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WAVES is the native token of the Waves platform, an open-sourced technology for decentralized applications (dapps) that is typically used for products that require high security. Use cases include handling information related to finance, personal identification, gaming and storage of sensitive data.

Waves price

In April 2016, Waves held an initial coin sale, or ICO, of WAVES tokens that raised about $16 million. The platform minted 100 million WAVES during the ICO and distributed 85 million to its participants, with the rest reserved for bug bounties, early supporters, strategic partners and developers.

The token started trading in June 2016 at a price of about $1. The WAVES price fell to a record low of  $0.1227 on Aug. 2, 2016, and touched a high of $41.33 on May 4, 2021.

At launch, WAVES had a fixed asset cap of 100 million tokens. That changed in October 2019 when token holders elected to move WAVES from a fixed asset to an inflationary one. That means the total number of tokens can increase over time.

How does Waves work?

Waves is a decentralized, open-source blockchain platform for the development of dapps and custom blockchain token processes. It uses its own programming language, called RIDE and a modified proof-of-stake (PoS) protocol known as Leased PoS, and has its own on-chain governance. WAVES holders can vote on on-chain reforms known as “Waves Enhancement Proposals” (WEP). An approval of 80% is required in order to support any changes to the protocol.

The WAVES token is an inflationary asset that offers a reward for every block mined. The reward was initially set at six tokens. Every 100,000 blocks, or roughly 70 days, token holders can vote on whether to change the mining reward by 0.5 WAVES or leave it unchanged.

The platform was developed as a smart contract-first, application-based platform that uses the so-called colored coins approach. It allows the development of new dapps with their own coins that are customized – or colored – iterations of the base version.

Since its mainnet launch, Waves has generated several purpose-specific applications for running decentralized applications. Some use cases for the protocol include decentralized exchanges (DEX), stablecoins and blockchain-based games.

Unlike ether or bitcoin, WAVES offers fixed-fee transactions without the need for gas fees.

Key events and management

The Waves Platform was created in 2016 by Russian theoretical physicist Sasha Ivanov, who named the project for Albert Einstein’s gravitational waves theory. The project was developed based off of the Nxt blockchain protocol. Ivanov, realizing the limitations the Nxt protocol brought to his project, decided to create a platform that met his needs better.

As the platform developed, Waves became the official partner of accounting firm Deloitte and entered a collaborative partnership with Microsoft’s Azure cloud-computing business.

In June 2019, Waves held its mainnet launch, which included the release of the RIDE language. With RIDE, developers could create dapps directly on the Waves blockchain.

SingularDTV (SNGLS) is a blockchain platform that is designed to build the infrastructure for a decentralized entertainment industry. SNGLS is the native cryptocurrency for the SingularDTV blockchain, with each token representing a share in intellectual property (IP) of S-DTV: film, television and software projects.

The platform’s goal is to create a film and television distribution platform that is “transparent, and somewhere where artists and creators have control of their IP,” according to the platform’s website.

It is split into two sections: the centrally organized distributed entity (CODE), which is a new form of structure for an organization, and the smart contract system, which is the decentralized component.

SNGLS Price

SNGLS, which was launched in October 2016, reached its all-time high of $0.435405 in January 2018. But the price action has been choppy since then and is down since its high from almost four years ago.

How SingularDTV works

SingularDTV is built on the Ethereum blockchain and operates using a proof-of-stake system run by the CODE. That is similar to a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) in that token holders are entitled to receive dividends from the profit generated by the platform. Unlike a DAO, however, SNGLS is centrally managed, meaning token holders don’t have voting rights or a say in the future development of the platform.

The SNGLS tokens themselves represent intellectual property and are considered tokenized assets, but they can also serve as utility tokens and be used to pay gas fees when performing smart contract-based functions.

Key Events and Management

SingularDTV was conceived in 2013 by co-founders Zach LeBeau and Kim Jackson. One year later, Joseph Lubin – one of the original founders of Ethereum – joined as the company’s third co-founder and chief technology officer, followed by Arie Levy-Cohen as its last co-founder in 2015.

In October 2016, the SNGLS token officially launched via a public token sale that raised 580,000 ETH, which at the time was worth about $7.5 million.

