2021: A Groundbreaking Year for BNB Chain

2021 was truly special.

We started the year with 350,000 daily transactions, 50,000 daily active users and about 200 dApps on 1st January. Today, we have well over 7 million transactions (ATH 16.26M) and 1.3 million active users (ATH 2.27M) on a typical day, with more than 1,150 dApps on the network.

It has been incredible to experience the tremendous growth of the ecosystem, and fun to have been part of the strong and zealous BNB Chain community that powered the growth.

We are now one of the largest blockchains in the world bringing decentralised and innovative services to millions of users. The journey we took to arrive here has been nothing short of amazing.

As we stand on the edge of a new year, it is time to look back at the key highlights over the past 12 months.

Key 2021 Numbers

• 2.14 Billion transactions in total, with an ATH of 16.26 million daily transactions recorded on 25th Nov.
• 123 million new wallet addresses created globally, with an ATH of 2.27 million daily active addresses on 1 Dec.
• DeFi TVL stands at $17 Billion, and Decentralized Exchange (DEX) transaction volume totalled over $300 Billion.
• 1,150+ projects spanning across DeFi, GameFi, NFTs, Metaverse and several other segments created on the network.
• BNB Chain Accelerator Funds granted and invested in 40+ projects. Over 42,000 BNB reimbursed in the BUIDL program.
• $1 Billion Growth Fund launched to accelerate, incubate and invest in blockchain adoption, and $200 million co-investment fund established with Animoca Brands to invest in games on BNB Chain.
• Over 17 million BNB staked on BNB Chain to support the network, with over 46,000 delegators sharing more than 2 million BNB rewards.
• More than 19,000 BNB burned through on-chain BEP95 burn.
• Twitter Followers increased from 130,000 in January to 1.8 million today.

Key Ecosystem Highlights

DeFi landscape on BNB Chain has massively expanded. Be it Lending protocols, DEXs, or Yield Aggregators, you can now find a wider variety of choices. New and innovative DeFi protocols, such as MCDEX and Deri for derivatives trading, Qubit for cross-chain lending, Alpaca Finance for leveraged yield farming or Tranchess for yield optimization, have been introduced to continuously optimize the capital efficiency and improve liquidity on the network. Be ready to see much more transformative DeFi protocols in 2022!

GameFi had a stellar year, and was a big contributor to BNB Chain’s network growth. Gamefi transactions make up slightly over 50% of total transactions, with game projects and players attracted by the low fees and fast transaction speed. BNB Chain now has a vibrant selection of game genres ranging from MMORPG to battle arena, racing, card games and much more.  

NFTs and the Metaverse are taking shape in BNB Chain. Pancake Squad NFT collection alone hit over $40 million in transaction volume. Projects like NFTrade and Binance NFT have created vibrant marketplaces. Meanwhile, gamefi projects like MOBOX, BinaryX, and Alien Worlds are increasingly building up their Metaverse, and we continue to see innovation in the Metaverse space (we look forward to seeing you in our next event on SecondLive).

Network upgrades continue to improve the network: BNB Chain client binary experienced 11 major upgrades and went from v1.0.4 to v1.1.7. Perhaps the most significant one to call out is the implementation of BEP-95. These upgrades will make BNB tokenomics more dynamic and decentralized.

BNB Chain Accelerator Fund  boosted the BNB Chain ecosystem and has seed-funded over 40 projects. BNB Chain $1 Billion Growth Fund was announced in October, the biggest funding program of its kind in the entire cryptocurrency industry. This fund aims to push the adoption of not only BNB Chain but the whole blockchain industry through four programs: direct investments (500M), builders and incubation (300M), talent development (100M) and liquidity support (100M).

Most Valuable Builder (MVB) Program was a huge success this year. We completed three seasons of the MVB with over 700 participating projects and hosted dozens of MVB-related hackathons and events.

So much more has happened on the network beyond the highlights mentioned above. We compiled a timeline of events below to walk through some of these major moments.

Towards 2022

BNB Chain’s core vision is to deliver a scalable and high performance network to satisfy the large scale business (>10M daily active addresses), foster  a robust and sustainable ecosystem and power the future of Web 3.0.  BNB Chain Community will host a New Year Event to share new strategy on BNB Chain, and announce some critical changes on the BNB Chain decentralization. There’ll be much more exciting developments to come in 2022.   Let’s continue to build together for the future!

Wishing everyone a wonderful New Year Holiday.

