Bancor Progress Update

End of Summer 2017

Hello Bancor community,

It’s been an eventful Summer since our TGE and the activation of the world’s first Smart Token (BNT) which has been healthily trading, directly through its contract, since.

We’ve missed being in close touch with you as we’ve hunkered down to get the house in order, put plans in place for our future growth and make sure we are covering the bases in terms of structure, communications and compliance for the longevity of this long term project which aims to create a new and smart standard for the industry moving forward.

Below is a partial list of the activities we’ve been pushing forward on. This fall, we will return to regularly scheduled updates so you can keep up with latest developments and of course always ask questions, submit feedback and explore ways to engage deeper with the project. We welcome your thoughts across all of our channels, and are especially active in our Telegram group which is moderated by community members for positive and productive discussion. We’d love to see you there.

Bancor Liquidity Network First Steps

• A trading volume of 302,702 Ether took place on-chain through the BNT smart contract since it was activated on June 22nd, 2017.

Bancor Web Service

Our production Bancor community creation service has been used to operate our crowd-source bounty program, one of the largest and most productive ever executed in the space. We believe it’s critical to operate the Bancor service for actual token-based applications on the Ethereum mainnet with real world use-cases in order to improve it. Our bounty programs enable us to continue to achieve this goal while also engaging positively with the community, reaching new members and creating network effects that will ripple outwards for the good of the project.

• We’ve built and launched the ability to convert bounty tokens (i.e. Smart Tokens) into BNT and withdraw them to an external wallet.

• New bounty programs have been initiated. Check them out here.

Frontend Development

• While it’s very simple to purchase BNT tokens by sending ETH to the contract address (which then automatically returns BNT to the sender), the fully-featured process of purchasing and liquidating Smart Tokens (with optional price limit) is still cumbersome to use.
• We are working on integrating web3 to our web UI, which will enable users to use Metamask, Parity and imToken as external wallets, and to trigger token conversion transactions from an easy to use web service — to be executed through these wallets.

• This will greatly simplify using Smart Tokens and help bring blockchain-based products and services to a wider audience.
• Price and charts will be displayed for token, adding easy to digest stats to the ecosystem, further simplifying usage.

Business Development

We have a heavy focus on collaboration as part of our desire to integrate various initiatives and build a truly healthy ecosystem. Below are technologies we are exploring:

• Cosmos — Making BNT a cross blockchain token, reducing number of required hops for converting any token to any other.
• Waves — BNT on Waves blockchain and smart tokens on Waves upcoming smart contracts
• Lykke — New opportunities made possible thanks to the recently announced Lykke Ethereum Integration.

Smart tokens deployment

There are many Smart Tokens in various stages of smart contract implementation. They are all independent ventures that have chosen to use Bancor protocol technology. Some of the use cases include:

• Asset Tokenizers (Similar to Digix, for other types of assets)
• Decentralized Messaging Platforms
• Blockchain-related hardware and devices
• Token-based Venture Funds (Similar to ICONOMI, TaaS)
• Financial Services
• Game Tokens
• User-Generated Content
• Payment Gateways
• Loyalty Marketing
• Community Currencies, existing and new
• And many more…

Spreading the message

It’s not trivial to fully understand the core value of the Bancor protocol, just as it’s not trivial to understand smart contracts, even today. We are putting in place infrastructure to create high quality content, instructional and educational materials around these topics and more. In the meantime, we continue to pound the pavement and share the benefits of Bancor with key stakeholders.

Recent Conferences Talks

• Cryptofinancing London (Eyal)
• D10e San Francisco (Galia)
• Hypethon St. Petersburg (Eyal)

Upcoming Conferences Appearances

• Techcrunch Disrupt SF (Eyal)
• CapitalFest Amsterdam
• BlockCon LA
• Ethereal SF (Galia)
• Startup Grind (Eyal)

We are also hard at work creating an industry-wide event around Smart Tokens and the Bancor protocol, details will be announced soon…

Recent Interviews

Neocash (Eyal)

Epicenter (Eyal)

Team

As we’ve mentioned, expanding the team is both the highest risk and highest reward component of scaling. We are hiring in every department and meticulously recruiting a team of the highest caliber, with the purest passion for blockchain technologies and the ability to work together effectively for years. We are super pumped about new additions in engineering, marketing, operations, compliance, finance, QA and communities, and will introduce team members through a new, delightful and informative website which will launch this Fall.

Advisory Board

Elie Galam — Wall Street Quant joins our strong advisory board to add product and partnership expertise in a new category of Bancor-enabled products and services.

Blockchain Community

We continue to engage with supporters and challengers alike throughout the industry, and hope to add value to every conversation through authentic participating and true belief in progress towards decentralization.

• Our CTO participated in Ethereum Foundation’s ENS workshop
• Yudi also was a judge in Underhanded Solidity Coding Contest, donating tens of hours to meticulously look for solidity potential security exploits/vulnerabilities

1 Year Anniversary

We have just celebrated one year since we began to work on Bancor (21-Aug-2016), and what an amazing year this has been for us and for many. We plan to release a monthly update around the 21st of every month in honor of this milestone, and look forward to sharing even more specifics around what you can expect in our next communication.

We can’t thank you enough for being on this journey with us, in any capacity.

Happy September,

The Bancor Team