Recently, a series of bank failures in the United States have caused panic in the financial market. The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank has swept the headlines of major media around the world. This star bank, which was once popular in the US science and technology circle and had assets of US$209 billion, was taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) on March 10 and declared bankruptcy.

In addition to Silicon Valley Bank, Silvergate Bank and Signature Bank in the United States also declared bankruptcy. On March 10, the stocks of the US banking industry collectively plunged, and the stock prices of the four major banks, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citigroup, plummeted, and the total market value evaporated by about US$50 billion.

Although the US government has announced that it will take action to support deposits in banks in crisis, the shock this crisis has brought to the US financial system is far from over.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen recently admitted that the main reason for the closure of Silicon Valley Bank was the Federal Reserve's continuous interest rate hikes, which led to a continuous decline in the market value of financial assets such as bonds held by the bank. She warned that if the crisis spreads further, it may trigger more bank runs.

Silicon Valley Bank collapsed, and the crypto industry "stood up"!

As people increasingly lose trust in the traditional banking industry, the cryptocurrency market, which aims to de-bank, has suddenly soared. In the panic caused by the bankruptcy of Silicon Valley Bank, the price of Bitcoin soared 27% in two days. It is understood that the overall market value of the cryptocurrency market has exceeded $1 trillion amid the successive bank failures.

The crypto industry demonstrated strong safe-haven properties during this global financial crisis, which in turn attracted a large amount of funds to flee from bank savings and flow into the crypto market.

In responding to this global financial system crisis, Binance, as a leading exchange, has performed particularly well, demonstrating strong risk resistance and a positive sense of industry responsibility.

Binance has pledged to provide $1 billion to its Industry Recovery Initiative (IRI) to help troubled crypto companies, and intends to increase the investment to $2 billion "if necessary." Led by Binance, crypto investment companies such as Jump Crypto, Polygon Ventures and Animoca Brands have followed suit and pledged to invest in funding.

As part of its global efforts to increase user transparency, Binance's Proof of Reserves system was launched at the end of 2022. The system uses a Merkle tree to add on-chain data for users around the world to query and verify at any time. This proves that Binance holds all user assets (and some reserves) at a 1:1 ratio, has zero debt in its capital structure, and ensures that there is an emergency fund (SAFU fund) to deal with extreme situations.

Binance's "Investor Protection Fund" (SAFU — — Secure Asset Fund for Users) was established in July 2018 to protect the assets of Binance users. When the fund was established, Binance promised to allocate part of the proceeds to the protection fund to ensure that the fund can grow to a sufficient size to protect the interests of investors. Binance ensures that the size of SAFU is no less than US$1 billion.

As of March 7, Binance, the world's largest trading platform, has disclosed reserves of more than US$63 billion.

Binance's series of measures have played a stabilizing role for the entire crypto market, greatly calmed investors' nervousness, and played an important role in preventing the financial crisis from spreading to the crypto field. At the same time, it has also won wide praise and trust from investors.

According to a report by CryptoCompare, a crypto market data provider, Binance has expanded its spot market share for the fourth consecutive month. Binance's global market share increased from 59.4% in January to 61.8% in February. Binance's spot trading volume increased by 13.7% to $504 billion, setting a record high market share for the exchange. Binance's market share in derivatives also increased, climbing to 62.9%, setting a record high monthly market share ever.

Entering 2023, Binance accelerates the overall layout of the Binance ecosystem

In the eyes of many people, Binance is equal to Binance trading platform, but in fact this view is outdated. In order to meet users' demand for more innovative blockchain products, Binance is significantly expanding its product direction. After entering 2023, Binance has shown amazing innovation and competitiveness, and comprehensively developed the Binance ecosystem.

BNB Chain to conduct Planck hard fork on April 12

As the core of the Binance ecosystem, BNB Chain will conduct a Planck hard fork on April 12 to enhance cross-chain security. The core team said that this upgrade will enhance the security and stability of the network.

The Planck hard fork aims to implement the security enhancements proposed in BEP-171 and strengthen the cross-chain bridge between the two blockchains that make up the BNB Chain network, namely the Beacon Chain and the Smart Chain. Through the upgrade, BNB Chain hopes to improve the security, efficiency, and interoperability of its blockchain network.

The Planck upgrade will involve migrating from the vulnerable IAVL proof verification to a more secure bridge security mechanism, called the ICS23 specification. In addition, the upgrade will also introduce a timer lock mechanism for large cross-chain fund transfers, as well as automatic suspension of cross-chain channels when emergency situations such as forged proofs or hacker attacks are detected. These measures are designed to better protect user funds from potential attacks.

The continuously upgraded and improved BNB Chain has become the second largest on-chain ecosystem after Ethereum, with more than 1,600 active DAPPs, covering all tracks and sectors involved in the industry.

Currently, the leading protocols on Ethereum, such as Uniswap, are actively expanding to BNB Chain. Uniswap has completed its deployment on BNB Chain. On April 4, the Aave community has initiated the ARFC proposal to deploy Aave V3 to BNB Chain. All of these will promote the BNB Chain ecosystem to a larger user level.

Bicasso became a big hit, ushering in an era where “everyone is an artist”

On March 1, Binance announced the release of the AI-driven NFT generator beta version "Bicasso", which allows users to generate NFTs by uploading pictures and entering keywords for AI calculations. As soon as the news was released, the 10,000 NFT minting quota was sold out in seconds, and the system was overloaded and crashed due to a surge in traffic, which shows how popular it is.