Key Milestones and Moments in 2021

January 2021

• BNB Chain community introduces its vision and roadmap for the year.
• BNB Chain and DoraHacks team up to announce the 1st round of Quadratic Funding Grant.
• pNetwork joins the BNB Chain ecosystem to enable BNB Chain-Ethereum cross-chain functionality for crypto-assets and NFTs.
• Blockchain gaming platform Seascape Network receives Binance.com investment and starts developing on BNB Chain.
• ChainIDE deploys on BNB Chain and BEW v1.131.1 is released.

February 2021

• BNB Chain hits milestone of 1 million wallet addresses.
• BNB Chain processes over 1 million transactions within a day for the first time.
• Launches the Most Valuable Builder (MVB) program designed to find the best projects and fuel their growth and development, eventually attracting over 310 contracts.
• Data and oracle infrastructure provider DIA announces support for BNB Chain.
• Beefy Finance records $100 million TVL for the first time.
• The validators community lowers minimum gas price from 15 gwei to 10 gwei for the BNB Chain mainnet.
• Alpaca Finance, 1st leveraged yield farming protocol, goes live on BNB Chain.
• BNB Chain holds Developer Masterclass and Hackathon in Africa with the aim to train 1,000 developers .

March 2021

• The Graph, an indexing protocol for querying networks, announces support for BNB Chain.
• To increase the security of the BNB Chain ecosystem, Gnosis Safe announces the first BNB Chain multisig ever.
• Biconomy introduces meta-transaction APIs to improve user experience by enabling gasless transactions.
• BNB Chain Accelerator Fund distributes a record-breaking $3.25 million reward as a part of the BUIDL Reward Program for February. BNB Chain Studio, a powerful integrated IDE for BS, is launched.
• Binance-backed Indonesian exchange Tokocrypto launched its DeFi project on BNB Chain.
• DeFi synthetics suite, governance, and NFT marketplace Juggernaut secures investment from the $100m BNB Chain Accelerator Fund.
• DappRadar report puts BNB Chain in the spotlight: “BNB Chain overtakes Ethereum in transaction volume and users”

April 2021

• Blockchain nodes provider GetBlock adds BNB Chain support.
• DeFi platform Bondly secures funding from the $100M BNB Chain Accelerator Fund. Decentralized, blockchain-agnostic layer 2 solution AllianceBlock also secures funding as a part of the program.
• The 1st BNB Chain Grant is finished, and 108 projects share over $780,000 in funding.
• Polkastarter announces its first BNB Chain-exclusive IDO for Refinable NFT marketplace.
• Venus, a decentralised lending protocol, hits $10B TVL.

May 2021

• BNB Chain daily transactions exceeds 10 million for the first time.
• MVB II, “The Big Bang of NFTs”, officially launches.
• MOBOX launches its first NFT game, ‘Momo token master’.
• DeFiDollar secures investment under the $100m accelerator fund.
• NFTb, a popular NFT marketplace, secures investment under the $100M accelerator fund.
• CipherTrace adds analytics support for BNB Chain to fight illicit activities and legitimize BNB Chain for more partnership opportunities.
• Host Southeast Asia and Vietnam Hackathon.
• Metamask adds built-in PancakeSwap’s swap feature, enabling users to access BNB Chain tokens seamlessly. (Based on BscScan and Etherscan data, Metamask Swap Router contract on BNB Chain received more than 10 million calls in 2021, 3x that of Ethereum).

June 2021

• A leading blockchain service provider Chainstack launches fast and resilient infrastructure for BNB Chain.
• BNB Chain announces the Martians Program to create a community of volunteers willing to grow and improve the BNB Chain ecosystem.
• The first edition of BNB Chain Learn & Earn is announced with over $25,000 and NFTs in prizes.
• Tranchess, a tokenized asset management & derivatives trading protocol, goes live on BNB Chain.
• BNB Chain organized a series of “Security First in DeFi” sessions to educate ecosystem developers and general users with industry leaders.
• NFTs are trending on BNB Chain. BakerySwap leads the NFT marketplace landscape in BNB Chain with over 500,000 NFT transactions. Maye Musk NFTs and Mystery box goes live on BNB Chain.

July 2021

• The MVB II program concludes with 10 project winners. MVB II projects delivered 500K+ active addresses and $16 billion in trading volume from May to July.
• Binance.com announces the BNB Chain Project of the Year awards for projects in 6 different categories.
• BNB Pioneer Burn Program review for Q2 2021 is published.
• BNB Chain community announces Priority One, a $10 million joint bounty program aiming to bolster the security of 100 BNB Chain projects.
• MyEtherWallet announced support of BNB Chain network.
• A report by Ethereum World News reports that BNB Chain was the most used blockchain in Q2.
• GameFi trend starts to heat up, boosted by Play-to-Earn phenomenon. Number of daily transactions on BNB Chain nears previous ATH in May due to increased game activities.

