The news that Binance, one of the biggest names in crypto with 15 million active users, will be launching its BINANCE Smart Chain smart contract blockchain is huge.
Headed by charismatic CEO Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao and focused on rapid technological advance. Binance’s dominance of the crypto exchange market has made it one of the most powerful and profitable companies in blockchain.
Ironically too, despite its heavy focus on centralization, it’s also one of the most trusted brands in crypto.
All these facets are being combined within the Binance Smart Chain, which is the logical progression of its Binance Chain. It launched in April 2019, and is currently best known for the Binance DEX dapp.
Adaptability
Using a staked authority consensus model and the BNB token. The Smart Chain will offer developers a more flexible and open blockchain in which to build a wider range of dapps.
Indeed, given its compatibility with Ethereum Virtual Machines and tools, developers should be able to run their current Ethereum dapps on the Smart Chain with little modification.
Cross-chain bridges will enable tokens to move between the two blockchains too. Something that could be very important to allow the deep liquidity of Binance users to flow into both the Binance Smart Chain and Ethereum dapp ecosystems.
And yet it’s important to understand that no matter how technically advanced a blockchain is and how large (or rich) its community. Creating a successful smart contract blockchain requires more.
For example, DappRadar currently tracks dapp activity across 11 smart contract blockchains (with more to come). But only Ethereum, TRON and EOS have more than 10 active dapps over the long term. And only Ethereum demonstrates a deep ecosystem with active dapps across all key categories. Such as DeFi, Exchanges, Gaming and Gambling.
Even in the case of DeFi, which would seem to be an obvious win for the Binance Smart Chain. Will the tight-knit Ethereum DeFi community be happy switching their allegiance to a brand that’s so heavily characterized by the success of a centralized crypto exchange and its token?
Winning over these hearts-and-minds could be a tough ask, no matter how much scale the community offers or how much faster Binance Smart Chain is in terms of faster block times and cheaper transaction costs.
You can find out more about the Binance Smart Chain via the Binance website.