Don’t sleep on Binance Chain: it is the largest chain in terms of daily active addresses. In the final week of February, Binance unveiled their technical roadmap for 2023. Some of the areas of focus are a separate chain for data storage, increased transaction throughput and network decentralization. 

The proposed improvements will allow more potential users and use cases. Let’s look at the most important ones: 

• Decentralized storage network: BNB Chain launched Greenfield, a separate chain that functions as a decentralized storage network. Decentralized storage has become an emerging use case for the blockchain industry. A competing chain is Filecoin, for example. BNB Greenfield will be a separate proof-of-stake blockchain, but it will use the BNB token for staking, transactions, and governance. What also sets BNB’s Greenfield apart from competitors is that it’s integrated with BNB Chain and is EVM (Ethereum) compatible.
• Increased transaction throughput: BNB Chain plans to incorporate both optimistic rollups and ZK-rollups in its modular stack. Also in this case, BNB hops onto an industry trend, led among others by Polygon and it’s zkEVM. The native ZK-rollup for BNB Chain is zkBNB, will probably launch in the first half of 2023. With zkBNB, BNB can scale transaction throughput for application-specific needs. Think of NFT transactions, a popular use case among BNB users.
• Increased decentralization. BNB wants to further decentralize by increasing the number of validators from 29 to 100. This is still nowhere near the thousands of validators (node runners) for Bitcoin but it alleviates some of the concerns of BNB being a highly centralized blockchain.
• Consumer financial protections. BNB-based AvengerDAO started in September 2022 behind leading audit and crypto security firms to protect users from unforeseen financial losses. An example of a service made possible by AvengerDAO is Meter, which offers an API for users who want to engage with an unknown smart contract. This API tracks audits and other security review data to help users assure of the safety of their smart contract counterparty. 

Conclusion

The proposed BNB roadmap is in step with the current infrastructure trends within the crypto space, such as transaction throughput increase, outsourcing of storage, increased user-friendliness (in terms of better safety). It shows that, regardless of the recent American attack on its stablecoin BUSD, Binance uses this bearmarket for building. And that’s how it’s ought to be!