Layer 2 scaling solutions have revolutionized the space with faster and cheaper transactions, as well as increased scalability and improved privacy and security.

In a bid to increase its competitiveness against rival blockchain networks, a proposal has been submitted that aims to adopt a lower transaction fee cost on Binance Smart Chain (BSC).

BSC Proposal

The proposal, submitted on March 28th, highlighted the need for a more adaptive transaction cost distribution on the BSC network with a more flexible transaction fee structure in a bid to ensure efficient block utilization and attract new users. It further stated that such an approach would help sustain the BNB economy while enhancing BSC’s position in the market, especially in the multichain strategy laid down in its roadmap.

According to the proposal, BSC’s high gas fees have impeded the network activity and claimed that the utilization of around 15-20% could aggravate if the gas fee is left unchecked.

“BSC transaction costs are currently set at a relatively high fixed rate of 5 gwei, which may not be as appealing to users as the more affordable fees provided by L2 solutions outside of the BSC ecosystem. This will ensure the existing and future BNB Chain L2 solutions remain competitive and keep attractive users in the ecosystem.”

The proposition for the BSC validators is to allow users to choose fees below the current 5 gwei rate, with options to go as low as 3 or 4 gwei, depending on their financial needs. This approach, as per the user, “would make BSC L1 more attractive than other ecosystems’ L2 solutions and provide a competitive advantage for potential BSC L2 solutions ( BSC L2 should have a target of < 0.005$/tx.”

In addition to the high transaction volume on BSC, which would serve as a strong financial incentive to participate as validators, the approach is also expected to enhance sustainability, attract new users, and optimize block utilization to the network.

Binance Smart Chain Hacks

In a recently rolled out roadmap, BSC said the focus in 2023 will be the EVM compatibility and mainnet launch of its new layer 2 infrastructure, zkBNB, and BNB Greenfield, the blockchain-based Web3 infrastructure. The blockchain also intends to increase its throughput from 140 million gas limit and 2,200 TPS to 300 million gas limit and 5,000 TPS.

Meanwhile, the daily transactions on BSC have increased by nearly 60% since the beginning of this year, from 2.46 million to 3.89 million as of March 29th. Despite the notable rise, BSC has suffered significant disruptions in 2022.

The network operations were temporarily halted following a $600 million hack in October. Several decentralized finance protocols housing on the network also witnessed hacks throughout the year. This included Uranium Finance, Spartan Protocol, Meerkat Finance, etc.

#bsc #Binance #crypto2023 #crypto #BTC

Binance announced a suspension of deposits and withdrawals from its Binance Smart Chain (BSC) network.

The issue was attributed to a node issue – the team has estimated a fix within the hour.

The exchange announced scheduled wallet maintenance to occur at 07:00 UTC on March 30. It was estimated to take two hours to complete — with deposits and withdrawals suspended during this time.

A further announcement was released at approximately 09:52 UTC, detailing “a node issue,” extending the downtime. The firm added that deposits and withdrawals would reopen once maintenance has been completed.

“The ongoing wallet maintenance for BNB Smart Chain (BEP20) will be extended by approximately 1.5 hours to 2023-03-30 11:00 (UTC). Binance is working actively to complete the maintenance as quickly as possible.”

Binance under fire

On March 27, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) filed an enforcement action against Binance over charges of operating an illegal exchange.

CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) said he was surprised by the move as the company had been working with the regulator over the last two years. He disagreed with the lawsuit, citing “an incomplete recitation of facts.”

