Binance Smart Chain surpasses 1.5 billion lifetime transactions

Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume, tweeted on Oct. 26 that the cumulative number of transactions on its Binance Smart Chain (BNB) has surpassed 1.5 billion. The network achieved this milestone a mere 14 months after its launch on Aug. 31, 2020. 

According to BscScan, the daily number of transactions on the blockchain recently surged to over 10 million — just shy of its all-time high record of 13 million back on July 29. There also appear to be more than 108 million unique wallet addresses on BSC’s blockchain, compared to about 650,000 at the beginning of the year.

In recent months, the BSC network has become a viable Ethereum competitor in terms of both cost and efficiency. Based on data from YCharts.com, average gas prices and block times on the Ethereum network amount to $131.87 and 13.33 seconds, respectively. Meanwhile, it takes on only 3.02 seconds to mine a new block on the BSC, with users paying, on average, $6.64 in gas fees to execute smart contracts on the blockchain. However, BSC is far more centralized than the Ethereum network, with only 21 approved validators.

Changpeng Zhao — the now billionaire founder of Binance — has stated that he has ambitious plans to expand BSC. Earlier this month, he announced a $1 billion accelerator fund to advance BSC and the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Currently, the most popular decentralized application, or dApp, on BSC is PancakeSwap — a decentralized exchange, or DEX. According to CoinGecko, PancakeSwap has more than 2,436 altcoins available for trading.