The Ankr Project and ANKR Token: Features and Prospects

From its inception, Ankr has significantly widened its service range. At first, Ankr was designed to help companies exploit the surplus power of their server equipment. Now, it has transformed into a platform offering liquid staking, functioning as an RPC (Remote Procedure Call) provider. Moreover, it supplies the developers with enhanced APIs, aiding in the launch of their own blockchains.

Ankr has also extended its SDKs to Web3 game developers, basing its operations on well-known engines such as Unity and Unreal Engine.

Ankr's Services and Products Source: Ankr.com

Founders and Investors

Ankr was born in November 2017. The project's key members include Chandler Song (Ankr's CEO, previously an engineer at Amazon Web Services), Ryan Fang (Ankr's COO, formerly a data researcher at Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse), and Stanley Wu (Ankr's CTO, boasting a 10-year technical leadership tenure at Amazon).

Key Members of the Ankr Team Source: Ankr.com

Ankr received its major funding in 2018, accumulating around $18.7 million in total. However, this figure might not be precise, as it fluctuates based on the information source. Funds were raised from high-profile backers such as Pantera Capital, DHVC, Neo, BlockVenture, LinkVC, and OK Blockchain Capital.

Working Mechanism and Unique Features

Ankr operates much like a marketplace for cloud computing. By employing containerization technology, it empowers developers and users to effortlessly deploy nodes and run a diverse range of programs.

Ankr's distributed infrastructure provides the possibility of renting out unused resources, thus creating a mutually beneficial scenario for providers of computational power and users in search of affordable cloud services.

When it comes to RPC service, Ankr's infrastructure operates on its own distinct principles:

• A robust monitoring system verifies the performance of nodes at regular intervals. Any malfunctioning node is promptly disconnected from the load balancer.

• The load-balancing algorithm employs a rating system to select the best node to service the RPC request at any given moment.

• The responses of nodes are cached, serving as an auxiliary method of reducing request processing time.

For a deeper understanding of the unique features and benefits of Ankr's liquid staking services, you can refer to a dedicated article available on our website.

Ankr Network Operation Scheme Source: Ankr.com

What exactly is ANKR?

ANKR serves as the utility token for the Ankr platform, holding a significant role within its ecosystem by serving several key functions:

• It facilitates the payment for services the project offers, such as node deployment or API services; 

• It rewards users who contribute their computational resources to the platform;

• It's used in staking, where a specific quantity of coins is locked to attain the status of a validator within the Ankr network;

• It confers voting rights during polls about project updates.

The total supply of ANKR is capped at 10 billion tokens. As per CoinMarketCap, all these tokens are now in circulation.

Use and Flow of Ankr Tokens within the Project's Ecosystem Source: Ankr.com

Challenges and Prospects

Despite prioritizing security, the Ankr DeFi platform encountered a cyberattack in late 2022. The perpetrators were able to secure a profit amounting to approximately $20 million from the so-called wrapped aBNBc tokens. Interestingly, this incident did not severely impact the value of BNB or ANKR.

From that point, the project has progressed well, broadening its product offerings and partner network. One notable milestone is the introduction of a blockchain creation tool, AppChains, to the Microsoft Azure marketplace.

The Ankr Ecosystem Source: Ankr.com

Ankr could potentially demonstrate its full capacity if it manages to secure more corporate clients after the saga of crypto regulation concludes. The advent of a bull market should considerably aid this effort. However, current regulatory uncertainties in the U.S., a key market, may pose obstacles to the advancement of such projects.