Over the past few weeks, crypto investors have largely focused their efforts and attention on a select set of players. These include Cardano and Chainlink — two altcoins near the top of the leaderboards that have gained hundreds of percent in mere months.
But there are other projects that have rallied. Band Protocol, whose native token is BAND, has gained approximately 400% in the past month alone, with its token now trading at $5.00. It is a competitor to Chainlink, as both projects intend on accomplishing a similar goal of connecting the internet to the decentralized web.
The cryptocurrency is benefiting from a series of partnerships with startups in and outside of this industry — the latest of which was announced on Wednesday.
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Sequoia-Backed Crypto Oracle Project Secures Partnership With ICON
Band Protocol, an oracle project backed by Sequoia Capital and some of crypto’s notable funds, announced a partnership with ICON on Wednesday. In a press release shared to the project’s Medium, Band’s Kevin Lu wrote:
“ICON Network, one of the largest decentralized blockchain networks, has strategically partnered and chosen Band Protocol to provide secure and verified data oracles for its rapidly growing decentralized application ecosystem.”
The duo intends to focus on ICON’s decentralized applications in the decentralized finance, prediction market, sports/esports betting, and RNG/VRF market segments.
The founder of ICON, Min Kim, shared the excitement expressed by the Band team:
“The strategic partnership and integration with Band Protocol to the ICON Network will bring increased security and scalability to all the decentralized applications built on South Korea’s largest blockchain project. Band Protocol’s oracle will simultaneously strengthen the existing network and allow expansion to new real-world uses.”
There Is Room to Rally for BAND
Analysts say that BAND has room to appreciate further as more partnerships are rolled out.
Kelvin Koh, a partner at the Spartan Group and a former Goldman Sachs partner, explained his opinions on this in a Twitter thread published last week. (The thread was notably published when BAND was 60% lower than it is trading at now.)
0/ The first phase of $BAND’s re-rating culminated in its mainnet launch lifting its circ. market cap to $40M (FD $200M).
The next phase of $BAND’s re-rating has started and will focus primarily on partnership announcements in the coming 6-12 months. https://t.co/7h2TeZIppL
— SpartanBlack (@SpartanBlack_1) July 13, 2020
Koh explained in that thread that the crypto asset is currently undergoing a “re-rating” phase spurred by partnerships and its mainnet launch:
“The next phase of $BAND’s re-rating has started and will focus primarily on partnership announcements in the coming 6-12 months… [Partnerships] will drive the next phase of re-rating. Even assuming its market cap doubles from here to $100M (FD mkt cap ~$0.5B), its valuation will only be at 4-6% of Chainlink’s current valuation, implying room for significant upside.”
The investor specifically made reference to two of Band Protocol’s earlier partnerships: one with Math Wallet and one with Waves Protocol. Koh claims the former is important as Math Wallet “supports 40+ assets and has a large userbase in China,” meaning BAND is exposed to a wider audience.
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Featured Image from Shutterstock One of Chainlink's Competitors, Band Protocol, Secures Partnership With Top Crypto