Bantu in 2021 — The year in review
From the desk of Ernest Mbenkum (CEO and Founder of Bantu Blockchain Foundation)
2021 was a productive year for the Bantu Blockchain Foundation. But 2022 promises to be even bigger as we transition from just building in the basement to showcasing to the world, what we have built for the world.
Post Launch — The Kick Off
The end of the launch event in December 2020 kicked off a very busy and productive year 2021 for Bantu Blockchain — Africa’s first and biggest blockchain infrastructure project. The team shifted gears in building out all the many components that make the ecosystem what it is today; the products, the community, interns, team, and partners. Year 2021 was all about building products and internal capacity.
Bantu Blockchain Foundation began to form significant and important partnerships; partnerships that will help the project scale across Africa and the world at large. In the words of a senior advisor to Bantu, we who know where the shoe pinches must have a unique approach to using this new technology to solve the continent’s peculiar problems, while also making it relevant globally.
The Partnerships continued through the year and will only continue to get bigger. Alone we can move fast, but together we can go far. One of the philosophies we live by at Bantu.
Mainnet Migration
20th March, 2021
The first quarter came with 2 big milestones for Bantu Blockchain. Firstly, we successfully migrated our Blockchain to the mainnet, and then in addition to that, we launched a brand new wallet — BantuPay 2.0 to accommodate this new reality. Things got real as our community realized that the tokens they received from the Foundation now had real world value.
BantuPay 2.0 was a breath of fresh air It was redesigned based on the multiple feedback received from the community, and since then, this ecosystem wallet has evolved from being a place to store digital assets to being an authenticator DApp in the Bantu ecosystem, and the use cases for the BantuPay wallet keeps increasing as we progress.
In April 2021, the BantuPay wallet became available in 23 languages across the globe!
Bantu Empowerment Bonus — community empowerment drive
31 March, 2021
We embarked on a community empowerment drive where we airdropped Bantu utility tokens (XBN) to our community members based on how early they had been supporting the project. It was our way of appreciating the community support but this airdrop initiative would later become seed capital for many believers, later in the year.
Our community members also started having a sense of identity, showcasing their recognition badges from time to time. Community member badges were given as follows:
- Bantu Natives (joined Bantu in November 2020)
- Bantu Discoverers (joined Bantu in December 2020)
- Banty Explorers (joined Bantu in January 2021)
- Bantu Early Settlers (joined Bantu in February 2021); and
- Bantu Pathfinders ( joined Bantu in March 2021)
Mitambo Launch
1st of May, 2021
While we were celebrating the crossing of the 20k milestone on Telegram and 10k milestone on BantuTalk, our developer community unboxed a project that had been in development. The very first gaming dApp built on Bantu Blockchain; a play to earn game of chance with game arenas named after cities in Africa. Mitambo.net has since been a household name among Bantus who love to play the game in expectation of winning some XBN tokens after each gaming batch. The launch of this game was an example of how developer communities can leverage the blockchain to build their own types of play to earn (P2E) games, taking advantage of Bantu’s speed and ridiculously low fees.
Mitambo.net has since then processed over 22,000 payments to players which includes big wins for almost 400 lucky players!
Bantu’s first live AMA Session
30th June, 2021
The end of Q2 was marked with the first live AMA session with the CEO and founder, Ernest Mbenkum. He revealed a lot of things on the roadmap to the viewers and also dropped a big announcement about the launch of a non-custodial peer to peer marketplace for Bantu Blockchain based tokens. The birth of Timbuktu, the world’s first of its kind, proudly built by our developer community, was announced. People would for the first time now be able to exchange their XBN tokens in a P2P manner using all kinds of currencies and payment methods. Ernest will eventually go on to have more AMA sessions with our Exchange partners Bittrex Global and FWFW.io.
Timbuktu Launch
19th July, 2021
The first non-custodial peer to peer digital assets exchange was launched for the Bantu Ecosystem. Members of the community became empowered to be able to exchange the XBN token for other real world assets. Timbuktu Exchange community keeps growing and now boasts over 1,200 traders and merchants in the official Telegram group and we have heard many heart warming stories of people who became Merchants by using airdrops previously received from Bantu as their seed capital. Some of those people are now trading huge volumes and have found a way to support themselves financially leveraging the Bantu ecosystem.
Bantu Internship Program
Bantu Blockchain Foundation (BBF) launched a program to allow people intern at different departments to build skills and capacity for a potential opportunity to be absorbed into the core team. This program has helped unearth some gems within the community. They continue to contribute to the growth of their ecosystem and have experienced a lot of capacity development on personal levels. Just another way in which the BBF empowers people beyond giving them airdrops.