#Binance #bsc #crypto2023 #cryptotrading #crypto

AUTOR:
MARCO MUSUMECI D'AGATA
Periodista financiero, experto en sistemas descentralizados DeFi.
NOTICIA 17.03.2024 - 19:37h
Un Bitkoin es una criptomoneda creada en una red de blockchain muy segura, descentralizada y con unos costes por transacción de pocos céntimos. Además, participar en la preventa de Bitkoin solo cuesta 2,5 dólares.
En un mundo donde todo parece ya estar explorado a veces surgen genialidades por manos de personas anónimas. Nos referimos a un ingeniero espacial de 46 años que dice llamarse Zhao Nakamoto, y ser el joven hermano del mismísimo Satoshi Nakamoto (creador de Bitcoin).
El 2 de octubre de 2023 a las 11:30, Zhao Nakamoto dio vida a 21.000.000 de Bitkoin, el nombre del token es parecido al de Bitcoin, solo ha sustituido la 'c' por la 'k' y lo hizo adrede para que Bitkoin sea un token con funciones complementarias al de su hermano Satosh.
Bitkoin es una criptomoneda creada en BSC (Binance Smart Chain, por sus siglas en inglés), una red de blockchain muy segura, descentralizada y con unos costes por transacción de pocos céntimos. Esta moneda está programada para narrar la historia de Bitcoin (BTC) a través de un calendario basado en eventos los 365 días del año, además, lo más importante es que distribuye una recompensa del 5% en Bitcoin (BTC) diariamente a todos sus holders (poseedores).
En el año 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto ofreció en preventa Bitcoin a 0,003 dólares y en 2011 su precio era aún de un dólar, pero ninguno de nosotros nos dimos cuenta hasta que el 8 de noviembre de 2021 su precio se multiplicó por 67.000 veces su precio inicial, alcanzando casi los 70.000 dólares americanos. Y el 15 de marzo de 2024 volvió a superar los 70.000.
El músico Stephen Perkins dijo una vez: "Todo el mundo comete errores. Lo importante es no cometer el mismo error dos veces".
Qué contestarías si te dijera que participar en la preventa de Bitkoin cuesta solo 4,5 dólares (4,10 euros), o sea menos de lo que pagarías por desayunar un café y un croissant en Madrid.
El precio de lanzamiento, en preventa, del Bitkoin es de solo 0,45 dólares la unidad, la inversión mínima son 10 Bitkoin y para poder recibir a diario recompensas en Bitcoins hay que poseer en cartera un mínimo de 100 Bitkoin (unos 45 dólares o 41 euros en preventa).
En este artículo no es nuestro deseo, en ningún momento, ofrecerle al lector ninguna inversión ni oferta financiera. Hablamos de una cifra de menos de dos euros y medio, un importe que probablemente hoy provocaría las risas de algunos, pero al igual que pasó con Bitcoin en 2009 quién sabe si mañana no provocará la envidia de muchos.
Donde el pasado se encuentra con el futuro, ahora tú, puedes tener una oportunidad, uniéndote a Zhao Nakamoto en este viaje criptográfico con destino a la luna.
#bitcoin #btc $BTC #bsc $BNB #DeFi

Binance Labs is one of the crypto sector’s most active investors. Its assets have now swollen to $9 billion, up from $7.5 billion last year. 

Binance’s chief business officer Yibo Ling says the venture and incubation unit is global in scope, undeterred by regulatory pressure in the United States and elsewhere. 

In this piece, The Block examines how and where Binance Labs invests, personnel changes, potential acquisitions and how the fund is navigating the bear market. 

Now that Binance, the world’s biggest crypto exchange, and its CEO Changpeng Zhao are being sued by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission over unregistered trading activity in the United States, one might expect the business to steer clear of venture investments in the region. But Binance is nothing if not a risk-taker.

“It doesn’t really touch Labs in any way that I can think of,” Yibo Ling, chief business officer at Binance, said of U.S. regulatory pressure affecting its Binance Labs venture arm, in a wide-ranging interview with The Block. “It’s not differentially impacting us. If there are good projects anywhere, we’re interested in having a conversation.”

As of the first quarter, Binance Labs had amassed $9 billion in assets, up from $7.5 billion in August of last year, according to a spokesperson. Its money is invested in over 200 projects from more than 25 countries in six continents. Of those, 50 have been incubated by Binance Labs.

