Contents

• The Band protocol: what is it and how does it work?
• From the BAND whitepaper
• BAND coin
• The story so far
• What might happen
• FAQs

In the world of decentralised finance, or DeFi, one problem developers face is linking the decentralised world with the centralised one. One way to solve this is through the Band protocol and its associated BAND token.

So what is BAND – and can we make a BAND coin price prediction? Let’s have a look.

The Band protocol: what is it and how does it work?

According to its website, the Band protocol aims to solve the linkage problem by “building a decentralised bridge to enable secure interoperabilities between smart contracts and the traditional web”.

This means that decentralised applications (dApps) can use the protocol’s smart contract data points to access data that’s outside the system. The data points are supplied by feeds from external sources, and provide a framework for dApp users and developers to moderate, operate and manage the data sources themselves, which means that the sources are secure and reliable.

The Band protocol was founded in 2017 by Soravis Srinawakoon (a former Ericsson software engineer and Boston Consulting Group management consultant), Paul Nattapatsiri (a former Turfmapp web developer and Tripadvisor engineer) and Sorawit Suriyakarn (a former Dropbox and Quora software engineer). Srinawakoom serves as CEO, while Nattapatsiri is chief product officer and Suriyakarn is chief technology officer. 

From the BAND whitepaper

The BAND: Decentralised Data Governance public draft was published on 1 May 2019 and is 30 pages long. 

According to the whitepaper: “Band Protocol intends to solve data accessibility and data reliability in a fully decentralised manner. This includes how Band provides data endpoint such that any smart contracts can easily consume real-world data and data governance mechanism to ensure data integrity.”

It goes on to say: “While Band is initially built on top of Ethereum, the protocol itself is blockchain-agnostic and will eventually be supported on all major smart contract platforms. Band’s vision is to become the decentralised world’s go-to database, which any decentralised programs or applications can rely on for trusted data.”

The paper also addresses the huge potential that dApps have “to disrupt traditional businesses by replacing centralised middlemen with automatically-executed, trust-less smart contracts”.

BAND coin

BAND coin is the native token of the Band protocol. It represents the data sets used within the protocol, and can be used in several ways.

Firstly, it can be used as collateral for issuing record tokens. Secondly, it can be used to give token holders voting rights in the network. And thirdly, it can be used for voting to secure the network through a delegated proof-of-stake (dPoS) consensus mechanism.

If you own BAND coin, then you can become a data provider for the protocol. You do this by getting a data source contract and inputting the relevant data into it. You can then become a candidate provider by deploying tokens that meet the minimum requirement and serve as collateral.

The tokens can be used in stablecoins and other asset-pricing feeds to conduct decentralised lending and other payment services, with dApps accessing the data through an aggregator.

One thing to look out for is the way that the value of BAND tokens gradually decreases. This is to encourage users to take part in network staking to earn more tokens through staking rewards, with a goal of having 66% of all tokens staked at any given time. In other words, the idea is for people to use their BAND coins, not keep them sitting in a wallet or on an exchange.

In September 2019, BAND coin launched on Binance in an initial exchange offering (IEO) for selected users of the exchange. The BAND token was offered for $0.473 on Binance. In total, 27.37 million BAND were sold in the IEO, representing 27.37% of the 100 million BAND coins that are available.

The system originally ran on Ethereum, but in the middle of 2020 it moved over to use the Cosmos system. This meant it relaunched in a simpler, more refined format. The move saw it touted as a potential rival for Sergey Nazarov’s Chainlink project.

One major piece of BAND coin news came in December 2020, when Band became the first blockchain company to join the OpenAPI initiative. The project, whose other members include the likes of Microsoft, Google, eBay and IBM, aims to create software on a blockchain that will allow applications and projects to, in effect, talk to one another. 

The Band protocol tracks fiat currencies and fiat metal. Its foreign exchange rates and commodity prices are aggregated from numerous APIs and sources, such as Fixer, OXR, XE and AlphaVantage, and served through the on-chain oracle endpoint. For cryptocurrencies, Band Protocol aggregates spot prices from sites such as CoinMarketCap, CoinGecko, Brave New Coin and other centralised exchanges. 

Band plans on further developing its use of Cosmos with the Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol, to improve data transfer across chains. This has serious potential as an interoperable, multi-chain future develops. 

The story so far

As we’ve seen, the coin was launched on Binance in September 2019 at $0.473, and for much of its first six months of existence the price hovered somewhere between $0.20 and $0.30.

However, in late April 2020 the coin began to kick off, breaking through the $1 barrier. Its relaunch was a success, and on 22 July it reached $4.55, according to CoinMarketCap. It dipped slightly to $3.98 on 1 August 2020, but then experienced a major price boom, rocketing to $15.05 by 12 August – a rise of nearly 280% in the space of just 11 days.

Although it dropped down in the middle of August to $10.34, it went back up to a then all-time high of $15.46 on 1 September 2020 – a price increase of just over 288% in a month. However, it then dropped once more and circled around the $6 mark for much of the rest of the year.

Last year was a wild ride for crypto, and BAND coin was no exception. It started 2021 at $5.51, then shot up to $10.35 on 8 January, nearly doubling in the space of one week. The price then hovered at around $9 for a short period but on 12 February it hit $18.83.

While there was an inevitable crash after such a big rise, late March, April and early May saw it go back up again. It stood at $11.75 on 25 March 2021, but a little more than three weeks later, on 15 April, it stood at its all-time high of $23.29. On 24 April, it dipped to $13.71, but it was back up on 6 May 2021, at $18.26.

The great crypto day crash of 19 May hit BAND and by 23 May 2021, it was $6.84. The price stayed around this mark and on 14 June, it was $6.91, down by more than 62% from just over a month earlier. On 16 October 2021, the BAND coin price stood at $8.19, and by 25 November 2021 the coin was valued at $7.52.

On 20 December 2021, the coin was worth $4.87, and after a difficult period for the crypto markets stretching well into the New Year, by 19 January 2022 the coin was worth $4.86. The coin continued on a general downtrend and by the end of February, the coin was trading at lows of $3.38. On 14 March, the coin hit a multi-year low of $3.27.

A few days later, Band announced the following developments on Twitter:

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Towards the end of the month, there was fleeting positivity in the crypto market, and by 2 April 2022, BAND was trading at highs of $5.60, the highest price recorded in well over two months.

However, by 12 May the bears very much had control after a market-wide crash, with BAND hitting lows of $1.29 on 12 May 2022. Some headway has been made in recent weeks, and as of 8 August 2022, the coin was trading at approximately $1.89, up 3% in a recent 24-hour trading period. 

That’s what has happened so far. So, what is the BAND coin price prediction for 2022 and beyond?

What might happen

There are differing opinions when it comes to what will happen to the BAND price in future.

For instance, WalletInvestor’s BAND price prediction suggests that the coin will continue on its downward trend, and be worth just under $0.12 in a year’s time. 

However, DigitalCoinPrice suggests the token will reach $2.84 in September this year, representing an upswing of almost 50%. The site forecasts a value of $3.28 in one year. The average BAND coin price prediction for 2025 is $3.53, and the site suggests that the coin could break the $5 mark towards the beginning of 2027.

The site’s BAND coin price prediction for 2030 is also optimistic, suggesting an average price for the year of $8.77.

FAQs

Further reading

What is BAND coin? Your ultimate guide

Basic Attention Token: your ultimate guide