August 2021

• BNB Chain Ecosystem Annual Report published. The network recorded 90 million unique wallet addresses since its launch one year ago.
• The MVB and MVBII Incubation Program are officially announced. MVB Incubation Program aims to provide projects participating in MVB with access to industry-leading mentors and opinion leaders.
• Ledger enables users to manage and transact BNB and BEP20 tokens directly via Ledger Live and Ledger hardware wallets.
• Deri Protocol launches the first permissionless derivatives market on BNB Chain.
• Tranchess TVL surpasses $1 billion.

September 2021

• Monthly Stars for August are announced and MVB Mentor Committee is introduced.
• Decentral Games receives investment from BNB Chain’s Accelerator Fund (now $1B Fund).
• Belt Finance pays a $1 million bug bounty under Immunefi and BNB Chain’s Priority One program.
• BiSwap surpasses 1 billion total transactions, jumps to top 5 DEX on BNB Chain.
• MCDEX goes live on BNB Chain, adding more derivatives choices on the network.
• PowerPool, the first BNB Chain DeFiIndex, goes live on BNB Chain.
• BNB Chain Security and Risk Control WhitePaper is published
• BNB Chain celebrates its 1st anniversary “Beyond the Big Bang” through 1 virtual conference and 2 metaverse venues hosted by Secondlive and Division Network.  6 different BNB Chain Awards are awarded to 32 projects.

October 2021

• BNB Chain announces the biggest crypto fund ever, with $1 billion from Binance.com to bring the next 1 billion people to crypto.  MCDEX and Deri are one of the first to receive investments under this fund.
• BNB Chain Surpasses 100 million unique addresses.
• BNB Chain joins Gitcoin DeFi & Cross-chain Hackathon.
• GameFi Hackathon for Central & Eastern Europe starts.
• BNB Chain Core team proposes BEP-95 with a real-time BNB burn mechanism that destroys BNB with every BNB Chain transaction.
• Gamefi trend continues. MOBOX rises to #2 dapp spots based on number of users, Radio Caca launches a Metamon game, and AlienWorlds goes live on BNB Chain.
• Binance.com introduces LAZIO Fan Token, starting a series of launches of Fan Tokens that run on BNB Chain.
• Monthly Stars for September are announced.

November 2021

• BitTorrent and Tron integrate BNB Chain into its cross-chain scaling solution.
• BNB Chain Testnet undergoes hardfork to undergo an upgrade to Bruno release.
• BNB Chain $1B Fund invests in Project Galaxy to empower on-chain credentials for Web3, and in Deri Protocol to further expand derivatives services on BNB Chain.
• Crust Network and BNB Chain partners to introduce decentralized storage solutions.
• MVB III introduces the Voting Committee and successfully selects the top 10 players.
• WooTrade and Decentral Games receive a liquidity boost from the $100M Incentive.
• Revolutionary BNB Chain v1.1.5 upgrade called Bruno, with BEP95 real-time burn mechanism, deploys on BNB Chain Mainnet.
• Coverage of metaverse projects on BNB Chain increases, and Division Network’s metaverse known as ‘Division World’ goes live.
• ThetanArena, a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game, starts its first battle on BNB Chain.

December 2021

• The US-based exchange Binance.us enables BEP20 withdrawals and deposits.
• BNB Chain and Animoca Brands announce $200M Investment Program for blockchain games.
• Chainlink Keepers launch on BNB Chain Mainnet.
• Ankr implements the Erigon client to BNB Chain Mainnet.
• Crypto Gaming United (Game Guild Protocol) secures investment from BNB Chain’s $1B Fund Multichain (previously Anyswap) and BNB Chain announces long term strategic partnership to advance interoperability in blockchain ecosystems.
• cBridge from Celer Network reaches TVL of $100M and receives a liquidity boost from the BNB Chain $100M Liquidity Incentive Program.
• BiSwap enters the $1 billion TVL club.
• “Sustainable GameFi: To Play or To Earn? “ is published.
• BNB Chain ends the stellar year with an annual total of 2.14 billion transactions, 123 million new unique wallet addresses, 1150 projects and over $17 billion DeFi TVL on the network.

Follow us to stay updated on everything BNB Chain!

Website | Twitter | Telegram | Youtube | Gitcoin | Discord