Maker (MKR) is an Ethereum-based DeFi lending platform founded by Rune Christensen, that allows users to lock ETH into smart contracts to mint Maker’s Dai stablecoin. Major decisions like protocol upgrades are made by MakerDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) made up of MKR token holders.

Maker price

MKR and DAI are the native cryptocurrencies of the MakerDAO protocol. In addition to enabling governance for holders, MKR also fluctuates with the price of DAI to ensure the stablecoin remains at $1 and gives holders the opportunity to receive interest from outstanding deposits.

The Maker price reached its all-time high of $6,349 at the start of May 2021 before tracking downwards toward the $2,000 mark over the next two months. It subsequently traded in the $2,000-4,000 range for the rest of the summer and into the fall.

Since MKR stabilizes DAI, the token was launched without an initial coin offering (ICO). However, investors looking to participate in the platform’s governance functionality have invested in MKR tokens including Paradigm, Dragonfly Capital, 1Confirmation and others.

How does Maker work?

The Maker protocol is open source and was developed by community developers and the Maker Foundation. As the project moved toward decentralization, the Maker Foundation transitioned control of the project to MakerDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) that gives MKR holders the ability to decide protocol updates through governance.

The MakerDAO ecosystem is governed by MKR holders in a direct, on-chain voting system. Proposals for upgrades to MakerDAO can be proposed by anyone, and any MKR holder can use one MKR to submit one vote.

In addition to governance, MKR ensures the stability of the DAI stablecoin. DAI is a full-reserve stablecoin, meaning that it functions off of a cash reserve of Ethereum native coin ether (ETH) and other assets to back its liabilities. When someone makes a deposit into the MakerDAO, they are given DAI as a reward. Outstanding deposits are changed interests, which in turn, are given to MKR holders.

In the event of a crash of ETH price or other cryptos held in the full-reserve system, the MakerDAO system will generate more MKR in order to offset the reserves and maintain stability in the DAI stablecoin.

Key events and management

The original Maker protocol launched in December 2017 as a Single Collateral Dai (SCD) protocol. The SCD protocol was only able to use Ethereum as a collateral asset for loans, but nonetheless generated $100 million in debt. Even as the collateral value dropped, the Dai stablecoin continued to retain its peg at $1 and became one of the most well known algorithmic stablecoins.

In September 2018, Andreessen Horowitz’s (a16z) invested $15 million in MakerDAO, buying 6% off the total MKR supply. This was one of the first investments made by a16z’s crypto fund.

In early 2019, Maker founder Rune Christensen presented a red pill, blue pill dilemma to the Maker staff. By taking the red pill, the Maker protocol would focus on government compliance and integrating Maker into the global financial system. On the other hand, the blue pill option would lead to the creation of Multi-Collateral Dai (MCD) and the end of funding for the Maker Ecosystem Growth Foundation. The dilemma became a point of contention among the Maker staff, which was highlighted in former Maker CTO Andy Milenius’ letter “Zandy’s Story.” In the letter, Milenius called the events the most difficult challenge he faced during his 3.5 years working on the project.

According to the letter, there was a faction of members at Maker that didn’t want to pick either option. The “Purple Pill” group started as a Signal group chat among Maker board members that discussed non-binary options for the red pill, blue pill dilemma. According to a leaked legal letter directed to the Maker Ecosystem Growth Foundation, Christensen believed that the board members were committing conspiracy against the Maker team and had them all fired for breach of fiduciary duties.

In November 2019, MakerDAO upgraded from SCD to a Multi Collateral Dai (MCD) protocol.

The Loopring token (LRC) is the native token of the Loopring protocol, a blockchain-based project that allows developers to build their own decentralized exchanges.

The project aims to create an interconnected system of trading platforms where buyers and sellers can access multiple platforms from a single dashboard and be matched together to trade crypto assets. This system makes finding people to buy crypto from or sell to much faster and easier.

Loopring price

Launched in 2017, the Loopring (LRC) utility token fuels all operations on the Loopring protocol, including voting. One of the main drivers of LRC price is how it allows users who stake their tokens (deposit them into a special staking wallet) to receive a percentage of the transaction fees that are paid across all Loopring-based exchanges.

