Just now, BNB completed its 32nd quarterly burn in history, sending over $1 billion worth of BNB to the burn address.

Only 24 hours ago, the xStocks tokenized stock announced its launch on the BNB Chain, with Kraken supporting deposits and withdrawals on this network. This means that tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs such as AAPLx, TSLAx, SPYx, NVDAx will be able to achieve 24/7 seamless trading and settlement on the BNB Chain in the coming weeks, leveraging the chain's high performance and low fees.

This is not the first time BNB Chain has participated in this wave of crypto stock frenzy, as BNB, as the ecosystem's native token, has expanded into more use cases. Last night, YZi Labs (formerly Binance Labs) officially announced its support for 10X Capital to drive the development of the BNB Treasury Company, aiming to create a publicly traded company that allows U.S. investors to access BNB's development. In June, Nano Labs Ltd announced the initiation of a crypto reserve strategy, with the initial phase involving the gradual purchase of $1 billion worth of BNB to hold 5% to 10% of the total circulating supply of BNB in the long term, with the first batch of purchases already completed.

In just 200 days, BNB Chain has experienced its most vibrant six months since the DeFi summer of 2020.

Why BNB Chain?

As the world's fourth-largest cryptocurrency (excluding stablecoins), BNB currently has a market cap of nearly $95 billion. It was once more commonly known as "Binance's platform coin," but it has now become a direct representation of the value of the BNB Chain ecosystem. The consecutive bets of listed companies and institutional investors are a multiple endorsement of its ecosystem's extension capability and on-chain incremental sustainability.

This is also the writer's impetus for writing this article. The BNB Chain is experiencing a moment when the "in-crypto flow" and "outside capital" are parallel: on the one hand, it is taking on the massive flow of Binance Alpha; on the other hand, it is also attracting liquidity from traditional institutional funds outside the crypto circle. The intersection of these two paths constitutes the most dynamic narrative core of the current BNB Chain ecosystem.

Binance Alpha Ignites an On-chain Summer

Over the past half-year, Binance Alpha has become the largest liquidity pool in the crypto circle. On the Alpha page, users can participate in early projects' IDOs by completing tasks, staking BNB, and more, with the opportunity to qualify for token lotteries before the project goes public, and the monthly returns that retail investors can earn from it have far exceeded the average white-collar salary.

However, Alpha is not a standalone product. Behind it is the interconnected on-chain operation scene of the entire BNB Chain: Alpha not only provides tasks and lottery opportunities but also serves as a traffic entrance guiding users to explore deep into the BNB Chain on-chain.

Users have shifted from passive "coin holding, fee deduction" to "on-chain natives" — learning to use various on-chain ecosystems such as Binance Wallet, Pancakeswap, etc., for swapping, LP, lending, even meme trading, and contract deployment, becoming true "BNB Chain natives." This shift in user behavior is a key driver of BNB's growth in this cycle.

From the data perspective, from Binance Alpha's launch until July 1, 2025, the platform has already listed over 200 projects, with an average TGE circulating market cap ranging between $20 million and $50 million, covering various hot tracks like AI, Meme, Layer2, RWA, ZK, GameFi, etc. More than half of these projects are from the BNB Chain.

Among these 120 BNB Chain projects, Meme projects account for the highest proportion, with a total of 41, representing 34.17%; AI concept projects follow closely with 28 projects, representing 23.33%. The combined total of these two categories exceeds half of the total, indicating that Alpha users prefer an "high-concept, easy-to-narrate" investment style, reflecting BNB Chain's capacity in "topic-driven applications."

This also aligns with BNB Chain's current narrative strategy: intra-circle Meme/AI, DeFi infrastructure, and extra-circle RWA progress.

The Rise of Whole-Chain Metrics and BNB Chain's Dominant Position

Since the beginning of the year, BNB Chain has not only seen the explosion of core projects such as Pancake, Lista, Four.meme, and Aster at the protocol level but also witnessed a simultaneous surge in the whole-network basic metrics — DeFi Total Value Locked (TVL), DEX daily trading volume, daily active addresses (DAU), and daily average transactions have continuously broken historical records.

