In one sentence
BNB Chain is the public blockchain launched by Binance. It took Ethereum’s toolkit wholesale (the same virtual machine, the same contract languages, the same wallets) and handed block production to a few dozen validators. Fewer participants agree faster, so blocks come quickly and fees stay low.
AGT, the subject of our issue 001, is deployed on this chain. When people say “BSC”, “Binance chain” or “BNB Smart Chain”, they almost always mean this one.
Where it came from
In April 2019 Binance launched Binance Chain. It was built mainly for on-chain order matching and could not run general-purpose smart contracts.
In September 2020 Binance launched Binance Smart Chain (BSC). It was forked from Ethereum’s Go client, so contracts written for Ethereum could be deployed almost unchanged, and wallets such as MetaMask only needed a new network added. DeFi was booming that year and Ethereum fees had reached tens of dollars per transaction, so projects and users flooded to BSC.
In 2022 the two chains were renamed together as BNB Chain. In 2024 the “BC Fusion” migration finished: the old Binance Chain (later called Beacon Chain) was shut down and staking and governance moved onto BSC. Today “BNB Chain” essentially means BSC. There is also a Layer 2 (opBNB) and a storage network (Greenfield) alongside it, which this guide does not cover.
Who produces blocks: PoSA
BNB Chain’s consensus is called PoSA, “staking plus authority”.
- Staking: to become a validator you first stake BNB; ordinary holders can delegate BNB to a validator and share its rewards. The more stake behind a validator, the more likely it is to be picked for the active set.
- Authority: the selected validators produce blocks in a fixed rotation. There is no hash-power race and no vote among thousands of nodes.
The system contract currently lists 45 validators, a subset of which take turns producing blocks in each round. Since 2023 the chain has “fast finality”: validators vote on new blocks, and usually after two blocks a transaction can no longer be rolled back.
We measure block time directly from a node: the last 10,000 blocks averaged one every 450 ms. At launch in 2020 it was 3 seconds; several hard forks since 2025 have pushed it steadily lower.
- 01Signed and sent
The wallet signs with its private key and sends the transaction to any node. Fees are paid in BNB.
Instant - 02Into the mempool
Nodes relay the transaction to each other and it waits to be included. Higher fees go first.
- 03Rotating validator packs it
The validator whose turn it is puts the transaction into a new block.
About 450 ms per block - 04Other validators vote
Validators sign votes on the new block, confirming it is valid.
- 05Finalised
Once enough votes are in, the transaction can no longer be rolled back.
Usually two blocks later
Times combine this page's measurements with a rough description of the official mechanism; they are slower when the network is congested.
What BNB does on this chain
Everything on the chain costs a fee (gas), paid in BNB. BNB is also used for staking, voting for validators and governance.
BNB has two burn mechanisms:
- Real-time burn: part of every block’s fees is burned immediately (BEP-95).
- Quarterly burn: each quarter a formula-based amount of BNB is burned (Auto-Burn), aiming to cut total supply from the original 200 million to 100 million.
About 133.16M BNB are in circulation, a market cap of $97.16B.
What is on-chain today
- USDT 70% $9.18B
- USDC 12% $1.59B
- Other 18% $2.33B
Sources: CoinGecko (market cap, supply), DefiLlama (TVL, stablecoins, DEX volume, fees, protocols), measurements from public nodes (block time, validators).
Things worth noticing:
- DEXs are the busiest activity. PancakeSwap is the largest decentralised exchange on the chain; 24-hour DEX volume is $900.5M.
- Stablecoins are mostly USDT. Stablecoins on the chain total $13.1B, of which USDT is about 70%.
- Launching a token is almost free. Since 2024 launchpads such as four.meme let anyone create a token in minutes, and large numbers of new tokens launch and go to zero every day. That is the part of the chain this site watches most closely.
Strengths and trade-offs
- Fast and cheap: blocks in under a second, and a simple transfer usually costs less than a cent.
- Fully compatible with Ethereum tooling: contracts, wallets and development frameworks work as they are.
- Backed by Binance: lots of users, easy movement of funds to and from the exchange, and new projects find traffic easily.
- Only a few dozen validators produce blocks, mostly run by large institutions; compared with Ethereum's hundreds of thousands of validators, it is far less decentralised.
- Launching tokens is too easy, so scams and controlled-supply projects are common; many tokens on the chain were minted by a deployer who then split the supply across its own wallets.
- The chain is closely tied to Binance, so the exchange's business and regulatory risks carry over to it.
- 01
Is the contract source verified on BscScan? With unverified code you cannot see whether there is a back door.
- 02
Is owner access still live: can it mint, change the tax, blacklist addresses or pause trading? If the permissions were not renounced, check who holds them.
- 03
Are the liquidity pool's LP tokens locked or burned? If not, the team can pull the pool at any time.
- 04
Where did the top ten holders' tokens come from? If they were all sent directly by the deployer or the same distribution wallet, treat them as one entity controlling the supply (see issue 001, AGT).
- 05
When the price jumps, compare perpetual volume with net on-chain spot buying. If they differ by hundreds of times, the price is most likely being driven by the derivatives market.
Data and sources
- Live figures: CoinGecko, DefiLlama and BNB Chain public nodes (measured block time, the ValidatorSet system contract). Numbers refresh with the page data; hover to see the cut-off time.
- Mechanisms are based on the official BNB Chain documentation and BEP proposals (BEP-95 fee burn, BEP-126 fast finality and others).
- This guide is educational and is not investment advice.
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