Ankr

Basics

• Announced on:
• Mainnet release:
• Based in:
• From the DIA (who is a partner) October update (23-10-2020):

"An infrastructure platform and marketplace for Web3-stack deployment & decentralised nodes."

Audits & Exploits

• Bug bounty program can be found [insert here].
• From Blockthreat:

"On December 2, 2022 Ankr lost $5M as a result of a private key compromise which was used to upgrade aBNBc contract with a malicious minting function. It was a particularly nasty combination of an offchain private key hack and an on-chain contract upgrade which resulted in quadrillions of aBNBc tokens minted on BSC. Attackers were particularly nasty by leaving the minting function exposed inviting a barrage of copycat exploiters. Interestingly a group of traders made three times the profit than the original Ankr attackers by exploiting a slow price oracle to borrow $19M worth of Helios stablecoin. Helio lost $19M as a result of a delayed price oracle which allowed traders to borrow stablecoin with worthless aBNBc token."

• Had an audit done by Beosin (28-11-2020).

Token

Utility

• From the Stkr announcement (19-8-2020):

"ANKR token is already used on the Ankr node and API market as a payment method for hosting fees. But with the launch of Stkr, we have reimagined our token utility!

The ANKR token is the only way to use the Stkr protocol, but users are heavily rewarded from being active in the ecosystem in order to gain rewards. Stakers become stakeholders, either providing computing power to our existing network or deciding on the future direction of the platform in governance elections to strengthen the network."

Technology

• Whitepaper can be found here (24-5-2019).
• Code can be viewed [insert here].

Staking

• Will stake on Skale (10-8-2020)

Interoperability

• Is supporting over 50 protocols (11-11-2020).

Their Other Projects

Ankr Staking

• Fka Stkr (22-1-2021).
• From the announcement (19-8-2020):

"Stkr is a decentralized protocol and platform that combines staking and DeFi, implementing elements from traditional staking with non-custodial staking, Micropools and decentralized governance. The Stkr protocol is built by Ankr and relies 100% on the ANKR token."

• Stkr website & mainnet deposit contract have been released (10-11-2020).

Binance Smart Chain

• Has become one of the 21 validators of BSC (8-3-2021).

Roadmap

• Can be found [Insert link here].

Usage

• Says they have 8000+ nodes deployed (11-11-2020).

Projects that use or built on it

• According to its website it is used by:

Acala, Arweave, Biki, Binance, Celo, Ferrum Network, Compound, Elrond, Harmony, LTO Network, Matic, NGC, Oasis, Prometeus, Vite, TomoChain, Waves and 50 more.

Team, Funding, Partners

Team

• Full team can be found here (11-11-2020).
• They claim their team comes from Amazon, AWS, BitGo, Ethereum, Goldman Sachs, Fitbit, Morgan Stanley, Oracle, Yandex and EOS.
• Chandler Song; CEO

Funding

• Prisma; founders were part of the first Prisma round (31-5-2023)
• Got investment from NGC

Partners 

• Partnered with Microsoft on node software (21-2-2023).
• Bitfrost, mentioned as a supporter/cooperator (11-11-2020).
• From the DIA (who is a partner) October update (23-10-2020):

"DIA and Ankr collaborate to further decentralize primary sourced data collection in various blockchains."

• From the FAQ of Fetch.ai (8-6-2020):

"Ankr: The partnership, agreed in December 2019, will see Fetch.ai further grows its network. Ankr will provide a node hosting application which enables users to run Fetch.ai master nodes."

• Participates as an Indexer in the Mission Control testnet of The Graph (11-11-2020).
• Part of the Celo Alliance (11-11-2020).
• Berkeley (11-11-2020):

"Ankr has been essential to Blockchain at Berkeley to provide consistent uptime for a variety of nodes and going above and beyond individual support 24/7."

• It is one of the whitelisted institutions of the TRON DAO Reserve (TDR), which governs the overcollateralization of USDD (4-11-2022).