The evolution of each public chain's share in weekly DEX trading volume, where the dark blue area represents BNB Chain.

From this stacked area chart, we can see that BNB Chain has transformed from a "steady follower" to the public chain with the largest trading volume in the past year.

Around July 2024, Ethereum (light purple) and Arbitrum (pink) had long held over 70% of the market share, while BNB Chain (deep blue) hovered in the 20%-30% range. By the end of 2024, thanks to PancakeSwap's low fee advantage and the launch of the first batch of Binance Alpha projects, BNB Chain temporarily pushed its share to nearly 30%, narrowing the gap with the top chains.

Another "tipping point" occurred in April 2025. The centralized launch of Binance Alpha projects rapidly unleashed a massive amount of traffic. Within a few weeks, BNB Chain's weekly DEX market share surged to over 50%, squeezing Ethereum and other Layer2 solutions significantly — the trading share of the two major chains fell below that of BNB Chain, establishing an inverted scenario as the new norm.

By the end of June, BNB Chain's share had further risen to around 80%, marking its absolute dominance in the on-chain spot trading market. Other chains (such as Polygon, Fantom, Avalanche C) collectively lingered at around 5%, highlighting the "encirclement" posture of BNB Chain.

Looking at a 60-day short-term perspective provides a more intuitive view of the recent growth rate. At the end of April, the daily average active addresses fluctuated between 1.1-1.2 million. By mid-May, this number rapidly climbed to around 1.8 million and saw a breakthrough peak in early June, with daily active addresses reaching a peak of 3.3 million. Correspondingly, the number of transactions during the same period rose sharply from around 5 million to over 15 million, approaching a peak of nearly 17 million transactions per day. Subsequently, despite some retracement in activity and transaction volume, the overall figures have remained high, at around 2 million daily actives and 12-15 million daily transactions.

Zooming out to a monthly scale, the contrast between the "new vs. old" during this period further highlights BNB Chain's growth trajectory. The gray bars represent historical monthly peak active addresses, while the gold bars represent new records since 2024. It can be seen that starting from June 2024, the new gold bars have consistently surpassed the old gray bars, with monthly active addresses soaring from the previous 6-8 million to nearly 16-18 million, reaching over 22 million by June this year. Correspondingly, monthly transaction volumes: there was a brief peak of around 250 million at the end of 2021, but in mid-2025, records have been continuously broken, with monthly transaction volumes soaring to over 420 million transactions, establishing a new all-time high. This trend not only reflects high-frequency bursts on a daily and weekly basis but also reveals the continuous amplification of the long-term user base and on-chain interactions.

Looking at BNB Chain from a longer time perspective: rapid growth in the second half of 2021, slow upward trend and steady climbing from the second half of 2022 to 2024, and in 2025, with the explosive growth of core protocols such as PancakeSwap, Aster, Four.meme, BNB Chain's TVL, BNB Chain DEX trading volume, BNB market cap, and trading volume all saw rapid increases, setting new records.

According to DefiLlama data, BNB Chain's daily Active Addresses reached 2.38 million, far surpassing the third-place Arbitrum's 280,000. Over the past 180 days, active addresses have steadily increased, staying above 2 million every day, soaring to over 3 million at times.

Looking at DeFi Total Value Locked (TVL), BNB Chain has reached a protocol-level asset size of approximately $10 billion, ranking third, far ahead of Polygon ($1.072 billion) and Avalanche C ($1.525 billion). If we add the Cross-chain Bridged TVL of $15.448 billion, we can more intuitively feel BNB Chain's position as a "traffic hub": a large amount of assets flow in through bridging, then undergo secondary activation in the on-chain lending, trading, and derivatives markets.