LRC is a “deflationary” token, which means the platform “burns” a percentage of transaction fees. Burning refers to the process of permanently removing tokens from circulation. 5% of normal order fees are burned, while 0.5% of peer-to-peer order fees are burned. This feature helps to support the price by making the remaining tokens in circulation scarcer. Because LRC has a capped supply of 1.37 billion tokens, the total number of LRC continuously decreases as more tokens are burned.

In early January 2018, LRC’s price hit an all-time high of $2.40, but it fell by 94% over the following seven months. Loopring’s price remained under $0.13 for about two years. In February 2021, LRC reached $0.89 – the highest price seen in almost three years.

How does Loopring work?

To launch an exchange using the Loopring protocol, developers are required to stake a minimum of 250,000 to 1 million LRC, depending on whether they use Loopring’s on-chain data proof service. If an exchange decides to withdraw funds from its staking pool or otherwise falls below the minimum requirement, the Loopring protocol will seize funds from the exchange, shut it down and distribute the confiscated tokens to LRC stakers. Exchanges are not required to stake above their minimum LRC requirement, but may choose to do so in order to reduce market-making fees on the exchange.

The project uses a type of cryptography called zero-knowledge rollups, or zk-rollups, which helps exchanges built on top of Loopring to lower costs and sidestep slow speeds without sacrificing security. Rollups on Loopring work by bundling hundreds of transactions together and executing them outside the main Ethereum blockchain, which is known as a layer 1 network. A cryptographic proof (a piece of cryptographic code that confirms all transactions in the bundle are valid) is then generated and submitted to the main chain.

That means exchanges can settle trades more quickly on Loopring because the protocol can complete key computations off-chain. Thus, by reducing the number of transactions communicated to the Ethereum network, settlements can be received faster and cost less.

Although the project was initially planned to be a blockchain-agnostic protocol, the Loopring Foundation has continued to focus on Ethereum.

Key events and management

China-based Loopring was co-founded by Daniel Wang and Jay Zhou in August 2017 following an initial coin offering (ICO) of its digital token, LRC. The sale raised 120,000 ether, which was worth $45 million at the time. LRC price at the time of the ICO was $0.067.

Changes to the regulations in China regarding ICOs at the time meant the Loopring Foundation was forced to return about 80% of all the funds it raised back to investors. The remaining 20% was held back to fund the future development of the protocol.

Loopring posts quarterly updates, and in August 2021, the platform announced new support for Ethereum-based non-fungible tokens, allowing users to create, trade and transfer unique digital assets with help from the platform.

Kava is the native cryptocurrency of the Kava.io platform, a decentralized finance protocol allowing users to lend and borrow assets using multiple crypto assets as collateral.

As a blockchain-based platform, Kava.io doesn’t require intermediaries to complete this process. Instead, it opts for a cross-chain lending platform allowing users to borrow the USDX stablecoin against non-decentralized finance (DeFi) assets such as bitcoin (BTC) and xrp (XRP.) Additionally, users can deposit supported crypto assets and earn interest.

KAVA price

The KAVA token launched in October 2019 and noted a first price peak of $5.11 on Aug. 17, 2020. Its value dropped to $1.28 in early November 2020 until recording a new high of $7.25 on April 9, 2021. The subsequent KAVA price dip to $2.78 on May 24, 2021, culminated in an all-time high of $9.12 on Aug. 30, 2021. The KAVA price retraced to $4.63 on Sept. 22, 2021.

In terms of its total supply, KAVA has an unknown supply cap; 100 million tokens were issued during three private sales – 30.05%, 5.02% and 4.93%, respectively – and one public round – 6.52% – on Binance Launchpad. Its current issuance rate is unknown because KAVA block rewards are randomized based on how much KAVA is staked on the network. However, Kava Labs maintains a burn mechanism when a collateralized debt position (CDP) is closed. Any KAVA used in that process to pay for stability fees is burned (permanently removed from circulation.)

The Kava Labs shareholders control 25% of the total KAVA supply, with the remaining 28.48% residing in the Treasury.

How does Kava.io work?

Kava.io leverages the Tendermint-based Proof-of-stake consensus mechanism. The ability to tolerate machines failing in arbitrary ways, including becoming malicious, is known as Byzantine fault tolerance, which increases transaction validation speed by splitting them into two levels:

• Validators act as a small “validator committee” to give initial approval to the transaction.
• Guardians leverage thousands of nodes (tasked to verify each batch of network transactions) to validate transactions and add them to the blockchain.

