TL;DR

• Proposal to whitelist REQ.
• Proposed co-investment is 100,000 BNT.
• There are no apparent security concerns that would prohibit whitelist status.
• There is no reason to doubt the legitimacy of the Request Network project.
• The benefit to Bancor is clear.

REQ token address: 0x8f8221afbb33998d8584a2b05749ba73c37a938a

Project Website: https://request.network Request Network is a blockchain payment request technology. Request currently supports Ethereum & ERC20s, Polygon, Celo, Fantom, and Near payment networks. The protocol's most successful app allows businesses to pay & get paid in cryptocurrencies, whatever the payment networks. In the last 6 months, Request went from >$1M to >$100M of crypto invoices paid through Request App, by +750 actors including Maker, Aave, Near, Ocean, and The Sandbox.

Token Security

REQ does not have an elastic supply or rebase mechanism. The Request Network contracts do not have permissions that grant administrators unrestricted mint/burn capabilities. The REQ token supply is fixed at 1,000,000,000, of which 999,881,815 are in current circulation. The contracts and addresses with the highest concentration of REQ tokens are predominantly the Binance, Coinbase, Huobi and Kucoin wallets, and the Swiss-based Request Network Foundation’s wallets.

Project

The Request Network project is a blockchain payment request technology. Request Network is a decentralized payment request network, aiming to replace thousands of old school payment request databases. As with any decentralized system, Request Network is nearly impossible to compromise, as the adversary must control the majority of the network to influence its behavior. Therefore, Request Network offers a trustless payment reputation. Due to the general nature of financial databases, and the already well-established and rapidly growing need for state-of-the-art security, Request Network serves a clear purpose now and in the future. The Request Network blog features a detailed list with examples of payment networks it connects with, such as Ethereum, Polygon, Near, Fantom, and Fuse.

Tokenomics

Request Network’s native token, REQ (ERC20) is an Ethereum token that powers the Request Network, a protocol for creating and requesting payments. Transactions on Request Network are immutably recorded and requests are processed without an intermediary.

REQ is required to vote in the project’s off-chain governance and serves as an anti-spam mechanism for payment requests, thanks to its burning function at each payment request creation. Therefore, the REQ token is a utility token and not merely a symbolic representation of the project. Coinbase and Binance are reputable centralized exchanges with helpful blog entries that discuss the project: https://research.binance.com/en/projects/request-network and https://www.coinbase.com/price/request

Available Audits

Request Network has been audited at least four times since 2017, by reputable auditors:

• Quantstamp (Oct 2017)
• Verichains (Mar 2018)
• Clement Lesaege (Sep 2019)
• Cur53 (Jul 2020)
• Request Network also opened a bug bounty program.

Benefits for Bancor:

Benefits for Bancor are clear. At the time of writing, Coinbase estimates the popularity of REQ at #83. Popularity is based on the relative market cap of tradable assets on Coinbase. What this means: Popular assets have a large market cap, which may imply enthusiasm for the asset. Less popular assets may be relatively undiscovered. Source: https://www.coinbase.com/price/request