Bancor hosts weekly community calls with core contributors every week in Bancor’s Telegram voice chat.
Nate hosted the call with input from Mark, Asaf and Steven. They were joined by Caleb Sheridan from Eden Network, Witek Radomski from Enjin, Li Jiang from Harmony and Lumi from AMP/Flexa Network.
This week’s recording can be found here
Below is a summary of the ecosystem & development updates from the call.
Ecosystem (00:54)
- Volume has been rising steadily for the past week with the uptrend in overall markets.
- Yesterday our daily vBNT burn hit an all time high. We are currently burning 10% of our swap revenue, up from 5%. Around 30k vBNT was burned in that single day, with over 3 million in total BNT locked in the protocol permanently due to vBNT burning.
- Bancor V3 contracts are being built and progressing rapidly. Audits are scheduled and V3 front-end development is underway.
- Bancor V3 launch plan is being developed and will be shared with the community in advance of its release.
- We have a newly launched swap interface and we are migrating the code to lower load times. You should see faster load times across the site soon.
- ETH is outpacing a lot of tokens recently, so if you are an LP in another AMM with ETH as its reserve token, you are probably losing a lot due to impermanent loss. This is a chance for us to tout the benefits of Bancor’s IL protected pools.
- If you missed it, Bancor’s Mark Richardson presented at SmartCon and gave a presentation on the history of Bancor and Chainlink’s collaboration, and what’s on the horizon. He also announced the news that V3 plans to integrate Chainlink Keepers.
Governance (5:03)
- Proposals are going live on Sunday going forward. That means we have proposals live right now — vote on https://vote.bancor.network/!
- Proposals this week include LM rewards for AMP pool, a fee change on the FTT pool, co-investment increase for DRC, and whitelists for MONA, ONE, and EFI.
- Whitelists last week: TRAC, now 500k in liquidity, and BORING, also with around 500k in liquidity now.
- It seems like the DAO is getting more targeted and conservative with its distribution of liquidity mining rewards. We want to keep integrating with other projects and communities that can drive both trade volume and liquidity on Bancor. Whitelists and liquidity mining rewards can be used to encourage these kinds of integrations.
Caleb from Eden Network (7:32)
- Eden Network, formerly ArcherDAO, is a project that addresses MEV.
- “I’ve been involved with DeFi since before it was called DeFi. In the early days, we tracked trading data for DEXs like Uniswap and Bancor, we saw the arbitrage opportunities that existed. Instead of creating bots to take advantage of MEV for ourselves, we created bots to help users and take into account the power of miners in Ethereum. What used to be called ArcherDAO was a protocol that split the arbitrage profits with miners directly.”
- “If a transaction can have MEV, it will have MEV.”
- “We created a trader protection called Archer Swap to protect traders where they can guarantee no slippage and have their transaction cancel if they can’t guarantee they will get the result they want. We have evolved this into Eden Network. The idea behind Eden Network is to give power back to users.”
- Nate: “Can you describe the integration with Bancor?”
- “We have three slots in our block production template. Any transaction that fits into that slot is prioritized and placed at the top of the block. Bancor is the tenant of one of these slots, and around 25% of all blocks are Eden blocks. Prioritized doesn’t mean they can’t be frontrun or that they are invisible, but they are harder to frontrun. Eden trades have much higher position in our blocks. Bancor users get this benefit without having to do anything. More stable costs, faster trades, and so on.
- “We also have the ability to submit transactions privately. The combination of private transactions and these slots mean much more reliable trades.”
- “We don’t have an Eden block explorer yet but we look forward to creating that.”
- “Bancor isn’t guaranteed to always have one of these slots. One of the top parts of MEV is that users don’t have a lot of options. We use an auction system so that anyone who stakes our token can burn them to maintain their slot. The slot for Bancor has another 30 days left.”
- “Users who stake at least 100 EDEN token on app.edennetwork.io can use the private RPC. Transactions are prioritized according to staking power. If you send a transaction through the private RPC, it won’t fail.”
- “The best way to learn more is on our site at edennetwork.io.”
Witek from Enjin (26:33)
- Enjin is leading NFT and gaming product, and they are now releasing their own blockchain, Efinity.
- “I’m an Enjin cofounder, founded about 13 years ago. Back then it was a social network, not blockchain based. Our users used our system to give perks in their own gaming communities, though it wasn’t very efficient. In 2017 we started developing a system on Ethereum to allow designers to tokenize their in-game items.”
- “The Enjin platform is used to integrate tokenizing assets into any game.”
- “We have a product called the Enjin Wallet, which we believe is one of the best and most secure mobile wallets around. Bancor is one of the DEXs that is integrated directly and it’s been that way for years.”
- “Our development team is over 50 people now. We’re working on a blockchain explorer, the wallet, SDKs for developers, and the Efinity chain. Ethereum is a beautiful blockchain but if you want to do fast transfers, crafting, or other gameplay related activities, it becomes expensive. We also can’t do large batch transfers and native tokens on Ethereum, so Efinity is designed to do those things.”
- “Efinity is a parachain on Polkadot and we’re glad that Bancor is building a DOT integration. We know that NFTs are going to be a multichain ecosystem, so one of our core features is the ability to move between blockchains.”
- “We helped design ERC-1120 token format, and a standard cross chain token format, to facilitate transferring tokens cross chain in the future.”
- “The EFI token just launched on Ethereum a few days ago and we’re excited to get whitelisted on Bancor. As soon as that happens, we’ll get that integrated in our wallet.”