BNB Chain has also shown strong growth momentum in the stablecoin trading field. According to Allium data showing the evolution of each public chain's relative share in "average monthly active stablecoin wallet addresses," in July 2025, BNB Chain (yellow) has become the public chain with the highest share of wallet addresses at 36.7%, followed by Tron (red, 21.7%), Polygon (purple, 10.7%), Celo (yellow spot, 7.3%), and Solana (pinkish purple, 6.7%), while the once dominant Ethereum (blue fork) now only accounts for 5.4%.

Meanwhile, the "Stablecoin Transaction Share" chart from official Dune data on the BNB Chain also corroborated its high-frequency usage characteristic: BSC's stablecoin transaction volume has ranked first in the entire network in the past few months. Within the ecosystem, in the past week, the stablecoin transaction volume on BSC has risen to a range of 60%–74%.

On the user activity and on-chain interaction front, BNB Chain has also delivered an impressive performance: the Daily Active Addresses (DAU) have reached 2,090,040, meaning that over 2 million unique addresses initiate transactions or contract calls every day, maintaining a high level of on-chain participation. The Weekly Active Addresses (WAU) stand at 10,526,223, equivalent to over 10 million different addresses revisiting at least once a week, showcasing industry-leading user stickiness and revisit rates. The Monthly Active Addresses (MAU) have soared to 27,798,916, nearly 27.8 million, indicating that almost one-third of active crypto users operate on the BNB Chain every month.

This level of activity is also directly reflected in the transaction volume: within 24 hours, the total chain transactions reach 11,806,204 times, averaging around 136 transactions per second; over the past 7 days, the cumulative transaction volume is 91,391,742 times, with over 130,000 transactions on average per day; over the past 30 days, the total sum is as high as 429,656,186 times, equivalent to an average of 14.3 million transactions per day.

The Explosive Growth of Multi-Core Ecosystem in the Alpha Wave

Pancake in a Distant Lead

In the first half of 2025, PancakeSwap once again completed a self-transformation—from the "default DEX" on the BNB Chain to a multi-chain trading hub, also becoming the preferred platform for Alpha projects to launch. Driven by Alpha traffic, the Meme project craze, and the multi-chain layout, Pancake's trading volume, market share, user base, and protocol revenue have all experienced explosive growth, making it the most core growth engine of the BNB Chain.

Over the past 7 days, in terms of total DEX market share, PancakeSwap accounts for 74.6%, holding close to three-quarters of the market. Uniswap comes in second at 17.1%, with other DEXs such as Aerodrome, Fluid, and Curve combining for less than 10% of the share. This landscape has established a formidable competitive barrier for Pancake.

Looking at the 7-day trading volume and 24-hour trading volume. Over the past 7 days, PancakeSwap has seen a total trading volume of a staggering $773.5 billion, with daily trading volume remaining at the $100 billion level.

In addition to its absolute lead in trading volume, PancakeSwap's performance on the revenue side is also remarkable. According to the latest Protocol Revenue rankings, its 24-hour fee revenue has reached $3.46 million, with a 30-day total of $660 million, second only to stablecoin players Tether (with a 24-hour revenue of around $20.14 million) and Circle ($6.41 million). This achievement not only reflects users' high approval of the low 0.01% fee rate but also demonstrates PancakeSwap's strong ability to convert trading volume into continuous cash flow. In comparison, emerging protocols like Hyperliquid, Axiom, Pump, while actively capturing market share, still lag significantly behind Pancake in terms of both cross-chain coverage (Pancake already supports 9 mainstream chains) and revenue scale.

This revenue position further cements PancakeSwap's crucial role as the "lifeblood" of the BNB Chain, bringing in pool liquidity and creating substantial economic incentives for on-chain ecosystem participants and liquidity providers.

