Binance has rebranded its two blockchains as one BNB Chain on Tuesday, in a push toward the metaverse and decentralized finance (DeFi), an ecosystem the company calls “MetaFi.”
Fast facts
- Binance has taken its name out of its two blockchains, the Binance Chain and Binance Smart Chain, which are now respectively called BNB Beacon Chain and BNB Smart Chain (BSC).
- The BNB Beacon Chain will serve on-chain transactions and governance features such as staking and voting, while the BSC will continue to offer its EVM compatibility and consensus layers as well as expanding to a multi-chain ecosystem.
- The Binance Smart Chain, launched in 2020, allowed the exchange to compete against Ethereum’s DeFi dominance by providing a cheaper, but more centralized alternative to investors during the DeFi summer.
- The rebranding signals the BSC’s shift from a DeFi-centric chain to branch out to emerging blockchain trends such as the metaverse and GameFi.
- Binance intends to improve the scalability of the BSC by almost doubling its validator set from 21 to 41.
- The BNB, or Binance Coin, which was birthed on the Binance Chain (BNB Beacon Chain), is still the gas token of the BSC smart contract ecosystem, and was trading at US$431 at press time.