Ok, here it finally is, the official BANANO Bitcointalk announcement thread (Edit: Updated Feb 2024). BANANO already started more than 5 years ago, on April 1st, 2018 and a lot has happened since then (check it all out /here if you like). Now we will also will give regular updates here.
Since BANANO is shaped by its rapidly growing community, I think it's best to give a brief summary here for now and amend/edit over time as needed. Everyone's input is highly welcome, may it be questions, suggestions, memes, contributions, whatsoever!

Key Features of BANANO

• forked from NANO/XNO (formerly XRB/Raiblocks)
• main-net since April 2018 with meanwhile 50M+ txs
• instant & feeless transactions
• ongoing free & fair distribution through airdrops & innovative faucets
• ongoing tech development (privacy layer, on-chain messaging, faucet games, mining faucets & more)
• MonKey implementation as visual account representatives
• aiming to onboard and educate people being new to crypto
• yes, we also have memes, and we don't take ourselves too serious
• ripe infrastructure with sleek wallets & tipbots on multiple social media platforms
• welcoming, multi-cultural community (e.g. our Discord Server has 30k+ members and our subreddit 70k+)
• traded on several centralized exchanges and bridged as wrapped Banano to Ethereum, Fantom, Arbitrum, Polygon, BNB chain, see more tech/market details here at coingecko and at CoinmarketCap
• current market cap is a few Million USD, with around 81% of all coins being distributed so far

What is BANANO?

BANANO was forked in April 2018 from NANO. BANANO offers instant, feeless and rich in potassium 🍌 transactions, thanks to the fact that BANANO developers (several of them having being involved in NANO itself) have kept big portions of the original code unchanged to keep cross-chain compatibility between existing code libraries. However, they have fined-tuned some parameters, such as Proof of Work requirements and currency units. While the focus for now is on having an ongoing free and fair distribution, BANANO is also experimenting with feature additions such as a privacy layer (Camo BANANO), on-chain messaging (MonkeyTalks) and more.

In context of distribution, we aim to use our meanwhile ready-to-strike infrastructure with easy-to-use mobile wallets (Kalium) and tipbots on several major social media platforms to onboard normies and crypto-noobs who have no idea yet what a cryptocurrency is. We also might do IRL airdrops at some point. Of note, key here is to make the start with crypto as easy as possible, use a fun attitude and gamification to get new users started without all the usual hassle, and then educate them to handle crypto in general in a responsible way.

Want to learn more? Read the BANANO Yellowpaper: All details about BANANO technology and its innovative features, and also animations, videos, and of course memes! ALSO, it's interactive and truly unique every time someone reads it!



How to get started with BANANO?

First, you'll need a wallet. The easiest way is to download Kalium - BANANO's mobile wallet (available for iOS and Android). We also have a web wallet, TheBananoStand. Check our official website for more information, and if you need help getting started you'll find it at banano.how.



monKeys as Visual Account Representatives

In Kalium, as well as in our webwallet and our network explorer, you will also notice that every account has a unique monKey as visual acccount representative.
Learn more at MonKey.banano.cc.



How To Get Free BANANO?

You can currently buy BANANO at various mid-tier exchanges (Mercatox, Coinex). You can also buy wrapped Banano at various well-known EVM chain (Ethereum, Fantom, Arbitrum, Polygon, BNB chain) dexes including Uniswap. Overview here), more to come over time.

Apart from that, you can get BANANO easily for free in multiple ways:

• Participate in airdrops (keep posted for announcements)
• Join our discord server and get tips/rain (how-to)
• Join our sub-reddit and get tipped for good memes/contributions
• Join one of our Telegram groups and get tipped/participate in contests
• Follow us at Twitter and participate in  giveaways and watch out for airdrops
• Get BANANO for free from our Faucets and Distribution channels such as BananoMiner

Join the BANANO Republic!

Official Website: banano.cc | Help getting started: banano.how
Network Explorer | Distribution overview | MonKey
Discord | Reddit | Telegram | Twitter
Instagram | Facebook | Github | Coingecko
Medium | Publish0x | Youtube

Overviews:
BANANO News

Edit Feb 2024: Please note that imgur links to embed images eventually stopped working from 2023 or so, thus the error messages in many posts following this one here.
I've fixed the images in the posts above and updated info especially in the very first ANN post above, but please note that the following posts are anyways outdated so I'll not fix all the images. From end of 2023/2024 all images are shown properly and to find updated infos and news you should anyways go to the new posts at the end.
Cheers, bantano


Few news from today and yesterday only:

BANANO finished 4th on the recent Kucoin Community voting - Top 5 are considered!

Details here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/banano/comments/cdev14/banano_finished_4th_on_kucoin_exchange_vote_top_5/



BANANO is now on Blockfolio Signal!