Pancake's leap is not accidental. In Dune Analytics' data, PancakeSwap's current growth has shown a significant two-phase burst:

The first phase was in February and March, in coordination with a wave of new projects launching on Binance Smart Chain. Pancake became the default DEX for these new projects, leading to a rapid influx of users and a simultaneous surge in liquidity and trading activity;

The second phase will take place in June. Pancake also officially launched the Crosschain Swaps feature, supporting seamless cross-chain transitions across Arbitrum, Base, and BNB Chain, allowing users to swap tokens across chains with a single click. On July 1, 2025, the official announcement was made that Pancake v3 would be integrated with Solana, where LPs can enjoy up to an 84% fee split, and traders can trade Solana native assets with fees as low as 0.01%, further boosting retention and activity.

Today's Pancake is no longer just a "Uniswap copycat" but has transformed into a DEX network with a complete traffic loop and strong on-chain aggregation capabilities.

Lista, the Second DeFi Growth Hub

The lending track, driven by mining rewards and leverage demand, has become the second growth hub of DeFi. Just 40 days after its launch in April 2024, Lista Lending's TVL surged to $780 million, quickly becoming the second-largest lending market on the BNB Chain, second only to the Aave family.

Subsequently, with the continuous launch of innovative features such as slisBNB collateralization and dynamic interest rate algorithms, Lista's locked-in value surpassed $1.1 billion in early June, achieving a staggering nearly 900% growth since the beginning of the year.

According to DefiLlama data, Lista Lending's current locked assets have exceeded $1.2 billion, with a total borrowing volume of over $630 million; the protocol's daily income has stabilized at hundreds of thousands of dollars, with a total income of nearly $380,000 in the past 30 days, demonstrating its ability to efficiently convert lending interest into a continuous cash flow.

Additionally, Lista adopts a decentralized P2P model, breaking the limitations of traditional liquidity pools, supporting various collaterals such as slisBNB and lisUSD, depositing these assets into various lending pools to earn interest, forming a financial loop of "collateralization → borrowing → re-collateralization."

Currently, Lista has integrated 10 core lending pools, with an average annual percentage yield of about 5.66%, covering mainstream assets such as BNB, USDT, USDC, and has introduced features like automatic liquidation for slisBNB and decentralized stablecoin functionality for lisUSD, meeting the demand for stable returns and providing ample ammunition for leveraged trading.

In terms of ecological collaboration, Lista DAO has also formed a strategic partnership with World Liberty Financial (WLFI)’s USD1 stablecoin, allowing users to mint USD1 using slisBNB or lisUSD and reintroduce it into the lending market, further strengthening the protocol's internal fund circulation and value capture.

With the three major advantages of "native on-chain," "multi-collateral," and "high capital efficiency," Lista has made significant contributions to institutional arbitrage, DeFi yields, and asset management on the BNB Chain, accelerating the thriving development of the BNB Chain lending track.

From CZ's "Four" Meme to Four.meme

During this era where meme coins and MEME coins are prominent, Four.meme is also one of the most important growth points for revitalizing the BNB Chain.

As can be seen from the image above, Four.meme's unique user count has surpassed 1.08 million, generating over 250,000 unique tokens, with 4,021 successfully integrated with PancakeSwap to form primary liquidity. The TVL has reached 2,654 BNB, with a cumulative trading volume of as high as 1,622,980 BNB; at the same time, 86,035 creators have left their mark here—such a large base of creation and transactions is sufficient to demonstrate the explosive potential of the Meme track in the BNB Chain ecosystem.

The success of Four.meme is inseparable from making the entire coin issuance process low-threshold, enabling anyone to create new tokens on the platform, initiate votes, and launch liquidity; it is also deeply tied to the profound connection between the BNB Chain and CZ's "hand gesture 4" culture. As early as the beginning of 2023, CZ adopted "hand gesture 4" as a symbol of social media consensus, laying the innate thematic genes for Four.meme.

In the MEME frenzy of the BNB Chain, from the explosive launch of TST to the "CZ Pet Dog Namesake Coin" naming contest, and to the short-lived surge of the "MUBARAK" Middle East Blessing Coin, every social media hotspot could be rapidly translated into on-chain transactions on the platform.