Kava is built using the Cosmos SDK, a modular blockchain development framework. As Cosmos’ ecosystem provides the IBC protocol – Inter-Blockchain Communication – Kava can directly communicate with other Cosmos-based blockchains and ecosystems to achieve cross-chain functionality. For example, Kava.io will use IBC to make Chainlink’s decentralized data feeds accessible to the broader Cosmos ecosystem.

Kava.io uses smart contract technology and offers a native dapp for users to lend, borrow and swap their assets. The platform currently supports KAVA, HARD, USDC, SWAP, BNB, BTCB, BUSD and XRPB assets. Smart contracts are self-executing computer contracts deployed on the blockchain.

Key events and management

Kava Labs, the for-profit company behind Kava.io, was founded in June 2017 by Brian Henning Kerr and Scott Stuart. The company raised $1.2 million in seed funding on Feb. 28, 2019, followed by a venture round on July 29, 2019 – although no financials have been published. FrameWork Ventures purchased between 1% and 5% of all Kava tokens for $750,000 on April 21, 2020.

Kava Labs acquired Crank Studio, a creative service provider specialized in UI/UX, visual identity, motion, and graphic design, in March 2021 for an undisclosed amount.

Investors in Kava Labs include, but are not limited to, Yield Ventures, Hashkey, TRGC, UniValues Associates, Robot Ventures, Lemniscap, Hard Yaka, IOSG Ventures, Digital Asset Capital Management and 2020 Ventures.

The Kava network underwent a hard fork on April 8. 2021, to introduce various governance and parameter changes. Kava Labs introduced a solution to facilitate the onboarding of layer 2 crypto assets. The switch-api supports Bitcoin, the Lightning Network, Ethereum and XRP. Support for ERC-20 assets and other blockchain-based currencies is on the agenda.

ICX is the native cryptocurrency of Icon: an interoperability blockchain protocol that helps connect multiple blockchains together for token and smart contract data sharing.

One of the main problems with blockchain projects is they’re created independently and therefore aren’t able to interact with one another. For example, without protocols like Icon, it would be impossible to send tokens or share smart contract data between blockchains such as Solana and EOS.

Icon price

The Icon Foundation held the ICX initial coin offering (ICO) in September 2019, offering 2,500 ICX for 1 ETH. The ICO made 50% of the total token supply available for public sale and raised just under $43 million. The remaining 50% of the token supply was allocated for product development and Icon’s founding team.

Newly issued ICX is first held by the Icon treasury before being distributed to community members based on their contribution to the project’s development.

Icon’s price spiked to $13.16 in January 2018 a few months after its initial coin offering (ICO) the previous September. ICX however caught the crypto bear market that unfolded throughout 2018 trending steadily downward toward a price of $0.25 at the end of the year.

The Icon price remained consistently under $0.50 for the next two years before eventually breaking north of $2.00 in early 2021.

How does Icon work?

The Icon network builds multiple components into its governance structure in order to maintain transparency and longevity, starting with Pubic Representatives (P-Reps) who are responsible for block production on the network. P-Reps receive votes from ICX holders which determine their rank.

P-Reps are elected by ICONists, who are incentivized to vote for P-Reps based on who contributes most to the network and whose policies they support. Policies are created or amended by the Network Proposal System (NPS), which P-Reps use to attempt to appeal to ICONists and attract votes.

P-Reps can also vote on or sponsor the proposals of their fellows using the Contribution Proposal System (CPS), which they can do to acquire additional rewards. They must however offer collateral equivalent to 10% of a proposal’s budget should it be unsuccessful.

Finally, a system called the Blockchain Transmission Protocol (BTP) allows messages to pass between connected blockchain by relayers. All data sent between blockchains are verified by smart contracts.

Key events and management

The Icon blockchain project was founded in August 2017 by Mun Kim, former chief strategy officer for Korean fintech holding company DAYLI Financial Group. The Icon protocol is governed by the Icon Republic, with notable representatives from the Seoul government, Samsung and LINE. The Icon Republic has since added Shinhan Bank and Saramin to its list of partners.