On paper, the venture business has generated significant returns. Binance’s spokesperson said the outfit has delivered a theoretical return of more than 10 times what it has invested. Yet Binance seemingly has no plans to sell. “We’re buying and holding, that’s been the strategy over the past few years. With maybe a handful of exceptions, we haven’t exited,” Ling said. 

If realized, those returns would accrue primarily to Binance itself, since the bulk of the capital it invests comes from the exchange giant’s profits. There is also a $500 million fund with external capital in the mix that closed in June last year. DST Global Partners and Breyer Capital contributed alongside private equity funds, family offices and corporations, according to a blog post published at the time.

Binance Labs doing fewer deals

Despite Ling's bravado, the publicly available data suggests that Binance Labs has made fewer deals in the U.S. this year. The chart below, compiled by The Block Research, shows how the firm's announced investments have declined.

In the second quarter, Binance Labs has so far invested in three firms: Thailand-based metaverse startup Playbux, Korean blockchain game developer Gomble, and Gameta, a web3 gaming platform based in the British Virgin Islands, according to The Block’s deals dashboard. 

Binance Labs team structure

The Binance Labs team remains surprisingly lean despite the size of its portfolio, with just a dozen or so dedicated staff, according to Ling. The structure of the team is not entirely clear. Binance’s spokesperson declined to share an organization chart, citing internal policy.

Yi He, a co-founder of Binance alongside Zhao, took the reins as head of Binance Labs in August 2022, taking on responsibility for global strategy and day-to-day operations, according to a blog post published at the time. Yi has a lot to juggle. She continues to lead and support other parts of Binance’s business, including customer service, institutional business, marketing, Binance C2C and Binance Wealth Management.

The decision to add Binance Labs to Yi’s already full plate followed a string of executive departures. In June 2022, The Block revealed that Bill Qian, the former head of Binance Labs, and executive director Nicole Zhang were on their way out. Peter Huo, a former executive director at Binance Labs, also left the unit last year, according to his LinkedIn profile. Jeffrey Ma, an M&A director at Binance, departed in March 2022, per his LinkedIn. He and Huo now work together at a business named Whampoa Digital. Huo and Ma did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 

In addition to bringing in Yi last year, Binance hired Natalie Luu, previously head of ecosystem at Terraform Labs, as vice president of investments and head of incubation in March, according to her LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn also suggests that Michael Siu and Alex Odagiu, both former bankers, have each served as investment directors at Binance Labs for a year or more, while Kevin Poh, a former regulator at the Monetary Authority of Singapore, is involved in both M&A and ventures. Luu, Siu, Odagiu and Poh did not respond to requests for comment. 

Ling's role at Binance Labs

In his role as chief business officer, Ling leads M&A and investments at Binance Labs, as well as business development for Binance, according to the firm’s spokesperson. Before joining Binance Labs, Ling was chief financial officer and before that head of corporate development at Bird and Uber, respectively. 

Though lean, being affiliated with the largest global crypto exchange — and its roughly 8,000 employees — gives Binance Labs access to a deep reservoir of resources and expertise.

“The Binance brand itself certainly affords us certain opportunities,” Ling said. “The expertise that we bring is much more considerable than a handful of investment professionals.” As well as the exchange’s resources, Ling pointed to Trust Wallet, CoinMarketCap, NodeReal and Binance Oracle as examples of outfits within the Binance ecosystem — the first two brought in via acquisition — that can offer additional technical expertise to Binance Labs’ startups.

In Ling’s view, the businesses Binance Labs incubates and invests in are better able to tailor their products to industry needs.

“How are these new primitives being built? Where is talent flocking to? Where are new thematic elements popping up? And we can help orchestrate a little bit, provide suggestions and guidance to our portfolio companies,” Ling said. “This ecosystem is just so dynamic that having folks in the flow of what’s changing and what’s happening, not yesterday, not the day before but today, I think is quite valuable.”

