2021 was a defining year for crypto. The total market cap hit $3 trillion, adoption spread like wildfire and the industry grew beyond a speculative space, transforming everything from how we transact money to how people engage with art and video games.  

At the same time, Binance made significant strides forward. This year, we reiterated our commitment to security, formed new partnerships with countries around the world,  created a better Binance user experience, added more services to our growing ecosystem and much more. With the first month of 2022 underway, let’s revisit our biggest (and under-the-radar) accomplishments of 2021. 

Security And User Protection 

As part of our commitment to safeguarding the crypto ecosystem, we worked closely with law enforcement agencies worldwide, including the Ukraine Cyber Police, Korean National Police, USA LEA and more, to combat ransomware cybercrime. We also became the first cryptocurrency and blockchain organization to formally join the National Cyber-Forensics and Training Alliance (NCFTA). To better protect users on our centralized exchange, we launched Project Shield, the first-ever token listing audit program, and implemented more robust Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) protocols. 

Partnerships

We signed an agreement with Dubai World Trade Centre Authority to establish an industry hub for global virtual assets, and we received in-principle approval from the Central Bank of Bahrain to become a crypto-asset provider in the Kingdom of Bahrain. In addition, we launched “Objective Moon”, a 100M Euro initiative to support the development of the French and European blockchain and cryptocurrency ecosystem. 

User Experience

Being user-focused is at the heart of everything we do at Binance. Here are just a few out of hundreds of tweaks, big and small, we made to improve the overall Binance experience for our community. 

• Chart drawing feature on the app

• Announcement banners now show on the trading page

• Swiping left or right in the app to switch pairs

• Immersive status and navigation bar on the Android app

• Price alert push notifications to help users track the market better

• Countdown page for new listings. (Simple, but cool. And useful.)

The product and content team improved language consistency and standards across all Binance channels. We created easy-to-follow guides for every user in every language and launched dedicated Customer Service channels for our Turkish and Polish-speaking users.

Customer Service

Despite improvements to our user experience, crypto’s rapid growth has welcomed a record-breaking influx of new users. And with more users, we’ve faced more customer support requests than ever before. This past year, our Customer Service team has worked overtime to address the community’s growing needs, adding more team members and conducting comprehensive training sessions—all while maintaining a consistent 90%+ customer satisfaction rating. 

Binance Ecosystem

As our community grew in size, so did our ecosystem. Here are some of the major platforms, services, projects and tokens we launched this year:

• Binance NFT

• Binance Gift Card

• Binance Fan Token

• Auto-Invest

BUSD Milestones

2021 was also a big year for the BUSD ecosystem. In less than two years, the stablecoin reached a $14.8 billion market cap, entered the top 10 crypto ranking and was “Green Listed” by the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS). Users in the Binance ecosystem choose BUSD for many reasons, from strict stablecoin compliance standards to diverse use cases in the CeFi and DeFi world. 

Binance Charity

We harnessed the power of blockchain to do our part during the pandemic, distributing $8,598,649 in donations, launching 27 projects and helping 1,847,993 people across 42 countries.

Education

With the help of @BinanceAfrica and @BinanceAfrique, we provided free classes to hundreds of thousands of African users on crypto, blockchain, user safety and career development. In India and Sri Lanka, we launched ‘Binance Campus BUIDLer’ to spread crypto education across college campuses, making crypto more accessible and familiar. At the time of writing, we’ve certified approximately 1,300 student BUIDLers through this initiative.  

Last but not least, we hosted an offline event in Dubai and Argentina. If the restrictions permit, we’ll be coming to your country very soon—so stay tuned! 

Looking Forward

The Binance team would like to thank you for sharing your crypto journey with us. We couldn’t have come this far without your support over the past year. For 2022, we’ll continue to power through and carry on building, growing and moving the industry forward.