blockchains, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, BandChain is built exclusively to compute and request oracle data.

As such, the average block validation time on the oracle is only 3 seconds, while it can take up to 10–15 seconds on Ethereum and around 10 minutes on Bitcoin to confirm a transaction. Such speed ensures that data requests are received and processed quickly.

Another benefit of an oracle-focused blockchain such as BandChain is that it helps offload heavy oracle computations from the requester’s blockchain. Hence, oracle operations don’t need to be duplicated onto a new chain, which enhances integration with DApps for greater scalability.

Through BandChain, users requesting data only need to pay the associated fees (depending on the request). BandChain’s pay-per-request model is very economical, especially when you don’t need data for an entire set of assets.

Band Protocol’s architecture consists of a thriving ecosystem of a fully-dedicated public blockchain, data providers, a standard dataset aggregator and verifiable random function (VRF).

These components provide a scalable interplay of strategic functionalities to provide DApps with access to real-world, off-chain data. Let’s look at each of these components for a better understanding of how Band Protocol works.

At the core of Band’s operations is BandChain, with a design that focuses on speed, scalability, cross-chain compatibility and flexibility. BandChain curates off-chain data using a system consisting of data sources, network participants, and 

A data source on BandChain describes the procedure of retrieving raw data and the fees applicable to the data query. Anyone can register as a data source on BandChain.

However, upon requesting data on BandChain, users don’t interact with data sources; instead, oracle scripts cater to their requests. BandChain’s oracle scripts are quite similar to smart contracts in that they’re 

, and programmable in multiple languages.

Oracle scripts are encoded to outline the data sources necessary to respond to a data request. Once the request is fulfilled, the scripts aggregate data reports from validators and provide a final result.

To function, BandChain relies on three groups of participants:

Before we proceed to the other components of Band Protocol, let’s look at how an oracle data request flows through BandChain’s network.

 Before a data request is addressed, data sources and oracle scripts have to be published.

Once published, a user broadcasts their data request, which initializes the oracle script’s execution process.

 On initialization, the scripts fetch and emit raw data, which is inspected and confirmed by randomly selected validators.

Once the raw data is received, the oracle scripts aggregate the validator’s reports and request storage of the final result.

 is an exhaustive reference dataset on Band Protocol that consists of frequently updated and highly customizable price feeds. This product provides developers with comprehensive and extensible price feeds to integrate into their DApps.

With real-time price information of 90 cryptocurrencies and 14 forex rates and commodities, Standard Dataset is heavily optimized and low-cost, with end-to-end flexibility.

The Band Verifiable Random Function (Band VRF) is a cryptographic operation powered by Band Protocol that allows verifiable and tamperproof randomness in DApps. As the newest feature on Band, VRF is packed with security properties, such as unpredictability, uniqueness and collision-resistance to ensure valid random outputs.

This product is particularly suitable for 

 DApps that depend on pseudorandom values, such as lottery and NFT minting.

Band Protocol has an on-chain revenue feature that lets data providers supply data and earn in real time. In this way, Band Protocol helps ensure DApps have ready access to a wide range of data to develop DeFi products.

To start earning, a data provider needs to set up a wallet (which takes less than two days) and deploy a data source. Data providers have 100% control over their revenue, since the wallet is decentralized.

When you mention blockchain oracles, the two names that always top the list are Chainlink and Band Protocol. The two are playing a crucial role in providing oracle data solutions to power the DeFi economy.

Chainlink was launched in 2017 and commands the largest market share in the data oracle niche, with its 

 by the end of 2021. Band Protocol was launched two years later, and has been right on the heels of Chainlink.

That said, there’s always a debate on which is better suited to build DApps.

Well, there’s no clear-cut answer to that question — since each of them possesses different features and approaches data oracle provision in diverse ways.

A key difference between the two oracles is that Chainlink is built on the 

 blockchain, while Band migrated to the Cosmos blockchain. When sourcing data from Chainlink, the fee conversion is done on Ethereum, which — at least pre-

However, Cosmos-powered Band Protocol enjoys almost instant transaction confirmations at a much lower cost.

Another major difference lies in the network design. While Band Protocol has developed BandChain to act as its public blockchain, Chainlink doesn’t have its own blockchain. Oracle nodes have the extra task of acting as block validators on the network, which may lead to increased operating costs. Oracle nodes on Chainlink are quite lightweight since their only focus is data delivery.

BAND is the sole native token powering BandChain. As of the time of writing (Oct. 27, 2022), it is priced at $1.14 and has a total supply of 100 million tokens with a circulating supply of 41,591,943.

It’s worth mentioning that the BAND token uses an inflationary model to encourage network participation by holders through staking. The inflation parameters are similar to those of Cosmos, where the inflation rate is between 7% and 20%, with a target of having 66% of BOND tokens staked.

Band Protocol is making a mark in the data oracle niche, which is a critical component of the DeFi ecosystem. Demand for data solutions by smart contract platforms and DApps is growing as more projects enter the space. Band Protocol’s vibrant ecosystem of a blockchain-focused solution to data oracles with monetized data provision is strategic and impactful.

BAND tokens were launched in September 2019 through an 

(ICO) at $0.63. However, BAND’s price didn’t have much traction, and traded in the range of $0.20–$0.50 for most of 2019 and early 2020.

In a buildup to the release of Phase 0 of its Mainnet, BAND’s price began to pump in May 2020, crossing the $1 level. The price increase continued into June, when the Mainnet was released. BAND experienced phenomenal growth after the launch, with major price spikes in July and August 2020 seeing the token touch $14.

However, BAND's price gradually fell for the rest of that year — yet performed incredibly well at the beginning of 2021, when it hit its highest price of $22.83 in April of that year. In mid-2021, Band Protocol's price plunged to a low of around $5. It continued to decline in the months that followed, stagnating at around $1. 

Market price experts hold a fairly bullish outlook for the BAND token. 

believe that BAND could range between $3.60 to $18.73 in 2025. Price Prediction 

of $3.45 by 2025, which could hit $21.46 in 2030.

 is somewhat less bullish in comparison to the two forecasts above. It anticipates BAND will hit $2.55 in 2025, with its growth rate slowing down to reach $5.59 in 2030.

You can buy BAND tokens from various top cryptocurrency exchanges, such as Bybit, which offers 

Data oracles are a critical link in the growth of DeFi. By providing a medium through which smart contracts and the decentralized economy can access off-chain data, the Band Protocol network helps in the scalability and growth of the sector.

As Band Protocol continues to roll out its Mainnet in phases and to scale, it’s expected to grow into a truly decentralized and reliable data oracles provider, and may even beat out its strongest competitor — Chainlink — due to its low cost and high speed.

What Is Band Protocol: Real-World Data For All

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