Binance’s BNB Chain Hits New Transaction Record of 32 Million Despite SEC Case
Key Takeaways
- BNB chain registered a record high of 32.7 million transactions in a single day.
- The surge in network activity occurred as the SEC prepares to up the ante in its legal battle against Binance.
- Could the blockchain’s success be coming untethered from the fate of its parent exchange?
Binance’s BNB chain is one of the most active blockchain networks by daily transaction count. Although it trails behind Solana (SOL) on most days, BNB competes with its nearest rivals Tron (TRX) and Polygon (MATIC).
Then there are days like Friday, December 8, when the blockchain registered 32.7 million transactions. Significantly, BNB recorded its all-time high transaction count despite ongoing challenges faced by Binance, which continues to battle a hostile US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Has BNB Stepped Out of Binance’s Shadow?
In the past, BNB-based decentralized applications (dApps) were bound by Binance’s massive influence over the price of BNB, which could dramatically influence the network’s overall capitalization.
When the SEC announced its lawsuit against Binance in June, a subsequent crash in the BNB market reverberated across the ecosystem, dragging down BEP-20 tokens like CAKE, PancakeSwap’s native exchange coin.
Recently, Binance’s $4 billion settlement with the Department of Justice (DoJ) has added a dramatic twist to its ongoing legal battle with the SEC.
The agency has started to incorporate evidence from the DoJ settlement into its case against Binance and former CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao.
As part of the agreement, the crypto exchange will be subjected to years of intense government scrutiny. Former SEC executive John Reed Stark described this as a “365-days-a-year financial colonoscopy”.
The fact that BNB chain’s transaction count has reached new heights despite all this points to the ecosystem’s growing resilience. But has the blockchain’s success become untethered from the fate of its parent exchange?
At the very least, dApp-users appear less worried by Binance’s regulatory malaise than they might once have been. In the past year, BNB has also moved to increase decentralization. It has done so adding more validators, although the network still has considerably fewer than most of its peers.
Over 5,000 dApps support BNB Growth
BNB chain as it exists today grew out of the merger of two separate blockchains in 2022. Combining the initial BNB ledger with the smart contract functionality of Binance Smart Chain (BSC), the new chain brought together two of Binance’s most popular products and helped promote the use of BNB coin beyond its function as the exchange’s in-house cryptocurrency.
Given this background, the association between Binance and BNB will probably never go away entirely. Nevertheless, both have sought to emphasize the blockchain’s independence.
Although it’s difficult to identify what sparked Friday’s record-high network activity, the BNB ecosystem is populated by a diverse array of applications spanning decentralized exchanges, Web3 games, NFT platforms and social networks.
According to DAppRadar , BNB chain hosts over 5,000 decentralized applications (dApps) – more than Ethereum or any other blockchain.
