Cryptocurrency could be seeing a changing of the guard. The hottest game in town is Binance Smart Chain (BSC), and it’s challenging global blockchain giant Ethereum.
Binance Smart Chain—the new kid on the block—is proving itself to be an altogether leaner, cheaper and—well—smarter blockchain.
If BSC’s popularity continues to grow, the new trading platform has the potential to deliver a killer blow to Ethereum’s stranglehold on the crypto market.
How BSC was born
Binance Chain (BC) launched in April 2019. Via BC, users can issue and trade digital assets while keeping their cash firmly in their pocket.
Binance Chain aims to facilitate fast, easy trading at high volume, using its own unique token, BNB. With minimum fees, BC directly rivalled Bitcoin based on the specific ease of sending and receiving funds.
In April 2020, BC announced the creation of a smart contract blockchain designed to run parallel to its trading platform. Decentralised apps and various testnets followed, as BC demonstrated how its BNB staking worked.
Five months later, BSC was launched—complete with full BNB staking. Users can carry out quick trades on the blockchain, at low cost.
BSC was now poised to rival Ethereum by allowing users to engage in smart contracts more cheaply and efficiently.
The benefits of BSC
Just why is BSC so hot? It offers:
- Comprehensive digital asset ecosystem with millions of users.
- User-friendly Binance DEX exchange.
- High-powered network with matching high-frequency trading potential.
- Very low transaction fees, starting at one per cent.
- Increased decentralised finance (DeFi) interoperability.
- Many large crypto projects already in BSC collaboration.
BSC vying for Ethereum crown
Ethereum has been facing an uphill battle for some time. Fees started to trend up as network traffic caused congestion and slower transaction times. As ycharts shows, the average cost of Ethereum transactions soared in the first couple of months of 2021—from an average of $5 in 2020 to a peak of $15 in February.
By comparison, BSC users enjoy far quicker trading and lower fees. This is drawing increasing numbers of new and repeat users to the BSC platform. In fact, Coincodex reported in February that BSC had beaten Ethereum’s daily transaction volume by 30%.
It’s not just transaction fees impacting Ethereum. BSC is 100% compatible with Ethereum, meaning users can deploy their apps on top of BSC with virtually no fuss or changes required.
Whether this BSC surge will continue, who knows? Analysts are divided on whether this will be a short-term rally or a longer-term pattern.
Whatever, Ethereum will definitely not be going quietly. Developers are currently working on Ethereum 2.0—with reports that the new version may be able to process thousands of transactions per second.
More to come!
