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Binance Blog

Introducing BNB Chain: The Evolution of Binance Smart Chain

2022-02-15

Main takeaways

  • Binance Chain and Binance Smart Chain have merged to become BNB Chain.

  • Through the concept of MetaFi, BNB Chain will underlie the world’s 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 much more than just Binance. BNB has its own living, breathing ecosystem, together with BSC. The vision is that one day everyone will own BNB, so it’s necessary to set it free. For BNB to reach its true potential, Binance and BSC must set sail on different courses. Today, Binance Chain and Binance Smart Chain (BSC) have 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 a key part of this process, 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

  • Bigger than and separate from 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, providing consensus layers, 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 come more benefits users, projects, and developers connected to the BNB Chain community. Over the past year, the community has introduced many technical upgrades for progressive decentralization, including:

  • Initiating the Bruno hard fork to increase the BNB burn rate

  • A new BNB Auto-Burn protocol that is objective and verifiable

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 the 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-source, 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 decisive step toward MetaFi.

MetaFi: When DeFi meets Meta

Today, the word "metaverse" is used by experts and companies worldwide. For BNB Chain, "meta" means "all-encompassing" or "a means to an end,” rather than denoting a specific reverence to the metaverse. We prefer the term MetaFi. 

MetaFi is a blend of a meta ecosystem and finance. MetaFi is a concept that brings together the worlds of the metaverse, DeFi, GameFi, SocialFi, Web3, and NFTs, and puts them under one umbrella. 

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

MetaFi will include DeFi products and a mix of fungible and non-fungible assets, powered by community governance models such as that of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). 

The goal of MetaFi is to build and foster new ecosystems that would underpin a wide range of digital asset functionalities, boost mass adoption of the metaverse, and provide users with numerous new use cases. Combining these different blockchain tools will spawn a full-fledged parallel ecosystem serving users globally.

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

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 virtual ecosystem. 

Think BNB Chain, Think MetaFi.Â