The Future of Binance Is an Open Platform
At Binance our vision has always been to increase the freedom of money. We view crypto as a fundamental means to attain this goal, and we work hard to ensure that all of our products and services contribute in some way to reaching that original vision. We believe the future of Binance is a decentralized open platform and we have taken many steps in achieving this.Ā
In CZās 2020 New Year message, he described Binanceās efforts last year as building the foundations of a house. Binance has evolved into much more than just the crypto-to-crypto exchange we launched in 2017. The foundations weāve built to help grow the crypto and new financial ecosystem also include margin and futures trading platforms, many more fiat-to-crypto gateways, lending products, and staking services, to name a few.
But weāre building more than just a house. Now we want to build the roads (infrastructure) surrounding the house and the roads in the city so that other people can build their own buildings (products). This is how weāre pushing towards our vision of increasing freedom of money: by enabling others.
Weāre making it our mission to build the infrastructure for crypto in tomorrowās world. This encompasses our core businesses including exchange, futures, margin (liquidity), fiat gateways (access), exchange and wallets (storage), and much more to come.
In 2019 Binance DEX (Decentralized Exchange) was launched on BNB Chain; a blockchain project initiated by Binance and designed as an alternative marketplace for issuing, using, and exchanging digital assets in a decentralized manner. Furthermore, with Trust Wallet we continue our mission of making crypto more accessible, giving access to decentralized finance. But how can we push for decentralization via Binance DEX and Trust Wallet while also having centralized exchanges like Binance.com? Well, thereās more than one route to a decentralized future.Ā
With the current state of UX and technology in crypto as it is, we believe that at present, both centralized and decentralized exchanges are needed. Ultimately, we strongly believe in full decentralization, but we recognize this may involve a few incremental steps, instead of one giant leap forward.Ā
So what do those steps look like for Binance.com? One approach weāre pursuing is an embodiment of our mission of becoming an infrastructure provider for the crypto world: an evolution of our core exchange products into a platform for others to build their businesses on, and thereby accelerating crypto adoption and access.
Itās a concept weāre calling the āOpen Platform.ā
One initiative in the Open Platform concept is the recently launched Binance Link Program where any other exchange, platform or institution can bring Binanceās liquidity and market depth to their users through an API that provides order-matching services, account management, settlement systems and more. More and more businesses around the world are now running on Binance in a very real way: At time of writing, more than 100 institutions around the world have applied to participate as a Binance Link Partner, with around 50 already onboarded.
Weāve recently announced a big upgrade to the Link Program too: brokers can now bring futures trading to their users, and weāve lowered the threshold to becoming a Link Partner with the addition of API key mode access. If youāre interested in becoming a Link Partner, apply here.
Another big focus for the Binance Open Platform is our P2P (peer-to-peer) platform which serves as an open marketplace facilitating direct trades between users and merchants. Through Binance P2P crypto trading, we are expanding the peer-to-peer trading market for multiple currencies (CNY, VND and RUB to cryptocurrencies, so far) and plan to launch in more markets very soon this year.
So what else can you expect from the Open Platform concept in the future? While we canāt reveal much yet, weāll be adding more products and services to our core exchange that advance our mission of providing infrastructure. Weāll keep building our house, but weāre turning more of our focus on building the roads around it too. All of this as one route to pursuing our vision of increasing the freedom of money globally.
Stay tuned for more news about our Open Platform next week.