On December 5, 2017, the Icon Republic joined the Blockchain Interoperability Alliance, which aims to promote interconnectivity between blockchain networks.

Icon started life on the Ethereum blockchain before migrating to its own blockchain on January 24, 2018. The Icon Mainnet 1.0 was released just ahead of the Icon Annual Summit: The Genesis and featured a native ICX wallet with an ERC20 token swap.

There followed rumours in early 2019 that Iconloop, the startup behind the project, was gearing up for an initial public offering (IPO) on the Korean technology-focused stock exchange KOSDAQ. However, Iconloop CEO Jonghyup Kim denied these rumours.

In January 2020, Icon announced that it would be integrating with Chainlink (LINK) on a collaborative, interoperable oracle solution for all blockchains. Oracles are third-party services which provide real-world data to smart contracts, such as live price information. Through the integration of price oracles with Chainlink, Icon was able to launch its token staking, yield and swap platform ICONFi.

In September 2020, Icon announced its plans to launch Icon 2.0, an upgrade on its existing loopchain with interoperability features to support decentralized finance (DeFi) services.

FET is the native cryptocurrency of Fetch.ai, which is a blockchain-based project aimed at introducing artificial intelligence (AI) to the cryptocurrency economy. Its main selling point are its “autonomous economic agents” (AEAs), powered by AI, that automate decentralized finance functions. Put simply, AEAs are coined as “intelligent software agents” that can perform tasks, such as finding the cheapest airline tickets to Spain or selling an item online to the highest bidder.

FET Price

The all-time high price of Fetch.ai’s FET token was $1.17 on Sept. 8, 2021. Its all-time low value was $0.00816959 on March 12, 2020.

FET, a token issued on the Ethereum blockchain through the ERC-20 token standard, has a total supply of 1.15 billion. Unlike the case with many other tokens, there is no burning or halving mechanism in place for Fetch.ai’s native token.

FET’s price is volatile, even for the cryptocurrency industry. Despite a successful launch, FET quickly dropped from $0.35 to $0.03 in late 2019 and went even lower in early 2020.

An uptick to $0.15 occurred in August 2020 before the price fell to $0.05 and lower. In March 2021, FET hit $0.28 and $0.78 in quick succession. The price then returned to $0.205 by June before surging again to $0.918415 and $1.17 in September 2021.

How Does Fetch.ai Work?

Fetch.ai uses a “smart ledger,” which combines blockchain architecture with “direct acrylic graph” (DAG) technology. The system allows for transactions to be “assigned” to different routes, creating a fragmented network. The network can create new routes if one of the existing “lanes” has a heavy load.

Under the hood, Fetch.ai uses the UPoW (useful proof-of-work/proof-of-beneficial work) consensus mechanism, a combination of proof-of-work, proof-of-stake and DAG.

In a future release, Fetch.ai will support sharding to process transactions in parallel.

At a programming level, Fetch.ai uses the Etch language to create and interact with smart contracts.

Key Events And Management

Fetch.ai was founded in the U.K. in 2017 by entrepreneur Humayun Sheikh, scientist Thomas Hain and software developer Toby Simpson.

The team raised $15 million in a seed funding round in June 2018 that included investments from Outlier Ventures and Blockwall Management. In February 2019, Fetch.ai raised $6 million through an initial exchange offering (IEO) on the Binance crypto exchange, and in March 2021,  a funding round brought in another $5 million. GDA Group, a Toronto-based digital asset firm, led that round.

In November 2020, Fetch.AI formed a partnership with Cudo, a service known as an “oracle” that brings data from outside sources to a blockchain, to enable batch processing of decentralized machine learning tasks on the Fetch.ai network. Cudo also provides computer power for autonomous software agents on the network.

Fetch.ai upgraded its network in July 2021, and a month later, following a judgment from the London High Court, Fetch.ai succeeded in forcing Binance to find and freeze $2.6 million worth of assets allegedly stolen from Fetch.ai’s Binance trading account by hackers.

Decentraland (MANA) is a decentralized 3D virtual reality platform powered by the Ethereum blockchain where users can create virtual structures such as casinos, art galleries, concert halls and theme parks, and charge other players to visit them.