Rising tides and firewalls

A business of Binance’s behemoth size must be cautious about how its many moving parts fit together. Sam Bankman-Fried’s collapsed crypto empire — at the heart of which resided the exchange FTX and the venture-capital-come-trading-firm Alameda Research — offers a painfully fresh example of how failures of segregation can lead to catastrophe.

Ling is acutely aware of the risks. “In terms of the specific ecosystem support, the listing is separated from what we do,” he said. “The listing piece we certainly keep very, very segregated from the Labs and BNB pieces because of all the reasons you can imagine. But clearly sometimes there will be overlap. The listing focus is on good projects and whether that’s something that Labs has invested in or not, or that BNB is associated with, is frankly from their perspective not material.”

BNB is a cryptocurrency issued by Binance that serves as the native token of BNB Chain, the Layer 1 blockchain formerly known as Binance Smart Chain. Binance Labs has a mandate, through its investments, to bolster activity on BNB Chain.

It runs two incubation programs, biannually. One — the “Most Valuable Builder Program” — is specifically focused on projects building tools on top of BNB Chain. Participants in the accelerator can expect investment, coaching and network support. 1,500 projects applied to participate in the most recent program, according to a Binance Labs blog post. 53% of those projects came from North America and Europe, with 36% were based in Asia Pacific. The chart below highlights the geographical focus of the accelerator, again with the caveat that it is based on publicly available information and may not encapsulate all participants. Details of the Q1 23 cohort are not yet available. 

The second incubation program is chain-agnostic, working with startups regardless of what blockchain they choose to develop on. BNB Chain also runs its own investment initiatives to try to foster more activity on the network.

Ling sees Binance Labs’ overarching mission as engorging the entire crypto market — and Binance’s exchange with it.

“Our thinking with Binance Labs is very much this notion that a rising tide lifts all boats,” he said. “We think that the value of that core business is going to dramatically increase as the web3 ecosystem continues to develop — so our role is to help seed that ecosystem and help it mature.”

Tough times

Sadly for Ling, the crypto tide has been going out for at least a year. The collapses of major projects and companies — including but not limited to Terra, Three Arrows Capital, Celsius, BlockFi and FTX — coupled with a broader downturn in macroeconomic conditions, plummeting crypto prices and a broad correction in tech valuations, have all served to severely shake the confidence of retail and institutional investors alike.

The valuations of blue-chip startups in the crypto space have fallen commensurately. The Block revealed in March that shares in companies like Blockchain.com, OpenSea and ConsenSys are trading at steep discounts on secondary market platforms.

Among the venture investors who remain committed to the crypto market, many have styled the past year as a kind of cleansing. Ling agrees.

“These types of moments are not necessarily unhealthy for tech or for web3,” Ling said. “It’s a moment that, number one, washes out some projects that may not have been meant for this world over the long term… I think that it’s allowing a lot of talent to flow from I would say less productive long-term things to more productive long-term things. It’s adding a lot of labor liquidity to the market.”

Binance’s Industry Recovery Initiative

Late last year, many crypto projects were desperately short of liquidity of the more traditional kind. Many had funds stuck in the centralized businesses that had abruptly shuttered — leaving them with shortfalls.

In response, in November, Binance Labs spearheaded a so-called “Industry Recovery Initiative” — to which it committed an initial $1 billion. Jump Crypto, Polygon Ventures, DWF Labs, Aptos Labs, Animoca Brands, GSR, Kronos and Brooker Group also contributed, among others. Its mandate was, according to a blog post, to support promising projects that, “through no fault of their own, are facing significant, short term, financial difficulties.” Hundreds of projects applied for aid through the program.

So far, the IRI has funded 14 applicants, with another 50 to 60 still in the review process, according to Ling. Six months on from its inception, Ling already feels the industry is showing signs of returning to health.  

“There are just less companies in need of help. We’re seeing less applications coming in as well, which is a pretty good sign,” he said. “We’re able to deploy against that initiative, but we’re frankly seeing a lot less need for it at the moment.”

