Bancor Progress Update: February 2019

We’re experiencing technical difficulties on Bancor’s Medium blog — which is why this progress update is being published on Steemit for the time being. If anyone has a contact at Medium support, please let us know :)

It's been a busy couple months at Bancor, here's the latest:

In Memoriam: The Passing of Bernard Lietaer

_{Bernard Lietaer, 1942–2019}

Earlier this month, we mourned the passing of Bernard Lietaer, President of the BProtocol Foundation and its Chief Monetary Officer.

Bernard was appointed by the European Central Bank to architect the Euro, and later emerged as a renowned author and advocate for financial inclusion through the use of “complementary” currency systems. His ideas are the driving force behind the Foundation’s vision for freedom of currency.

We first met Bernard when he came to Israel to give a talk on community currencies at the University of Tel Aviv. It was intimidating and also exhilarating to directly share our findings and ideas with a hero who had inspired our work via YouTube videos we discovered while researching Bitcoin in 2011. We then reconnected several years later after he read the Bancor Protocol whitepaper and believed it to be the breakthrough he had been searching for in his decades of work on complementary currencies.

_{Bernard discusses the Bancor Protocol in a lecture titled “Economic Justice — Theory to Practice”. (June, 2017)}

Bancor Co-Founder Galia Benartzi wrote a tribute to Bernard’s life and work, from his early days at MIT to his time at the Central Bank of Belgium, to his discovery of Bancor and his work with Sarafu, the first Bancor-powered community currency network deployed last August in Kenya.

As Galia wrote, “It is with great sadness and also fierce determination and deep gratitude, that we continue to share his ideas and research with the world, and to innovate towards fair, free and fluid financial systems that serve people — just as resilient, natural ecologies serve the planet.”

Bernard is survived by his loving wife and partner, Helga Preusse. He will be truly missed.

Sneak Peek: Bancor’s Upcoming Unified Experience Launch

Bancor’s new unified experience is going live soon, allowing single-action conversions between ERC20 and EOS tokens, as well as intuitive management of your Ethereum and EOS tokens and accounts, all from one interface. We are building towards a world where wallets function seamlessly between dApps on different blockchains, just as browsers allow for seamless surfing between websites.

_{A sneak peek of Bancor’s unified experience, enabling single-action conversions between ERC20 and EOS tokens, as well as intuitive management of Ethereum and EOS tokens and accounts within one interface.}

This is the next step in Bancor becoming a blockchain-agnostic network, and abstracting away the blockchain experience in favor of frictionless token conversions and management. Among its many new features, the Bancor Wallet will now provide users with a free EOS account, enough EOS resources to get started and built-in management of RAM, CPU & NET:

_{Buy and sell EOS RAM, stake and unstake CPU and Net directly from the Bancor Wallet.}
Bancor’s cross-chain conversion functionality is based on the ability of BNT — the Bancor Network Token — to operate concurrently on multiple chains. By utilizing BNT, any token can be instantly converted into other tokens in the network, no matter their underlying blockchain.

With this release, we’re aiming to offer a simple way to use your wallet on multiple blockchains, so you can more easily share value between the dApps you love, and the ones that will emerge. This is the decentralized future, and these are the steps (by steps) to get there.

Stay tuned for the upcoming release!

Building Bridges: Good Luck to our Friends at LiquidApps!

Are you following the EOS ecosystem? If so, you’ve probably been hearing both the growing challenges with MainNet resource availability, and the excitement around the announcement of LiquidApps, which will soon be releasing their first product to address this issue — vRAM.

_{A community-generated explainer video for LiquidApps, by the talented EOS Weekly.}

We are truly excited about this innovation for many reasons. First, Bancor’s vision has always been to create a liquidity network that supports millions of long-tail tokens, enabling any community to create a token that is easily convertible. However, in order for this vision to become reality, we need stable technological infrastructure that enables innovators and developers to do this in a scalable and affordable way. And continuous (automated) liquidity, of course :)

While Bancor was an early adopter of the Ethereum blockchain, we were also excited by EOS’ ability to enable 1-second transactions and zero transaction fees for users. But EOS comes with its own set of scaling issues — which LiquidApps is tackling head on.

Leading up to the EOS Mainnet launch, Bancor’s then head of operations, Beni Hakak, created LiquidEOS, a block producer based in Israel, along with Tal Muskal, who joined as the CTO of LiquidEOS. While building LiquidEOS, Tal and Beni learned a great deal about the EOS system, its advantages and the gaps it has to overcome on the way to scalability. This led to them discovering an innovative solution that would lead to the creation of LiquidApps. Beni is now the CEO of LiquidApps and LiquidEOS; Tal is the CTO of LiquidApps and LiquidEOS.

As longtime entrepreneurs, Bancor’s four co-founders, Guy, Galia, Eyal and Yudi, recognized and supported Beni and Tal’s ingenuity and drive, and joined Beni and Tal as non-operational co-founders and advisors. Bancor’s four co-founders maintain their full-time operational roles at Bancor, and remain fully focused on delivering a liquidity solution that serves token creators, no matter their size or blockchain. Bprotocol Foundation (Bancor), LiquidEOS and LiquidApps are separate entities.

We wish Beni, Tal and the LiquidApps team the best of luck in their upcoming launch. Learn more at LiquidApps.io and follow along on Twitter.

On the Road Again: Meet Us in Hong Kong and Amsterdam

We’re extremely excited to attend Asia Crypto Week and speak at Token2049 March 13–15. Bancor co-founder Galia Benartzi will join the panel, “The Push Towards A Billion Crypto Users”, alongside Bill Barhydt (co-founder and CEO of Abra), moderated by Ernst and Young. We have never been shy about our vision to empower the long-tail of tokens, bringing crypto to the masses, and we are thrilled to have the opportunity to reflect on the industry’s progress towards making this a reality.

Will you also be there? We would love to meet you! We will be hosting a side event (details to follow), so drop us a line and we’ll be in touch. {insert hyperlink to: [email protected]}

Galia will also be keynoting the cryptocurrency panel at The Next Web in Amsterdam May 9–10, speaking on how diverse communities can be transformed into economies via new token models.

As always we’d love to hear your thoughts on the product, progress and our plans. For an ongoing discussion with the community and team, please join our Telegram group and or follow us on Twitter, where we’re posting the latest news and announcements from Bancor and blockchain world.

Stay Liquid,

The Bancor Team