- “In the beginning we were focused on traditional games, like RPGs or shooters, but we realized we were very early in the space. Many game developers were hesitant to integrate with us. Indie game developers are more open to it though. With Efinity, we can expand what we’re able to do, including into the gaming casino and pay-to-earn style games like Axie Infinity.”
- “You can learn more at enjin.io or on our Discord.”
Lee from Harmony (41:42)
- Harmony is an Ethereum compatible L1 blockchain.
- “We recently put up a proposal to whitelist the ONE token on Bancor.”
- “We have engineers from Apple, Google, and Amazon, and we are trying to scale blockchain technology to millions of users. We took the best research about proof-of-stake and sharding from Ethereum, and we’ve had those core technologies active on our mainnet for over 2 years. We have well over one million transactions per day on mainnet.”
- “We’ve recently been working with the Sushi team to launch a liquidity mining system on Harmony. It now has over $75m in TVL.”
- “The whitelisting on Bancor will be for the Ethereum ONE token, a wrapped native token. We see that the future is multichain. Sushi, for example, is going to twenty different chains and twenty different communities. We want to bring in users who are priced out on Ethereum mainnet so they can engage in DeFi or NFTs. We want to scale to millions of people.”
- “Our Bancor whitelisting is a great way to expand our liquidity pools on Ethereum. We think there will be more multichain deployments and Bancor will be part of that. We are currently set up on Sushi and Uni. I think they are both around $1m in liquidity, but we can always use more. Neither of those pools are incentivized by Harmony right now.”
- “You can learn more on harmony.one.
Lumi from AMP and the Flexa network (52:25)
- “AMP is the native token Flexa. Flexa is a payments network to facilitate the ability to pay with any digital asset. The merchant can also choose to receive their payment in any digital asset, regardless of what the payer pays with.”
- “The AMP token accrues all the value from the network. All fees collected are redistributed to AMP token holders. This way everyone is included in the value created.”
- “Flexa works with Gemini for settlement, in terms of merchants they are working with many top-500 companies, and companies like Shopify.”
- “AMP is a collateral token. Every transaction on the Flexa network sets aside AMP as collateral while the transaction is resolving on chain. This allows us to authorize payment in real-time without giving up any assurances about payment. This gives us resistance against fraudulent payment or gas issues. We’ve never had a liquidation of collateral, which might occur in the event of fraud. In exchange for taking on this risk, AMP holders get the rewards of the network.”
- “We have a long running relationship with Bancor. I believe we were one of the first projects to work with the Bancor community to get ourselves whitelisted. That’s a big honor for us. The integration so far has been really healthy. We would like the growth and integration to continue by passing liquidity mining for AMP on Bancor. The acceleration of AMP is increasing and we think we’re bringing a lot to the Bancor community in terms of revenue and users.”
- “Making the BNT token a spendable asset on Flexa is one of the conditions of passing LM rewards for AMP on Bancor. I’m a long-time fan of Bancor and I’m personally excited to make that happen.”
Q and A (1:13:55)
Q: Hey Lumi, can you tell us any of the future merchants on Flexa?
- Lumi: “I really can’t say much, but there will be many high-profile merchants in the future. I can say Tesco was teased earlier.”
Q: It has been said that the vBNT peg can’t go above 1 for long because of arbitrage opportunities. What if there is no more room for BNT to stake?
- Mark: “There is effectively unlimited room to stake, at least until BNT reaches say $100k each. That won’t happen for awhile.”
Q: Can you tell us about cross-chain integrations after the launch of V3?
- Nate: “We intend to build out V3 on Ethereum L1 and then rapidly deploy to an L2 when it’s ready. There is community interest in Arbitrum and Polygon, but we’re certainly keeping our eyes open for other chains. In general, we are focused on deploying V3 prior to deciding.”
- Mark: “Nate is remaining non-committal. The maturity of Polygon is supreme among L2s right now but some functionality is lost when compared to Arbitrum, for example. We haven’t made up our minds, and ultimately it is up to the community.”
Q: Any thoughts on US crypto regulations?
- Nate: “We are paying attention and trying to pull whatever strings we can behind the scenes. The regulatory landscape is evolving in the US very fast, but to remind you, the Bancor Foundation is a Swiss non-profit. We’re on calls with our legal teams and keeping abreast of the implications of these guidelines. No deep insights to report.”
- Mark: “I think the level of fear on social channels is probably unjustified. This wouldn’t change how we operate very much. It would just change the types of conversations we have. The changes wouldn’t be that rapid, and they might not be a bad thing necessarily.”
Q: Due to the Vortex burn trigger reward, we’ve effectively paid a script a hundred thousand dollars to trigger the burn. Is there any desire to lower the reward?
- Steven: “You should write a script or draft a proposal. One will be more profitable, but the other will be easier!”
Wrap Up and Asks
Mark at SmartCon
- Bancor’s Mark Richardson recently gave a talk at SmartCon. Make sure to watch it here.
Connect Projects with Steven, Bancor BD Lead:
- Are there tokens you’re holding that we should whitelist on Bancor? DM @FoxSteven about it or connect us with any community leaders / core contributors on the project. Steven leads all our BD efforts and will connect with the team and work with them to get whitelisted or build a deeper pool.
Bancor Grants:
- We have content grants active at all times. Any users that want to create videos or guides, please reach out to Nate Hindman (@NateHindman on twitter or telegram).
- We have analytics grants. If you want to work on Bancor data projects or if you are good with working on blockchain data and APIs, we can always use your help!
- As always, we have rolling developer grants for those who want to build and innovate on Bancor’s infrastructure.