How to spend it

In general, Binance’s Zhao appears to enjoy thrusting the company into the role of white knight to an ailing industry — but with a pragmatism that sometimes sees support withdrawn as circumstances change.

In April 2022, days after North Korean hackers stole $540 million in crypto from the sidechain that supports Axie Infinity, Binance Labs rode to the rescue by announcing that it would lead a $150 million investment in Axie Infinity developer Sky Mavis. The plan was to use the funds, alongside Sky Mavis’s own capital, to reimburse victims of the hack. It was seen as a crucial intervention. But a few months later, The Block revealed that Binance had significantly reduced the size of its investment, such that it was no longer the lead investor in the round. A Binance spokesperson said at the time that Sky Mavis had recovered funds and could therefore cover users’ losses “without significant investment from Binance.”

More so than ever, Binance is in a position to consolidate its power through acquisitions — a major focus for Ling and Binance Labs. The company recently re-entered the South Korean crypto market by acquiring a majority stake in Gopax, a local player. Late last year, Binance acquired Sakura Exchange BitCoin to pave the way for its expansion into the Japanese market. 

“We’ve had a number of investments of that type over the last few years, and that isn’t primarily focused on returns and lifting all tides. That is much more about fitting strategic elements into our business, or with our business, that help improve the overall Binance exchange,” Ling said.  

There are some more outlandish deals in the mix, too, such as the proposed Forbes deal — which is still up in the air — and the investment in Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover. But the focus is on what Ling describes as “strategic” deals.

In terms of timing, Ling admits that “plenty of people would view this as a moment of opportunity,” but adds that Binance wants to be judicious about “how we spread out our resources.”

“It is not necessarily super straightforward to project the future.”  

#Binance #crypto2023 #BTC #BullRun #bsc

BNB Greenfield’s adoption was on the rise with xLog’s latest integration. BNB’s price action might soon turn bullish, as suggested by its green hourly chart. 

Recent ecosystem developments can help BNB further increase its daily active users. 

BNB’s hourly chart became green, and a few metrics looked in the token’s favor.

BNB Chain [BNB] has maintained its spot as the second largest blockchain in terms of daily active users for quite some time. Though it is an achievement in itself, a few developments have happened in the network that can propel further growth. Therefore, this can increase the chances of BNB overtaking Tron [TRX] on the list. 

BNB Greenfield adoption is on the rise

BNB Chain’s tweet, posted on 20 April, revealed a new integration. As per the tweet, xLog announced that their decentralized blogging platform will integrate with BNB Greenfield. For the uninitiated, xLog is an on-chain and open-source blogging community. 

Is BNB’s network usage declining? 

As per Token Terminal, over the last 90 days, BNB fees remained high but stagnant. It was also interesting to note that BNB Chain registered a double-digit decline in its revenue in the first quarter of 2023.

Stagnant fees indicated less usage of the network, which was further proven by BNB’s declining gas amount and plateaued daily transactions. As this latest integration can bring new users, a rise in fees and revenue can also be expected.

BNB in the bear market

The entire crypto market was currently under the influence of bears, causing a 3% decline in global crypto market capitalization. Though BNB was affected, its performance was comparatively better than most others on the list of the top 10 cryptos by market cap.

CoinMarketCap’s data revealed that BNB’s price declined by over 2.5% in the last 24 hours. At press time, it was trading at $317.19, with a market cap of over $49 billion.

Surprisingly, the number of BNB holders kept on increasing despite the recent price action. However, whale interest has declined, as evident from BNB’s whale transaction count. 

Good news for investors

At press time, BNB’s price showed signs of recovery by increasing over 4.5%. A look at BNB’s MVRV Ratio also gave hope for a trend reversal, as it went up slightly on 21 April.

As BNB’s price increased, its trading volume also showed a spike, further raising the chances of a continued uptrend.

#Binance #crypto2023 #BTC #crypto2023 #bsc