Bittrex Global Listing
27th July, 2021
Bittrex Global became the first centralized exchange to list the XBN on its USDT markets. This listing gave more exposure to the utility tokens and was the springboard to actual price discovery. The XBN tokens started the price discovery journey on Bittrex Global in the perimeters of 1 cent, but at current time of writing is going for close to 6 cents, an appreciation of over 400%.
Community events
27 August, 2021 — Bantu Hangout, Lagos Nigeria
Bantu held its first physical community hangout in the heart of Africa’s biggest economy — Lagos, Nigeria. This was the first time since the Soft Launch event that people got to interact with members of the team while learning about all the existing projects and partnerships in the Bantu ecosystem. It was a successful event and marked the beginning of very amazing community hangouts. We would eventually also start featuring at Blockchain workshops and roadshows in Lagos and Abuja.
5th November, 2021 — Bantu Hangout, Abuja Nigeria
Bantu Blockchain Foundation took its next community hangout to the capital city of Abuja, Nigeria. It was attended by persons from regulatory agencies and political establishments. It was an opportunity to showcase what Africa has been incubating for the world. Needless to say, it was a successful outing which heavily featured Sterling Bank, our day 1 ecosystem partner.
The Bantu Token Creator was also showcased for the first time publicly.
26th November, 2021- Bantu Hangout, Port Harcourt Nigeria
Bantu held its last and most vibrant (to date) community hangout for 2021 in the city of Port Harcourt, Nigeria. The sparks (of interest) that we had been lighting at the previous events finally started a fire that everyone will see as we move into 2022. We are excited about what the future holds for everyone of us.
Hello Bantu Weekly Community Voice Chat
The community engagement team also started a weekly interactive Telegram voice chat where members of the community get together to catch up on Bantu’s latest developments as well as play Mitambo games. Sometimes, alphas are dropped by the team at these voice chat events. Make sure to always attend.
Partnerships
In 2021, we forged so many strategic partnerships. We have barely scratched the surface when it comes to the level partnerships we will be making in 2022. Many of our current partners include but are not limited to: Sterling, Interstellar Inc, SystemSpecs, Convexity, BotMeCash, Sage Grey, Earnathon, Starvolt, Timbuktu Exchange, Bittrex Global Exchange, Mitambo.net, FMFW.io, Tradefada.com, BitMart Exchange etc etc.
Bantu Enters Cameroon!
11 December, 2021
Bantu made its debut into the bilingual country of Cameroon (Africa in miniature) via Entertainment. After the entertainment came the moment of education. We have started a grassroots movement that we believe will take Cameroon and Francophone Africa by storm in 2022.
FMFW listing
16th December 2021— the anniversary of Bantu’s launch
The Bantu token (XBN) finally became available on another centralized exchange — fmfw.io. This listing will eventually become the catalyst that has sent the price and trade volume of XBN through the roof. The ease of accessibility has indeed made it possible for more people to acquire the tokens from around the world. FMFW.io saw a 24hr trade volume of about $1m
Tradefada Listing
29th December, 2021
XBN got listed on Tradefada, another centralized exchange that makes it easier for people who had been experiencing difficulty with other previous exchanges to finally be able to acquire the utility tokens even using their local currencies.
Price and volume milestones
XBN price is currently trading at close to 6 cents after hitting a 24hr trading volume of over $1.2m. This price reflects an over 400% increase from when the tokens first became available on the centralized exchanges. We believe this is due the fact that people are starting to take notice of what we are building at Bantu and they are trying to support the project early to help it scale into a globally successful blockchain infrastructure.
Timbuktu traders crossed $100k in volume traded despite the trade size limits. We expect to have many more Bantu based tokens on Timbuktu in 2022 and we believe that the Merchants are capable of keeping the ecosystem ticking with their trading and educational efforts. Timbuktu Merchants are a diverse group and come from 70 different countries in total.
BantuPay Wallet also is inching towards 100,000 real users as at the time of this writing. BantuPay has users from over 180 countries across the globe and is available in 23 major languages. The app has maintained a high rating at the different stores and it only keeps getting better.
Bantu People (Influencers and Ambassadors)
In December 2021, we onboarded our first Bantu Brand Influencers and Ambassadors. We will be doing a mass unveil in January 2022. Stay tuned.
Looking ahead
If in 2021 we focused on onboarding users as easily as possible, the year 2022 will be the year where we start onboarding developers to start building out their ideas and projects on Bantu Blockchain. Some of the groundwork is currently being laid, and the Bantu Builders community for developers and ecosystem builders is slowly growing. Don’t blink on this development.
Thank you
A special thank you to everyone of you who have contributed in one way or another to making Bantu Blockchain ecosystem what it is today. We hope you are all ready for the 2022 ride? We will need all the support you can give to make this project a global phenomenon. Do not stop speaking about Bantu. Spread the good tidings to your friends, family and followers.
Alone we can go fast, but together we can go farther. Ubuntu.
