Even if you are new to crypto, most probably you heard about Binance and BNB. Binance is now the biggest exchange and provides many instruments for trading and earning in crypto. There is also Binance Academy, a good place to start learning about the cryptocurrency industry. Binance is not only exchange, but the whole ecosystem and Binance Chain (BC) and Binance Smart Chain (BSC) are important parts of it.
BNB, a native token of Binance was started as ERC-20 token and the main utility was to pay discounted commission fees on the exchanges. Binance Chain is the blockchain running and transacting the Binance Coin, BNB which protocol was optimized for fast transactions on their decentralized exchange (Binance DEX).
Binance Smart Chain is EVM-compatible (Ethereum Virtual Machine) meaning that it is super easy for developers to move their projects onto the blockchain, and for users to integrate their Metamask wallet when using the blockchain. The two chains run separately side-by-side and there are extensive interoperable features.
Let's take a brief look at the differences. First I start with the addresses differences. on BC address start with bnb*** and on BCS with 0x*** like in Ethereum. For the following example, I took my Binance exchange addresses, and for example, for BSC the address is the same which I have for Ethereum and Ethereum-based tokens.
Since the Binance Smart Chain start in September 2020, Binance teamed up with many existing projects and platforms, to assist in the growth and strength of the security and launch of the BSC. Some of these projects are ChainLink, Band Protocol, Ankr, Trust Wallet, Ontology, Travala.com, Swipe, Aave, 1inch.exchange, CREAM, and others.
Currently, there are more than 100 projects on BSC, and 60 of them with large numbers of users and transaction volume. There are 850,975 active addresses on BSC. The blockchain processes 473,000 transactions each day, almost 40% of Ethereum’s numbers. The average gas fee per transaction is as low as $0.07, which is about 2-3% of the gas fee of Ethereum.
In the Roadmap for BSC, Binance announced two key goals: to Build cross-chain financial infrastructure (build more bridges between DeFi and CeFi) and to Unlock the Internet of Value (dapps). To pursue these goals, the BSC team shared a vision for 2021 and they are planning to do the following steps this year:
I. Strengthen critical infrastructure and services.
II. Build secure, trust, and holistic DeFi infrastructure.
III. Pursue mass adoption opportunities.
IV. Foster strong developer communities.
The following dApp categories are the priority for BSC team for this year:
1. Algorithms. Projects: ditto (elastic supply token on BSC), bdollar (algorithmic stablecoin on BSC)
2. Aggregation and Integration. Projects: beefy (yield optimizer), Bearn.fi (cross-chain auto-yield farming), OpenOcean (DEX aggregator), Xend (DeFi for credit unions and cooperatives)
3. Cross-chain and Multichain. Projects: BTCST (token anchored on Bitcoin computing power, Anyswap (cross-chain exchange), NerveNetwork (cross-chain asset network), PolyNetwork (cross-chain network), renVM (multichain solution)
4. Gamification. Projects: Blink (gaming token), Rocketgame (decentralized gaming platform)
5. Community and Social Tokens. Projects: Chiliz (fan tokens), Realy (luxury NFT platform)
6. Synthetics. Project: Mettalex (derivatives exchange)
7. Institutional DeFi. Project: Allianceblock (decentralized capital market)
8. Infrastructure and Tools. Projects: Bitquery (blockchain data), PARSIQ (cross-chain monitoring), Tenderly (smart contract monitoring), BSCscan (blockchain explorer), ChainIDE (smart contract deployment), Mywish (smart contract creation), Nownodes (blockchain infrastructure)
And last, but not least -Binance introduced $100M Support Fund for DeFi Projects on Binance Smart Chain so now the crypto-developers have more opportunities for funding.
To explore more Binance Smart Chain, visit https://www.binance.org/en/smartChain