The traversable virtual space within Decentraland is called LAND, a non-fungible digital asset (ERC-721) that is divided into 16m x 16m parcels. These parcels are permanently owned by members of the community and are purchased using MANA – Decentraland’s native cryptocurrency token. Some parcels are organized further into themed communities, called Districts, allowing users to create shared spaces with common interests.

MANA price

Decentraland launched in 2017 following a $26 million initial coin offering (ICO). Forty percent of the tokens were sold publicly in the token sale, while the Decentraland Foundation held on to 20%, the founding members of Decentraland kept another 20%, and the remaining 20% was allocated to building the community and funding partnerships.

The virtual world launched its test platform in 2019 and opened the platform to the public in February 2020.

MANA is an ERC-20 token – a fungible token created using Ethereum smart contracts. Before the Decentraland platform launched, the project held two LAND auctions where prospective players could bid for plots. All plots had a minimum bid amount of 1,000 MANA and all MANA spent on LAND during the first two auctions were burned – meaning they were destroyed and taken out of circulation. Registering and reselling avatar names, selling LAND or wearables on Opensea or the Decentraland marketplace also involves burning an amount of MANA each time. The total amount of MANA burned to date can be found here.

In 2018, shortly after MANA made its debut on exchanges, the asset experienced an initial pump and dump as new investors flocked to buy the asset and ICO investors dumped their presale tokens. After that, MANA prices stagnated between $0.02 and $0.17 for about three years until Grayscale Investments (a sister company to CoinDesk) announced the launch of its Decentraland Trust product. Shortly after that update, MANA hit its all-time high of $1.63 in April 2021.

How Decentraland works

According to the official white paper, Decentraland’s protocol consists of 3 separate layers:

1. Consensus layer: For tracking ownership of land and virtual items within the game.
2. Land content layer: A decentralized storage system for uploading assets and content like audio files.
3. Real-time layer: For allowing avatars to communicate and connect with each other in-game.

MANA plays a central role in the Decentraland world and is available to purchase across a range of centralized exchanges including Binance, Coindesk and Kraken. Players can buy and sell a range of in-game items using MANA, including costumes for avatars. Holders of the cryptocurrency can also convert their MANA into wrapped MANA (wMANA) and deposit it into a Decentralized Autonomous Organization wallet (DAO) in order to gain the ability to vote on the future development of the virtual world. 1 MANA token equals a single vote.

LAND owners – holders of tokens that represent a single plot of land in Decentraland – also have voting rights, however, they aren’t required to convert their tokens or deposit them into the DAO. The price of LAND varies considerably depending on location, with an average price of $3,000 to $60,000 on Opensea. In July 2021, a U.S-based investment firm Republic purchased 259 parcels of land for $913,228.20 – the highest recorded purchase on the platform to date.

Key events and management

The Decentraland Foundation, the organization behind the development of the Decentraland software, was founded by Esteban Ordano and Ariel Meilich in 2015. Both have stepped down from their positions at the project but continue to work on it as advisers. The Decentraland Foundation holds the intellectual property rights and maintains the Decentraland website.

According to Crunchbase, investors in Decentraland include venture capitalist George Burke, venture capital firm Fundamental Labs, Genesis One Capital, Fabric Ventures, Boost VC, Animoca Brands and Digital Currency Group, which also owns CoinDesk.

In June 2021, famed auction house Sotheby’s opened a virtual gallery, its first ever, in Decentraland.

BitTorrent (BTT) is a digital token based on a blockchain that powers some of the world’s most popular decentralized protocols and applications. BitTorrent itself is a decentralized file-sharing protocol that was developed in 2001 by computer programmer Bram Cohen. It was designed to facilitate the transfer of large computer files without a central server, and it is responsible for moving a significant percentage of the world’s internet traffic. Decentralized apps powered by BTT include BitTorrent Speed, BitTorrent File System and DLive.

BTT price

BTT was launched in 2019 through an initial exchange offering (IEO) on crypto exchange Binance’s Launchpad platform in two separate sales, including one for those who paid with the token native to the Tron blockchain, TRX, and the other for those who paid with Binance’s native exchange token, BNB. Within minutes of the public sale, all 59.8 billion BTT sold out for a total of about $7.2 million. Demand was so high for the token that Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao stated that the IEO would have taken 18 seconds if not for some technical issues on Binance’s end. All together, 962 investors participated in the sale.

