What Is Ankr (ANKR)?

Origins of the Ankr Project

With the advancement of Web3, the proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain has seen explosive growth, as has the demand for nodes. However, node deployment is costly and time-consuming, and node construction is complicated and with a high barrier. The Ankr ecosystem was developed to provide a solution for the development of fast node services.

Chandler Song, Ryan Fang, and Stanley Wu of the University of California, Berkeley co-founded and launched Ankr in 2017. Chandler Song worked as a software engineer at Amazon before becoming the CEO of Ankr. Ryan Fang worked as an investment banker at Morgan Stanley before becoming the COO of Ankr. Stanley Wu worked as a software engineer at Amazon before becoming the CTO of Ankr. After raising venture capital funding, Ankr debuted on the Ethereum network in 2018 and released its white paper. Ankr launched an initial coin offering and launched its mainnet in 2019. The Ankr network launched Ankr 2.0 and the Ankr DAO in 2022, allowing users to use ANKR to participate in the DAO’s governance. Since then, the Ankr Network has shifted from a traditional corporate project operation to a DAO governance model, democratizing the Ankr Network’s services.

The Ankr network’s operation and services

In contrast to blockchains, which are decentralized ledgers used to record transactions, Ankr is a decentralized application platform that offers a suite of Web3 development tools and services to programmers, stakeholders, and businesses.

Let’s take a deep dive into Ankr’s ecosystem to understand how it works and the services it provides.

• Node services: The Ankr network provides users with distributed node services. Because Ankr’s network nodes are spread across more than 30 countries, there is no need to be concerned about geo-fencing or centralized power outages when using Ankr’s node services.

Ankrnode operation principle, source: Ankr white paper 2.0

The diagram above depicts how the node service operates. The load balancer is at the heart of the Ankrnode architecture throughout its operation. When Ankr receives an RPC request, it sends it to the load balancer, which uses a scoring algorithm to find the best node. When the load balancer sends a request to a node that has insufficient information or reports an error, it immediately requests a new node, and so on until an available node is found. Simultaneously, the load balancer sends the same request to each node near the user in order to find the most responsive node to serve the user. As a result, the Ankr network provides nodes capable of meeting the high demand of users.

• Provide API endpoints: Developers working on dApps can use Ankr to access APIs (application programming interfaces) for various blockchains and Defi protocols. When using the Query API, users can directly search for a series of blocks rather than manually searching for addresses and events using RPC; when using the NFT API, Ankr allows developers to easily query all information about NFTs in different blockchains, including the owner, mint time, and transaction history; and when using the Token API, users can quickly search for information about tokens, including the owner, mint time, and transaction history. When using the Token API, users can quickly search for information about tokens on the EVM-compatible blockchain supported by Ankr, including account balances, market prices, and circulation quantities. These API services greatly improve the developer’s efficiency.

Ankr API service, source: Ankr official website

• Liquidity Staking: Normally, staking locks tokens in a smart contract and prevents them from being used during the staking. However, with liquidity staking, users can stake their assets on Ankr and receive liquidity tokens, which are then used to generate revenue on the Defi marketplace. For example, in 2020, the Ankr network launched liquidity mining for ETH, in which users stake ETH and receive synthetic assets aETH on the Ankr network, and then provide liquidity for aETH pairs on a decentralized exchange (DEX) for a reward.

Ankr liquidity stake, source: Ankr official website

• Ankr AppChains: The Ankr network allows developers to build custom-specific blockchains in new subnet frameworks such as BNB Chain, Polygon Edge, and Avalance, with only one dApp per chain, allowing dApps to not compete for network resourcing and developers to focus more on user experience. Ankr allows for low transaction fees and fast transaction speed.

Ankr AppChains, source: Ankr official website

• Web3 Game SDK: The Ankr Web3 Game SDK provides game studios and developers with the mainstream Web3 infrastructure, NFT, and multi-chain wallet integration needed to create Web3 games. Ankr helps game studios connect their games to Web3 on the mainstream Unity and Unreal engines in order to get traditional games to the crypto-fast market.

Ankr game SDK, source: Ankr official website

What is the ANKR token?

ANKR serves as the store of value for Ankr and is the native token of the network. It can be used on the Ethereum (ERC-20 token) and the BNC Chain (BEP-20 token). ANKR currently has a market cap rank of 119 and a total supply cap of 10 billion, with 9.66 billion tokens in circulation.

ANKR tokens perform a number of core functions in the Ankr network, including:

1. ANKR is used to pay for services incurred on the Ankr network, including node deployments and RPC services.

2. Node providers provide network services by taking Anker to receive ANKR rewards. Each node needs to take 100,000 ANKR tokens, which ensures that the node provider can maintain uptime requirements.

3. Token holders can provide ANKR to node providers to participate in network operations and share ANKR rewards.

The following is a summary of the uses of ANKR tokens：

ANKR tokens: The use of ANKR tokens, source: Ankr White Paper 2.0

Historical price

From the time when ANKR was issued to 2021, the price of ANKR gradually increased from $0.002 to $0.01.

After the Ankr network became a verifier for the BSC in 2021, the price increased 700% from $0.01 to $0.07. Its price then skyrocketed to $0.22 as ANKR became available on more cryptocurrency exchanges. But by the end of 2021, its price dropped to around $0.1.

Due to the overall market downturn, ANKR’s price continued to fall in 2022, from around $0.1 at the start of the year to a low of around $0.02 in November, returning to the price before the early 2021 spike.

ANKR price history, source:

How to use Ankr for staking?

One of the main functions of Ankr is to stake on-chain to earn yield. To do this, first, go to the official Ankr website and select the cryptocurrency you want to stake.

1. Select Ankr to delegate the stake and then click [Stake] to operate. Note that you must connect the wallet first and have enough gas fees.

Ankr staking, source of information: Ankr official website

1. Enter the amount of ANKR you want to stake, first authorize the stake by clicking [Approve], and then click [stake].

Ankrstake, source: Ankr official website

Conclusion

As an early pioneer dedicated to building and developing Web3, Ankr has established itself as a leading provider of distributed infrastructure, offering developers the resources required to build projects across multiple chains.

Ankr currently supports RPC requests for 27 blockchain networks, with 345 node providers running, and daily API requests can reach 7.2 billion. It is clear that Ankr has evolved into a powerful distributed infrastructure provider, offering excellent development tools for the future development of a healthy and complete Web3 ecosystem.