‘We Need to Be Faster and Cheaper’: BNB Chain’s Zoe Wei on Scaling Plans

• BNB Chain is one of the most active blockchains in the industry.
• BNB Chain’s Director of Ecosystem Growth, Zoe Wei, told DailyCoin that BNB Chain is looking at optimistic and zero-knowledge rollups as scaling solutions.
• She also revealed the window for opBNB’s launch.

Binance, the largest centralized cryptocurrency exchange in the world, has a plethora of different products and services aimed at different user groups.

One of its most used products is BNB Chain, one of the most used blockchains in the industry. In April, there were, on average, over one million daily active users using BNB Chain for various things, including transacting, swapping, gaming, and other activities.

However, the minds behind BNB Chain say that a million daily active users are not enough. And to increase the number exponentially, BNB needs to make transacting on the blockchain cheaper and faster.

BNB Chain Scaling Solutions

Despite being one of the most consistently used blockchains in the world, BNB Chain isn’t stopping. The development team behind the project is working towards making the blockchain even more accessible than it currently is.

Speaking to DailyCoin’s Sections Editor Stefan Trapp at Next Block Expo in Warsaw, Poland, Zoe Wei, Director of Ecosystem Growth at BNB Chain, said that Binance’s blockchain is actively developing Layer-2 scaling solutions.

According to Wei, not only are there cheaper blockchains, but Web2 systems are also still faster than BNB Chain and the majority of other alternative Layer-1s.

“The main reason we’re looking at various scaling solutions for BNB Chain is that we aren’t the cheapest blockchain out there. Also, we want to be much faster because web2 systems are still faster than us. So that’s why all L1s, including BNB Chain, need scaling solutions.”

Wei emphasized that BNB Chain mainly looks at optimistic and zero-knowledge-based rollups, just like the Ethereum community.

Optimistic and ZK-Rollups to Scale BNB Chain

BNB Chain has already made substantial progress toward developing its own scaling solutions.

One example Wei pointed to was zkBNB, a scaling tool built on a zero-knowledge architecture that bundles thousands of transactions and executes them off-chain before sending a proof to the underlying layer that the transactions were executed correctly. This drastically reduces transaction costs and increases throughput to thousands of transactions per second.

Wei highlighted that zkBNB is currently in testnet phase and is expected to launch on mainnet “very soon.”

“We launched zkBNB on testnet last year and have been testing it for some time. The expectation is that zkBNB will help specific ecosystem projects like GameFi scale tremendously. We’ll be launching zkBNB on mainnet very soon.”

BNB Chain has been looking into optimistic rollups as well. Together with the launch of EIP-4844 on Ethereum, also known as Protodanksharding, optimistic rollups like opBNB are expected to process more than 20,000 transactions per second, at least in theory.

Wei also revealed that opBNB will use the BNB token.

“opBNB will make sure our speed is even higher and the fees lower. Both of the scaling tools will use BNB as their currencies, which reflects our goal of promoting BNB across different BNB ecosystems to make sure our speed is even higher and the fees lower.”

Wei added that opBNB is set to be released in “Q3 of this year.”

Security at the Front

BNB Chain is one of the most actively used blockchains in the world, so the presence of scams and rug pulls is no surprise.

When Stefan asked how BNB Chain is tackling the tricky situation, Wei revealed that BNB Chain invests a lot in user security and highlighted AvengerDAO as an exemplary community-led initiative that helps tackle bad behavior.

“BNB Chain is an open platform and we can’t stop people from deploying their projects. However, to make sure to tackle rug pulls and scams on BNB Chain, we have a community-led security project called AvengerDAO. The project scans all suspicious transactions on BNB Chain and reminds users to be careful. We think this helps users to avoid projects that are likely to scam and only promote the good projects on BNB Chain.”

Stefan asked about BNB Chain’s landmark Planck upgrade, which went live in April. The upgrade incorporated security changes in BEP-171, including a timer lock on large cross-chain transactions.

According to Wei, Planck has made the “free flow assets across different chains” more secure.

“The Planck hard fork facilitates the free flow of assets between different chains and maximizes the utility of different assets securely. Cross-chain is where a lot of hacks happen, so it was super important to implement BEP-171 to make sure it’s as secure as possible.”

Wei added that the next security proposals always depend on the community’s wants. BEP-171 was also a “community-led proposal,” she said.

On the Flipside

• zkBNB had been planned for Q1 of 2023. However, the project is still in testnet. It’s unclear when zkBNB going is going to launch.

Why This Matters

Scaling BNB Chain to process thousands of transactions per second cheaply would open up many doors adoption-wise.

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