On the market cap and 24-hour trading volume leaderboard, "B" ($405 million), Banana For Scale ($137 million), Conscious Token ($121 million) are leading the pack, while projects like GridiumAI, EGL1, and Caila have seen daily trading volumes surpassing 2–3 billion dollars. With a series of event-driven marketing campaigns and a very low barrier to entry, Four.meme has become the most dynamic Meme track platform on the BNB Chain.

Aster: The Perpetual Contract New King Second Only to Hyperliquid

In the decentralized derivatives field, the Perp DEX track has remained hot due to its high leverage, deep liquidity, and 24/7 trading features. Hyperliquid, which has long dominated the scene, once held the top spot with over $60.4 billion in 24-hour trading volume ($2,186 billion in 30 days); just as it faced controversy due to a significant liquidation event by JELLYJELLY leading to a decline in listing effects and TVL, and encountered a situation where it was blocked by all sides, the Perp DEX became a beachhead coveted by various forces, providing an opportunity for newcomers like Aster to break through, which also aligns with BNB's strategic layout to compete for on-chain liquidity.

Aster's growth began at this point.

Initially, Aster, formerly known as "Astherus," focused on liquidity wrapping for PoS assets; until its merger with the APX Protocol on March 31, 2024, Aster transformed into a multi-chain DEX focusing on the perpetual contract market.

With a fee design friendly to high-frequency traders (Maker 0.01%, Taker 0.035%)—Aster quickly garnered attention from a large number of quant teams and arbitrageurs upon its launch. At the same time, it consistently prioritized listing top projects from Binance Alpha, including perpetual pools for MUBARAK, BANANAS31, and the popular Solana meme coin "RFC," creating user stickiness.

Following a brand upgrade and product reshaping, Aster's series of actions have already hinted at the precursor to a TGE (Token Generation Event). Whether in 24-hour trading volume or 30-day trading volume, Aster is second only to Hyperliquid, ranking second on the entire network's Perp DEX, with a 24-hour trading volume of $4.5 billion and a 30-day trading volume of $341.7 billion.

Of note, in multiple public interactions with CZ, discussions on when it will be listed on Binance have seen a surge in enthusiasm on social platforms. Various signs indicate that Aster is not only the new favorite in the BNB Chain perpetual market but is also becoming another ace in the battle for on-chain liquidity in the BNB ecosystem.

Looking back at the two main threads at the beginning of the article—in the circle, the BNB Chain has formed a positive cycle of users and assets; on the outside, major institutions are turning their tens of billions of dollars in strategic bets into on-chain reserves and capital thickening.

The data has already proven that BNB has not only completed its role evolution from a "platform coin endorsement" to an "ecosystem value carrier" but has also achieved absolute dominance in a multi-chain layout.

Furthermore, the Maxwell upgrade has brought about new breakthroughs, serving as the BNB Chain's third core network upgrade this year. The block time has been reduced from 1.5 seconds to 0.75 seconds once again, enabling faster on-chain responses.

This series of continuous upgrades has a clear goal—to continuously advance the high-performance public chain infrastructure. This not only elevates network throughput and response speed by an order of magnitude but also provides a solid underlying support for DeFi applications, NFT-linked games, and high-frequency scenarios such as the upcoming xStocks tokenization of US stocks. The performance leap brings in more developers, validators, and institutional-level users, laying a deeper technical and traffic cornerstone for the next growth cycle.

In the past 200 days of this year, BNB Chain has delivered its performance. What are the highlights of the second half of the year for the BNB ecosystem? Can Binance Alpha continue to "add fuel to the fire"? What major initiatives are planned for BNB Chain? Will more institutions consider adding BNB to their core reserve assets? Facing the rapid development of Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, and Arbitrum, how will BNB Chain accelerate the landing and deep cooperation with high-quality projects to explore new possibilities? Let's wait and see together.

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