The Return of BNB Chain? - What You Need to Know
BNB Rejuvenation, CZ Return, & More
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Markets are slow right now, as new chains launch and memecoins bleed themselves dry. One chain that people might not have expected to see a rejuvenation is BNB Chain. $BNB by itself is a somewhat underrated asset. It can act as a major that has consistently outperformed Ethereum, mitigating downside by being relatively stable, while still marginally beating $BTC. We have consistently used $BNB in our Alea Market Pulse list as a way to maintain exposure to the crypto market while limiting downside.
$BNB as an asset has become somewhat separated from the BNB Chain. Last cycle, BNB Chain was one of the most active and popping chains on the market, likely considered the first chain excluding Ethereum mainnet to really get involved with DeFi. Since then, for regulatory reasons or else, the team has seemingly been less proactive in promoting the chain. It seems that this current status might change, however, with recent initiatives laid out by the team and CZ himself…
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Background on BNB Chain
BNB’s relevance has declined among crypto natives and DeFi power users, but it remains one of the most dominant chains today, perhaps somewhat comparable to Tron in terms of a chain that is widely used but rarely talked about by crypto twitter. BNB Chain paved the way for CEXs to launch and promote their own chain, with both Bybit and Coinbase having launched L2s in a similar vein.
Early on in BNB Chain’s lifecycle, users participated in various DeFi farms and financial games. This was back in 2021; a lot of this ‘hot money’ economy has since moved to other chains, most notably Solana over the course of this cycle.
Of course, CZ wound up in jail around a year ago. Mandated regulatory scrutiny was applied to Binance as an exchange; this may have spilled over to BNB Chain as well, or the team was at least cautious in how the chain was used and promoted. Recently, Binance Labs announced a rebrand to YZi Labs, with CZ back at the helm, in addition to his education venture, Giggle Academy.
On February 11th, it was also announced that the SEC had basically paused its Binance lawsuit. While this regulatory ceasefire lasts 60 days, the new Trump administration and a Heath Pierce-led SEC might just opt to drop it entirely.
The idea behind this pause is that changing regulations at the SEC might effectively solve this lawsuit by themselves, without such a case-specific motion being needed. Either way you look at it, this is positive for the state of crypto regulation, and definitely positive for Binance.
Shortly after this news came out, BNB Chain began announcing some new initiatives being undertaken in 2025. These include performance and developer experience upgrades, as well as more narrative-driven ecosystem support in the way of memecoins and AI.
Some of these initiatives, like gasless transactions and the BNB Chain smart wallet, are particularly suited for a retail audience coming from Binance, as opposed to power users and traders on Solana or Base. On the 2025 roadmap is the integration of AI agents for the automation of onchain transactions - this could be significant.
The reality is a lot of these things might not be necessary for BNB Chain to see a big resurgence - just being more proactive in its promotion and funneling users from Binance could go a long way. Base managed to capture a significant amount of volume and activity with a small team. Of course, adding new primitives and improving UX for developers and users will help.
If you’ll remember, BNB chain hasn’t been completely idle over the past couple of years. The team pushed out opBNB, Binance’s OP-stack chain, though the chain has not seen a massive amount of activity or inflows. While BNB hasn’t been a loud chain in terms of announcements or mindshare, it remains the 5th largest by TVL ($5.58B), just behind Tron. Notably, the chain has had the largest inflows this week in percentage terms.
New chains continue to launch, whether it be Story, Berachain, or MegaETH. But a new chain may not be needed at all, if existing ones can get back into gear under a new regulatory regime…
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