BNB Chain 2023: What Does the Future Hold for Binance’s Blockchain?

BNB Chain, formerly known as Binance Smart Chain, has been one of the most prominent Layer 1 blockchains since its release in 2020 as an Ethereum alternative with lower fees and faster transactions. Over the past few years, it has largely remained relevant due to its support from Binance, even though it has been plagued by scammy projects and a high level of centralization. Let’s review their 2023 roadmap to see BNB Chain’s plans to stay a top blockchain against strong competition.

BNB Chain was originally created to capitalize on Etheruem’s congestion issues. In 2020, transacting on Ethereum was extremely expensive and cost upwards of $100 to execute something like a decentralized exchange transaction. In response, Binance released the Binance Smart Chain, which was designed to be compatible with Ethereum’s virtual machine, the EVM - meaning that any applications deployed on Ethereum could easily be ported to BSC. It achieved its low fees and fast transaction times by sacrificing decentralization, as there were only 21 validators in charge of running the network. For comparison, Bitcoin has 16,000 and Ethereum has 500,000.

Regardless of potential centralization and censorship issues, the blockchain prospered, and retail traders looking to use DeFi applications without paying exorbitant fees flocked to the chain. Naturally, wherever retail traders go scams will follow, and BNB Chain became flooded with meme coins, rugpulls, and scam projects. Nonetheless, the chain boasts high transaction volumes and around 1 million daily active users.

Since BNB Chain’s release, several other layer 1 blockchains have been released, many of which directly compete with BNB Chain. Examples include Avalanche, Solana, Aptos, and Fantom, among others. Additionally, the release of Ethereum Layer 2s like Optimism and Arbitrum, which provide the security and nearly the same decentralization as Ethereum while also delivering low fees and fast transactions, threaten BNB Chain’s viability and value proposition. In response, BNB Chain has released a 2023 roadmap with some milestones that, if accomplished, would be quite impressive. 

There are six main focuses of BNB Chain in 2023: scalability, multi-chain solutions, decentralized data economy, security, greater decentralization, and mass adoption infrastructure. 

BNB Chain plans to continue improving its virtual machine to address its scalability and multi-chain solution themes, allowing for greater transaction throughput. They also plan to implement zero-knowledge proof-based rollups, allowing some specific applications to run incredibly efficiently. Optimistic rollups will also be implemented, allowing applications to create a more sovereign chain supported by the BNB base chain. They also plan to implement EIP-4844, an Ethereum upgrade colloquially known as proto-danksharding that will reduce fees on rollups. Together, these upgrades will help BNB achieve over 5,000 transactions per second by the end of 2023.

BNB Greenfield is BNB Chain’s attempt to create a decentralized storage network. The goal is to allow users to upload, own, and share data-based assets with the transparency and decentralization that a public blockchain provides. Additionally, the user experience will be no different than existing cloud hosting services, like Dropbox or Amazon Web Services.

On a chain known for scams, security is a top priority. AvengerDAO 2.0 is a joint effort between Web3 security firms and BNB Chain partners to reduce the risks from malicious actors. Their features include watching and rating smart contracts for safety, notifying users of potentially malicious activity, and a vault for locking and transferring funds.

BNB Chain currently has 29 active validators but hopes to scale to 100 by the end of the year. Given their goals to improve scaling in the same time window, this may be difficult but would be a great feat if completed. They also hope to introduce additional consensus mechanisms and allow community validators to join. Finally, on-chain governance will be emphasized, increasing transparency and accountability for the chain’s activities.

With its massive user base, mostly made up of retail traders instead of financial institutions, infrastructure is critical to BNB Chain’s success. Some areas BNB Chain will emphasize in 2023 include account abstraction, developer-friendly toolings, Web3 identity, messaging and communication, and gaming infrastructure. These features and tools will help developers and users have a more seamless experience on the chain, making it feel more like a modern-day service than a complex and futuristic financial tool.

BNB Chain’s lofty roadmap includes several important improvements that could possibly change the chain’s reputation from that of a memecoin layer 1 to a legitimate technological contender. Their goals will be difficult to reach, especially considering they plan to increase decentralization and transaction throughput. Whether or not they accomplish their goals remains to be seen, but it should be reassuring for BNB holders that the team is emphasizing the infrastructure and developments that matter.

By Lincoln Murr

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