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Binance Blog

Introducing BNB Chain: The Evolution of Binance Smart Chain

2022-08-01

Main takeaways

  • Binance Chain and Binance Smart Chain become BNB Chain

  • Through the concept of MetaFi, BNB Chain will build the world’s parallel virtual ecosystem infrastructure

  • BNB, which stands for “Build and Build” (formerly called Binance Coin), is the blockchain gas token that “fuels” transactions on BNB Chain

In 2017, Binance and BNB were born. Three years later, Binance Smart Chain (BSC) was introduced to the world.  As Binance grew bigger and stronger, so did Binance Smart Chain.  BSC was born in time for the DeFi revolution, as the public showed increased interest in alternative financial solutions and use cases powered by blockchain. Today, both Binance and BSC remain connected by BNB.

Beyond Binance

BNB is more than just Binance. BNB has its own living, breathing ecosystem, together with BSC. The vision is that one day everyone will own BNB, and that’s why it’s necessary to set it free. For BNB to reach its true potential, Binance and BSC must set sail on different courses. From today, Binance Chain and Binance Smart Chain (BSC) become BNB Chain.

What is BNB Chain?

Innovation never sleeps, and it’s clear that the future goes Beyond Binance into a world of over 1 billion users. MetaFi is also a key part of this too, helping to create a future where interoperability makes lives easier. BNB Chain’s mission is to build the infrastructure powering the world’s parallel virtual ecosystem, and BNB Chain’s commitment to the community is that it will be: 

  • Open

  • Multi-chain

  • For creators and inventors

  • Permissionless

  • Forever decentralized

  • And bigger than Binance

 BNB Chain is comprised of:

  • BNB Beacon Chain (previously Binance Chain) - BNB Chain Governance (Staking, Voting)

  • BNB Smart Chain (BSC) (Previously Binance Smart Chain) - EVM compatible, consensus layers, and with hubs to multi-chains

BNB (formerly known as Binance Coin) stands for “Build and Build.” Along with “fueling” transactions on BNB Chain (similar to gas on Ethereum), BNB also acts as a governance token. Holding BNB gives you the right to make your voice heard and is necessary to participate in BNB Chain’s decentralized on-chain governance. With this name change also comes more advancements to benefit users, projects and developers connected to the BNB Chain community. Over the past year, the BNB Chain community has made even further technical upgrades for progressive decentralization, including:

BNB Chain will also embrace large-scale applications, including GameFi, SocialFi and the Metaverse. In particular:

  • Scaling from one chain to multi-chain 

  • Boosting the throughput of BSC

  • Introducing on-chain governance mechanisms

  • Improving scaling solutions and an expansion of the validator set of BSC from 21 to 41 (with 20 validators functioning as candidate block producers)

Above all, BNB Chain remains a community-driven, open-sourced and decentralized ecosystem. The support of its community of users, developers, validators and delegators is vital to its health. With BNB Chain gaining major technical updates, it’s time for the community to take a flight towards MetaFi.

MetaFi: When DeFi meets Meta

Today, the words ‘Meta’ and ‘Metaverse’ are used by experts and companies worldwide. However, for BNB Chain the use of the word ‘Meta’ means an "all-encompassing," or "a means to an end,” rather than an acronym for the Metaverse. We prefer the term MetaFi. 

MetaFi is a blend of two words - ‘Meta’ for meta ecosystem and ‘Fi’ for DeFi. MetaFi is a concept that combines all different types of projects such as Metaverse, DeFi, GameFi, SocialFi, Web3, and NFTs and puts them under one umbrella – MetaFi. 

This is possible thanks to the metadata that defines ownership of assets. MetaFi will allow for a wide range of blockchain functionality to merge in one meta ecosystem, and it will be interoperable thanks to defined metadata standards used across various platforms and blockchains. 

MetaFi can include DeFi products or a mix of fungible and non-fungible tokens or assets coupled together with community governance such as Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs). 

The goal of MetaFi is to build and foster new ecosystems filled with a range of functionality, based around digital assets that empower mass adoption of the metaverse and also provide users and players with new use cases. Combining these different blockchain projects enables a full-fledged parallel ecosystem serving users from around the globe.

None of this will be possible without stable and interoperable projects developed with multi-chain functionality and bridges that will facilitate the enormous volume of asset and data transfers. 

And, this is where creators, developers and entrepreneurs have the unique opportunity to build for MetaFi with BNB. The BNB Chain community will build the infrastructure that powers the world’s parallel virtual ecosystem. 

Think BNB Chain, Think MetaFi.