BNB Chain is steadily gaining traction, with daily active users surging to 6 million in 2024. Key growth drivers include its dominance in Web3 gaming, advancements in AI applications, and strategic incentives like gas fee rebates and token rewards.
While historically, BNB Chain has often stayed in the shadows of Ethereum and Solana, Binance has consistently supported and iterated on it, regardless of circumstances. Although its team has generally been in a position of following trends rather than creating them, BNB Chain has managed to build a strong community around it and is gradually making steady progress in developing its ecosystem. This success is largely thanks to the power and influence of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, which continues to back and build it.
The market resurgence in 2024 has brought a significant influx of active users to the BNB Chain. While the daily active user count hovered around 1 million in 2023, it increased sixfold in 2024 and now averages around 6 million.
Interestingly, Solana boasts nearly the same number of daily active users. However, the activity levels of these users set the two projects apart. While 6 million users on BNB Chain conduct approximately 12 million transactions daily, the same number of users on Solana execute an astonishing 400 million transactions. The ongoing memecoin frenzy on Solana has significantly drawn liquidity away from other chains, including BNB Chain, making it challenging for competitors to counteract.
However, the crypto market extends far beyond memecoins; it encompasses a much broader spectrum. Over the years, the BNB Chain team has actively attracted Web3 gaming projects. This strategy has yielded tangible results, with opBNB, an L2 network built atop BNB Chain, emerging as the leading chain in the Web3 gaming space in 2024.
Notably, opBNB has even surpassed Ronin, the gaming-focused chain developed by the creators of Axie Infinity, with 898,000 daily unique active wallets engaged in Web3 gaming. Several popular games on opBNB boast hundreds of thousands of daily players.
Beyond gaming, BNB Chain has been actively exploring the AI sector, drawing blockchain AI developers, and fostering AI applications. The project already boasts a solid portfolio of AI dApps and numerous teams building AI-driven solutions.
Most recently, the team announced the launch of the AI Agent solution, a toolset designed to simplify the creation and deployment of decentralized AI agents on the BNB chain.
The project also incentivizes users and developers through various rewards such as BNB tokens and gas fee rebates. For instance, it is currently running a campaign offering zero gas fees on stablecoin transfers for $USDT, $USDC, and $FDUSD until March 31.
All these initiatives, coupled with potential new listings on Binance, attract both projects and users to the BNB Chain. This increased activity positively impacts the BNB price, as its burn dynamics are tied to chain usage.
At present, the BNB price is hovering near its all-time high, with a market cap of approximately $100 billion, making it the sixth-largest project in the crypto space. While the high BNB token market cap in previous years largely reflected its status as the native token of Binance Exchange, the development of the BNB Chain has now made the chain’s growth a much more significant driver of BNB’s price performance.
With time and further movement towards decentralization and DeFi, the importance of BNB Chain within the entire Binance ecosystem will likely grow even further.