Key takeaways:
- Binance has announced Binance Smart Chain (BSC) and Binance Chain will unite under the BNB Chain umbrella
- BNB, the native gas token of both chains and previously known as Binance Coin, will from now on stand for “Build and Build”
- Binance is introducing significant improvements to its blockchain ecosystem, including improved scalability, multi-chain interoperability, and higher transactional throughput
On Tuesday, the Binance cryptocurrency exchange announced it is rebranding and restructuring its flagship products to reflect recent developments in the decentralized finance (DeFi) space and the growing proliferation of metaverse commerce.
BNB Chain comprises of Binance Chain and Binance Smart Chain, embraces DeFi and Metaverse use cases
With the announcement of BNB Chain, Binance has also unveiled the restructuring of its blockchain ecosystem and accompanying name changes. According to Binance, the new chain consists of BNB Beacon Chain (formerly Binance Chain) and BNB Smart Chain (formerly Binance Smart Chain). While the Beacon chain provides staking and governance capabilities, the Smart chain provides an EVM-compatible multi-chain interoperability layer.
Additionally, the underlying Binance Coin (BNB) gas token will form now on stand for “Build and Build.”
Cosmetic changes are far from being the whole story pertaining to today’s breaking announcement. BNB Chain will bring significant improvements to the Binance blockchain ecosystem, including better scaling, higher BSC transactional throughput, and new on-chain governance features.
“BNB Chain remains a community-driven, open-sourced and decentralized ecosystem. Through the concept of MetaFi (“Meta” for metadata, and “Fi” for DeFi), the BNB Chain community will aim to build the infrastructure that powers the world’s parallel virtual economy,” explained Binance.
The concept of the metaverse has drawn a lot of scrutiny over the last couple of months due to its somewhat vague definition. However, Binance’s new MetaFi concept takes vagueness to a whole new level – it combines Metaverse, DeFi, GameFi, SocialFi, Web3, and NFTs under a single banner.
Binance has been diligently upgrading its blockchain solutions over the years. While BSC launched in September 2020 as a clone of the Ethereum blockchain, albeit with lower fees and faster transaction speeds, the platform has since undergone several significant updates.
At the start of last December, BNB burning went live on BSC as a part of the so-called Bruno hard fork, which introduced real-time burning mechanics similar to Ethereum’s EIP-1599. Later in the same month, Binance revamped its quarterly burn program and unveiled BNB Auto-Burn to provide greater transparency and predictability to the token destroying process.
The price of BNB rallied by more than 7% on the news of significant ecosystem changes and is trading at $432.23 at press time.
