Bridging DeFi and CeFi: Introducing a $100M Support Fund for DeFi Projects on BNB Smart Chain

We're establishing a $100 million USD seed fund to empower emerging projects and drive collaboration between centralized finance (CeFi) and decentralized finance (DeFi).

Today, Binance Founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao announced the creation of a seed fund worth $100 million USD for DeFi during The World of DeFi summit. This fund and other initiatives from Binance aim to further support the DeFi ecosystem and solutions to bridge DeFi and CeFi ecosystems. 

How to Benefit From the $100 Million Fund

We will soon call upon DeFi projects to submit their proposals to be one of the beneficiaries of this fund. The decentralized community that built BNB Smart Chain will act as an early investor and governance party for funding. Strong projects can get up to $100,000 in funding. The selection criteria will follow the same standards used for Binance X, Binance Labs, and Binance Launchpad. 

We will provide liquidity support for DeFi projects that pass security audits and the due diligence process. Selected beneficiaries will also enjoy support from the resources we offer across the Binance ecosystem. This includes access to millions of customers, media information in the ecosystem, knowledge education, incubation financing, derivatives, financial management, and other comprehensive resources and financial support. High-quality projects may even have the opportunity to participate to be listed on Binance. 

We anticipate your applications for the new BNB Smart Chain fund. Together, let’s create more DeFi applications on the BNB Smart Chain together. Fill up this form to apply!

Bridging Various Blockchains with BNB Smart Chain

Aside from the $100 million fund, we are also bridging DeFi and CeFi in many other ways. Through the Token Canal project, we’re working with the BNB Smart Chain community to help developers connect the BNB Smart Chain with other public chains. We want to be the proverbial bridge that connects the various highways provided by the many blockchains that already exist. Through the secure custody service of the Binance CeFi platform, tokens on other public chains can be connected to the BNB Smart Chain, including BTC, ETH, and other ERC20 tokens (LINK, USDT, DAI, and more), as well as XPR, BCH, LTC, ADA, DOT, XTZ, EOS, ONT, etc. 

We will offer safe custody services, comprehensive cross-chain services, linkage liquidity, privacy protection, and much more through the Token Canal project. 

BNB Smart Chain will be able to realize the one-click transfer of assets between different network tokens. Users can simply and quickly transfer token assets into BNB Smart Chain. 

At Binance, we aim to establish the BSC as the provider of interconnection scenarios for multiple blockchain DeFi protocols and establish a reliable infrastructure for what we envision as the "Internet of Value" for the future.

Giving Power to BNB Holders, Developing DeFi and DeFi-like Solutions, and More

We are also bridging CeFi and DeFi in our Binance ecosystem. We want to show the world how we can integrate between DeFi and CeFi to offer the best of both worlds.

For instance, with the launch of BNB Smart Chain, we have introduced the Proof of Stake Authority consensus mechanism, which adds a staking functionality for BNB, the native token of the BNB Chain ecosystem. BNB holders participating in staking will receive BNB rewards from BNB Smart Chain’s validators and benefit from the same interests of DeFi staking returns on the CeFi platform.

In August last year, we launched DeFi staking, another excellent example of Binance bridging DeFi and CeFi. Alongside our existing support for staking of several tokens listed on Binance, we also offer our users the means to use their tokens to participate in various DeFi platforms’ DeFi staking activities, such as Kava’s BNB staking mechanism for earning new USDX tokens.

As we continue to build out this bridge, our users can benefit from CeFi services on Binance (Spot, Margin, and Futures Trading, Savings, DeFi Staking, DeFi Pooling, etc.) and DeFi products on BNB Smart Chain (Lending, AMM, Liquidity Mining, Yield Farming, and more).

Why Do We Continue To Disrupt Ourselves

For some people, the emergence of DeFi represents a shift away from centralized blockchain platforms. This could be interpreted as a threat to services such as Binance. We beg to disagree. For us, DeFi is an opportunity to offer better solutions to the blockchain world. 

We are committed to building products and services that give people more freedom with their crypto, including DeFi. In early 2019 we supported the creation of BNB Chain and Binance DEX before DeFi went mainstream. Back then, some people expressed concerns that we are building our own rival. But from our perspective, we’re just giving our users what they want. 

At Binance, we’d like to think that our biggest opponents are ourselves. We continue to disrupt and improve upon what we already offer, because we want to offer even better services for you, whether on CeFi or DeFi.

Updated on July 27, 2022