On Friday (April 7), crypto exchange Binance announced that it will soon have an EVM-compatible “parallel blockchain” to the current Binance Chain; this new blockchain, which is called “Binance Smart Chain” will support smart contracts and Binance Coin (BNB) staking.

Binance already has a blockchain called “Binance Chain” that was launched last April. The community of developers who are building on Binance Chain is called the Binance Chain Development Community (BCDC).

Binance Chain’s native decentralized exchange (DEX), which is known as Binance DEX, has been deservedly popular due to the speed of its matching magine. 

However, since Binance Chain was launched, third-party developers have been asking Binance to add support for smart contracts. Binance was reluctant to add this support because it did not want to potentially slow down Binance Chain.

Well, earlier today, Binance announced that the BCDC has proposed the idea of building a new “high performance” blockchain called Binance Smart Chain that will run in parallel to the existing Binance Chain, but will also support smart contracts via support for the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).

The idea of this “dual-chain architecture” is that users/developers will build their decentralized apps (DApps) and digital assets on Binance Smart Chain, while being able to use Binance DEX, which is powered by Binance Chain, for trading of assets on both chains.

According to Binance, these are main advantages of Binance Smart Chain:

  • by being EVM-compatible, it will support “all of the existing Ethereum tooling along with faster and cheaper transactions”;
  • its interoperability with Binance Chain means that it will support “cross-chain communication and scaling of high-performance dApps that require fast and smooth user experience”; and
  • its on-chain governance (Proof of Staked Authority) is based on 21 validators, which means that it is sufficiently decentralized.

As for when Binance Smart Chain is going to be available, Binance Co-Founcer and CEO Changpeng Zhao (aka “CZ”) hopes that it will be out “soonish”:

 

Featured Image Courtesy of Binance