The name Bicasso reminds people of the famous Spanish artist Picasso. However, unlike Picasso, who relied on talent and time to complete a work, Bicasso allows users to complete barrier-free NFT art creation in a few seconds, which seems to realize the era of "everyone is an artist" as described by German artist Joseph Beuys.

Bicasso's advanced AI technology allows you to easily depict imagined scenes. Just enter a description of what you want to see and the Bicasso tool will turn your ideas into reality in seconds.

AI has created huge opportunities, and the application of Bicasso in NFT has undoubtedly put Binance at the forefront of exploring the combination of the crypto industry and AI.

CZ bluntly said that the potential of BNB Greenfield is underestimated

At the beginning of the year, the prosperous Binance Chain ecosystem launched a new distributed storage system — BNB Greenfield, which attracted great attention in the industry. However, CZ still bluntly stated that the potential of BNB Greenfield was underestimated!

The white paper of the decentralized storage infrastructure BNB Greenfield shows that its goal is to allow users and dApps to create, store and exchange data with "full ownership" to form a new data economy.

This is a decentralized storage system with smart contract integration for Web3 applications. BNB Greenfield uses BNB as its native token and will become the third chain in the BNB public chain system. The other two are BNB Beacon Chain, which focuses on BNB governance and security, and BNB Smart Chain for smart contract computing.

In 2023, through BNB Greenfield, BNB Chain will create a new theme for data ownership and utility. BNB Greenfield will bring utility and financialization opportunities to data in storage, and programmability to data ownership.

The white paper also emphasizes that the real revolution of BNB Greenfield is rooted in its native integration with BNB Smart Chain, allowing smart contracts to interact with users' own data assets. Authors can easily publish digitally and sell their works directly on BNB Smart Chain through smart contracts.

Users can store their social graphs in a decentralized manner on BNB Greenfield, and different social media frontends will facilitate users to build social networks. In the long run, BNB Greenfield can also serve as a good backbone system for trusted computing and federated learning.

As CZ said, many people underestimate the potential of Greenfield. As new usage scenarios of BNB in ​​the field of data storage are developed, BNB Greenfield will surely show broader application potential.

Web3 identity platform SPACE ID announces version 2.0

At the beginning of the year, Binance ushered in a new round of IEO with a bang. The Web3 domain name Space ID was launched on Launchpad, 100 million $IDs were successfully sold out, and it was launched on the Binance trading platform, making Space ID the focus of the industry.

On April 4, Web3 identity platform SPACE ID announced the launch of version 2.0. SPACE ID 2.0 includes four major functions: Referral Program, SPACE ID Gift Card, Referral Program, and SPACE ID Voyage Program. BNB Chain and Arbitrum now support SPACE ID Gift Card. Redeemed points can be used to offset the fees during the registration and extension of .bnb or arb domain names.

Space ID is an important part of Binance's Web3 decentralized identity (DID) layout. It not only supports domain name registration and management, but also supports .bnb, .arb, and .eth blockchain network domain name auction services. According to the official website, Space ID has received investment from Binance Labs, Polychain Capital, Bullet Labs, Dao5 and other venture capital institutions.

SPACE ID continues to innovate and bring forth new ways of playing, which makes people dazzled and the development prospects are becoming more and more broad. It also once again proves the strong ability of Binance Labs in selecting, incubating and supporting innovative blockchain projects.

Actively deploy in the payment field and accelerate the formation of an ecological closed loop

In Binance's financial ecosystem layout, payment is an important link that cannot be ignored, and it is also the only way to finally achieve a closed loop of Binance's ecosystem. Binance has successively acquired the payment protocol Swipe.io (the leading team of Binance Card and crypto debit card business). I believe many friends have experienced the convenience and benefits of Binance Card (each eligible purchase can get up to 8% BNB cashback).

After entering 2023, Binance Pay continued to expand its territory online and offline, with remarkable results.

According to financial reports, blockchain retail solution Pundi X announced a partnership with Binance Pay to introduce Binance Pay to PundiX's XPOS devices. XPOS devices are now deployed in more than 30 countries, and this partnership will provide physical retailers with the ability to accept cryptocurrency payments.

On March 8, Binance Pay reached a cooperation with Latin American travel agency Despegar to accept cryptocurrencies as a payment method in Argentina. Payments will be made through Binance Pay, and the financial-as-a-service platform Inswitch will be responsible for converting cryptocurrencies into legal tender. In addition, the crypto payment function will initially only be available in Argentina, but Despegar plans to launch this service to other Latin American countries in the future.

As we all know, the global payment market has a huge stock. According to reports, the total transaction volume processed by traditional payment giant Stripe in 2022 was US$817 billion, an increase of 26% from 2021 (US$640 billion). The early layout in the payment market has shown us another tangible and broad landing scenario for the Binance ecosystem.

All in all, at the beginning of 2023, Binance's performance is exciting and refreshing.

In the eyes of many people, Binance is equal to Binance trading platform. In fact, in order to meet users' demand for more innovative blockchain products, Binance has long been not limited to this. Binance is one of the most diverse ecosystems in the current crypto industry. After years of development, it has gradually formed a multi-dimensional ecological pattern.

It is not difficult to see that Binance not only has the vision to pioneer the industry, but also has the endurance and strength to maintain its advantage in the fierce business competition, and this strength comes from Binance's various measures in recent years to continuously enrich its own ecosystem and enhance the moat of its core business. We look forward to Binance bringing us more surprises in 2023, just as it has done in the past.