Trading in BTT began to pick up in February 2021, and its price hit an all-time high of $0.013566 on April 5, 2021. After that, BTT’s price fell steadily until July 21, when it bottomed out at $0.002154. Its all-time low was $0.000138 on March 13, 2020.

How BitTorrent works

The BitTorrent peer-to-peer protocol boasts higher transmission rates than HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol) and FTP (file transfer protocol) because it is a distributed transfer protocol. BitTorrent finds users with files others want and then downloads pieces of the files from those users simultaneously, leading to higher download speeds. It has more than 100 million active users each month in 138 countries.

Key events and management

Cohen co-founded BitTorrent Inc. in 2014. So far, the company has raised $42.9 million, according to Crunchbase, including the ICO in 2019.

In 2018, BitTorrent was acquired by Chinese cryptocurrency company Tron, and Cohen left soon after that. He went on to launch Chia, which bills itself as an environmentally friendly cryptocurrency.

On Feb. 11, 2019, the BitTorrent Foundation initiated airdrops of BTT to TRON (TRX) holders and said it plans to continue doing so every year on Feb. 11 until 2025.

Band Protocol (BAND) is a cross-chain data oracle platform that aggregates and connects real-world data to smart contracts. The project’s mission is to bring external data sourced through traditional web APIs, such as stock prices and weather, onto blockchains. Band Protocol is blockchain-agnostic, which allows for interoperability between smart contracts and the traditional web.

Band Protocol price

Band Protocol released its token via an Initial Exchange Offering (IEO) in the fall of 2019. During the IEO, tokens were sold for $0.473 to the public, representing 27.37% of the total supply of BAND tokens. Other holders of BAND tokens include private investors, advisors, the Band Protocol Foundation and the Band Protocol ecosystem. The total supply of BAND tokens is capped at 100 million, a figure expected to be reached by mid-2024 according to the token release schedule.

On Sept. 18, 2019, BAND token debuted trading at $0.64 per token. On Apr. 12, 2021, the BAND token hit an all-time high of $23.23 but experienced a drawdown in May and June amid a broader market sell-off. For the next several months, BAND continued to trade between $5 and $10 per coin.

The token is supported on several centralized and decentralized exchanges, including Binance, Coinbase, Huobi and Uniswap.

How does Band Protocol work?

Band Protocol falls within a category called “oracles”, which act as a middleman between decentralized applications and various data sources. Other oracle projects include Ethereum-based Chainlink and Solana-based Pyth Network.

In June 2020, the project officially launched the public mainnet of BandChain, the protocol’s blockchain in the Cosmos ecosystem. BandChain utilizes the native BAND token to secure the decentralized oracle network through delegated Proof-of-Stake. This means a person can validate block transactions according to how many BAND tokens they hold. Validators stake their tokens to fulfill data requests in return for a portion of the usage fees and earn block rewards.

According to the project’s website, “For every data request to BandChain, which requires BAND tokens in the form of transaction fees, validators and their delegators earn a fee for fulfilling oracle requests and producing blocks.” This ensures that all stakeholders on the oracle network including data requestors (protocols, developers), validators and BAND token holders are economically aligned. The more usage on BandChain, the more protocol fees are accrued by validators and token holders creating a positive feedback loop enhancing security and demand for BAND.

Key events and management

The Band Protocol project was founded in 2017 by Soravis Srinawakoon, Sorawit Suriyakarn and Paul Nattapatsiri. As of October 2021, all three co-founders are still at the helm of the project, with Srinawakoon serving as CEO, Suriyakarn as CTO and Nattapatsiri as CPO.

The project received funding from venture capital firm Sequoia Capital and cryptocurrency exchange Binance, as well as Dunamu & Partners, Spartan Group, Alphain Ventures, Woodstock and SeaX.

• In June 2020, Band Protocol launched its public Mainnet of BandChain on the Cosmos ecosystem, in order to foster greater cross-chain compatibility.
• In December 2020, Band Protocol became the first blockchain firm to join the non-profit OpenAPI Initiative, alongside tech giants such as Google, eBay, IBM and Microsoft.
• In July 2021, Band Protocol went live with its BandChain version 2, allowing data providers to run nodes themselves, rather than having intermediaries acquire the data.