With contributions from Trollime#3385, badsyntax#0208, RobFord#0025 & Kron#0582!
TOC
General Questions
What happens if I send Banano to the Bridge from the wrong wallet
Technical Stuff
General Questions
What is "wBAN"?
wBAN is short for Wrapped Banano. The main idea is that you wrap your Banano as wBAN tokens, and unwrap wBAN tokens back to Banano crypto. This allows you to use a representation of Banano on other blockchain networks! wBAN is currently available on the Binance Smart Chain, Polygon and Fantom.
What is BSC?
Binance Smart Chain (BSC) is an EVM-compatible smart contract blockchain launched by Binance.
What is Polygon?
Polygon is an open source protocol and a framework for connecting Ethereum-compatible blockchain networks. Polygon was added for its more competitive fees compared to Binance Smart Chain.
What is Fantom?
Fantom is a fast, high-throughput open-source smart contract platform for digital assets and dApps. It delivers unparalleled speed, security, and reliability. Enjoy almost instant transactions and extremely low fees.
What is a "wrapped token"?
Binance has a nice article explaining this: https://academy.binance.com/en/articles/what-are-wrapped-tokens
What are the smart-contract addresses for wBAN?
Same address for both BSC, Polygon and Fantom: 0xe20b9e246db5a0d21bf9209e4858bc9a3ff7a034
Why wBAN?
Read wBAN announcement: https://www.publish0x.com/banano/development-update-wrapped-banano-on-binance-smart-chain-xzwxmyr
Does wBAN have fees?
Yes.
Using Binance Smart Chain or Polygon or Fantom requires paying transaction fees in their native token, BNB or Matic or FTM for all transactions. This includes wrapping your BAN into wBAN, swapping, providing liquidity, staking, and all the other actions you will perform on BSC/Polygon/Fantom. Confirmation is always required before spending BNB, Matic or FTM as gas. Signing however, does not require confirmation, as it is not a transaction.
What happens if I send Banano to the Bridge from the wrong wallet?
Translated: I sent Banano to fund my account, but I sent it from an address other than the one I linked to my account, am I rekt?
The wBAN deposit address is a hot wallet, that is the same for everyone. If you send from a random address other than the one you linked, there is no possible way the deposit contract could know that it was from you, and that it should credit your account. That is why you need to send from the address you linked. Funds sent from addresses that are not being expected will be returned.
This can still be a problem! so please read:
Never send Banano from an Exchange (or any other hot wallet) directly to the wBAN Bridge!
If you try to withdraw Banano directly from an exchange to the wBAN deposit address, it will come from that exchange's hot wallet. You do not own that hot wallet, and have not linked it. That hot wallet is in no way directly associated with your exchange account (you have a unique deposit address for that). The address you deposit into on an exchange is NOT the same as the address the exchange will send from when you withdraw. This means that if you send from an exchange to wBAN hot wallet, and it gets refunded, it will go to the exchange, and not your account, potentially resulting in you losing your funds completely. You would need to contact the exchange's support and hope they credit your account.
Is there a risk wBAN would become more popular than Banano?
No. wBAN provides a solution for increasing the accessibility and liquidity of Banano. wBAN costs BNB or Matic or FTM as a gas fee to transfer, so it does not replace Banano and its instant, feeless transactions.
I don't have a Binance account, can I use this?
Yes!
Binance Smart Chain is a blockchain, not an exchange or service. Similar to Ethereum.
You interact with the blockchain using wallets. In this case Metamask.
Using Binance Smart Chain (BSC) or Polygon or Fantom does not require a Binance account. No KYC needed!
Does this mean I can trade BAN on Binance?
No BSC is something completely different than Binance. (blockchain versus business)
DeFi Questions
Why Binance Smart Chain or Polygon or Fantom and not XYZ?
We started with Binance Smart Chain for its low fees, while Polygon allows us to have even lower fees (nearly negligible). Fantom being popular was the third supported blockchain.
We started on these three platforms, for two reasons:
BSC, Polygon and Fantom have vibrant DeFi ecosystems that many other platforms don’t have yet.
Focus: We don’t want to spread our effort too thinly on too many blockchains to start.
We’re open to expanding to other platforms in the future when we’re ready!
How do you ensure that wBAN price is the same as BAN?
We don't!
This matter is solved by arbitrageurs who are incentivized to benefit from small differences in prices between exchanges. When they do, they make the prices converge.
The prices will change, however the central bridging point to convert your BAN<--->wBAN is hard coded to always be 1:1.
1 BAN will always = 1 wBAN.
Can I stake wBAN?
You could stake wBAN in the past.
Such an option is not available anymore. Right now we have some farms allowing you to stake liquidity pool tokens, on Polygon & Fantom.
Technical Stuff
Is wBAN custodial? Are my funds safe?
The BAN sent by users are stored into two centralized wallets (per blockchain network), a hot one and a cold one.
wBAN app has the key to the hot wallet and regularly sends BAN deposits to the cold wallet owned by the Banano core team.
So any withdrawal from wBAN may potentially be put on hold in a pending list until the owners of the cold wallet refill the hot wallet.
Full decentralization would rock but it is not easy to do atomic swaps properly. We are always keeping track of developments in this area, and we will look to implement advances and improvements when the time is right.
What is wBAN total supply?
Each time a monkey swaps BAN -> wBAN, some wBAN are minted, increasing the total supply.
When a monkey swaps wBAN -> BAN, the wBAN tokens swapped are burnt, decreasing total supply.
So the total supply of wBAN is basically the sum of minted tokens not burnt, or worded another way, the supply is the total amount of Banano currently wrapped within the Bridge. Each blockchain has a dedicated total supply. The sum of the three will vary based on how popular each platform is between the wBAN users.