That means you'll get all BANANO updates directly through the blockfolio app!
Never miss any Airdrop, Giveaway, Faucetgame or Contest!

Details:
https://www.reddit.com/r/banano/comments/cdvu9t/banano_is_now_on_blockfolio_signal_get_all_news/



Party Invitation for YOU! BANANO Ban-Jam 2.0 Party (July 17) - Free Crypto, Music Trivia, Games, Quizzes & more!

Make friends, earn free BANANO, have fun!
Full announcement:
https://www.publish0x.com/banano/party-invitation-you-banano-ban-jam-20-party-july-17-free-cr-xelrlj?a=QJ0dNjvdLO

Finally a project that is actually putting in some effort, free fair distribution without ICO, pushing updates back to its parent code and educating newbies on cryptocurrency in a controlled safe environment. Will be watching this project for sure.

Glad to be with banano community
it's just perfect

I love Banano to the point where it might be unhealthy.  :-p

Viva Banano!

BANANO Faucet Game 'Black Monkey' Round 12 is live now!

Earn BANANO by playing - 24 hours only!

Details at:
https://www.publish0x.com/banano/banano-faucet-game-black-monkey-round-12-live-24-hours-only-xvywkd?a=QJ0dNjvdLO

or here at Medium:
https://medium.com/banano/banano-faucet-game-black-monkey-round-12-is-live-24-hours-only-2147eb282719

Trying to answer as brief as possible:

Regarding your question:
Banano is experimental, as Bitcoin still is experimental. We are trying to do things little different in most ways than Bitcoin did, see the main post at the top for all the details. Our overall aim is TRUE free and fair distribution and engagement with people who don't know cryptocurrency yet, or find it too complicated. Keep in mind that most people in the world have no idea cryptocurrencies even exist, or don't care.

Key is education and adoption, we're trying to do this through free distribution and gamification/ease-of-use.

Regarding the anonymity remark:
Our website doesn't state linkedin profiles or full names, true. If you, however, have a closer look you'll find out the real names or identities of several team members. For example, just head over to Creeper, our Network explorer and scroll to the bottom. Anyway, team identity and lack of anonymity mostly is applicable if projects take money from investors, as it was done in thousands of ICOs over the last years. It's important that people know whom they give money.

In the case of BANANO, however, we are giving out free coins to everyone who wants. We've not done any ICO, it's rather the opposite, and as mentioned it's a big experiment with lots of unpaid work behind. But it's fun, and we enjoy it.

I assume Satoshi Nakamoto (who is the anonymous dev behind the biggest crypto project so far) also would have enjoyed BANANO. 

Yes, maybe to add I haven't meant at all to use 'experimental' in a negative way. BANANO is a young project and we're trying out a lot of different and sometimes very new things, and keep learning. 'We' doesn't mean few Devs, but the overall community. Several of our faucets actually started from ideas or concepts initially created by our community members, later those then became official faucets.

Just yesterday two members from our community released a proof-of-concept website using BANANO. It's a Fomo3D variant based on BANANO.

More details:
https://howtobanano.info/new-proof-of-concept-community-project-banscam-me/

Direct Link: https://banscam.me/

BANANO is now on qTrade!

After winning their first community voting few weeks ago, BANANO is now live on the US-based exchange qTrade! Thanks again to all BANANO community members who voted!

Direct link: https://qtrade.io/

Overview of all current BANANO exchanges: http://exchange.banano.how

Full Announcement: https://www.publish0x.com/banano/exchange-listing-banano-now-qtrade-xeleyo?a=QJ0dNjvdLO

We fully agree that memes are serious bushyness. I realise we have memes indeed underrepresented in the ANN post. Our meme makers are doing an overall noice job I think. Memes are part of BANANO, and it's much more fun under the flag of a memecoin project to realise the ongoing free and fair distribution mentioned before, since it leaves more freedom to the project and creates a nice attitude and atmosphere.

Obviously this is, however, not only about word play, but BANANO is used right now in many thousands of transactions per day, and a considerable amount of those transactions are tips for memes and content. In that sense, BANANO is already working and heavily used as a tipping coin to reward content creators.

As summarized in our network stats here, the BANANO network (at the time of writing this) has an average of 0.234 blocks per second, which makes it averaging above 20k  blocks per day! Once could say it's foreseeable that BANANO will disrupt lots more than just the meme economy

Having that said, here is a premium video BANANO meme with unprecedented voice-overs, making clear we're not taking ourselves seriously but have high ambitions
(Make sure to turn on sound!)



This one actually won the "Meme of the Year 2018 Award" by r/cryptocurrency (source)! Enjoy!