Binance Smart Chain 2021 Year In Review Report

2021 - A stepping stone for new beginnings in the BSC ecosystem in 2022!

This is the BSC 2021 report from the Coin98 team's Year In Review series.

The year 2021 will be a turning point for the crypto market in general and the financial industry in particular, as both continuously experienced tremendous growth and attracted the attention of many investors around the world!

We believe that after reading this article, you will recall great memories of BSC from the previous year.

The report is a collection of significant events, milestones, and statistics. You will also have access to Coin98's research team's high-quality insights. The Coin98 team believes that this report will be a valuable resource for your crypto investment adventure in 2022.

To read the full BSC 2021 Report, download it here: c98.link/Binancians-BinanceSmartChain2021Reportv1

Looking back at Binance Smart Chain on 2021

How it began

In this part, we will look back to see how BSC started from January 2021. 

1. Ecosystem

• The development direction of focusing on building apps serving end-users remained up to the beginning of 2021. At this time, major DeFi protocols on BSC like Tranchess, Apeswap, Deri... had not appeared yet. 
• Binance Bridge, Binance P2P, Binance Cloud, and other essential infrastructure would be deployed in 2020, making it a foundation year for BSC. BSC was used in about 60 projects up till the beginning of 2021. The focus of these projects is on DeFi and infrastructure.

2. Statistics 

Some key metrics of BSC at the beginning of 2021:

• $1,000 million: BUSD’s market cap, ranked at 6th place compared to other stablecoins.
• $240 million: BSC’s TVL (Total Value Locked).
• 0.39 million: BSC’s daily transactions. 
• 60 projects using BSC.
• 600,000 unique BSC addresses.
• 3,000,000 BNB staked by BSC validators.
• 40 wallets offered on Binance Chain & BSC.
• 810,000 Binance Chain addresses.
• 154 tokens listed on Binance DEX.

The beginning of 2021 is a good time to buy BNB, which has grown by over 1,560% in 2021.

How it is growing 

1. Ecosystem

January - February 2021

• During this time, DeFi's cash flow was primarily in the Ethereum ecosystem. DeFi at BSC was still very empty.
• However, BSC has had a lot of smart strategies, including the Most Valuable Builder program and the Build Reward Program, with a total prize of up to a million dollars to attract developers from the BSC system.

March - June 2021

• DeFi in BSC developed very strongly, most notably in PancakeSwap. 
• By June 2021, the NFT trend was taking over of DeFi. Binance also announced that by the end of June 2021, Binance launched the NFT Marketplace.

June - September 2021

• GameFi trend of BSC was born, led by Axie Infinity in the Ethereum ecosystem.
• In less than a week, the BSC ecosystem has taken over with GameFi in the crypto market.

September - December 2021

• Binance launched a $1 billion BSC Growth Fund to increase global crypto users to 1 billion. This event was the primary catalyst for BSC's growth during this period.
• Until the end of October, Facebook officially rebranded as Meta, showing the focus on Metaverse. This event led to the growth of Metaverse projects in a short time.

2. Statistics

2021 by the Numbers

• 1,150+ dApps using BSC.
• 17,000,000+ BNB staked by BSC validators.
• 19,000+ BNB burned through on-chain BEP95 burn.
• 7,352,392 BNB burned in 2021 (down from 13,384,040 BNB in 2020).

• 125,000,000+ unique BSC addresses.
• 1,200,000+ daily active wallets.
• 6,500,000+ daily transactions.

• BSC has grown exponentially since 2021, and it now ranks second in the entire crypto industry. BSC's TVL ranked 3rd, behind Ethereum and Terra.

Key Milestones in 2021

January

• BSC released Patch v0.8.0-hf.2 for Binance Chain Mainnet.
• Orbs and Binance teamed up to launch a DeFi accelerator.
• Animoca Brands and BSC announced a strategic partnership wherein Animoca Brands will expand its innovative tokenization of gaming assets by using BSC as the preferred blockchain infrastructure for selected blockchain projects.
• Binance joined Seascape Network, a gaming platform designed around the NFT and DeFi economies, to take DeFi Gaming to the Next Level.
• Leading crypto asset management platform Cobo has announced the addition of BSC support for both Cobo Wallet and Cobo Custody.
• The BSC community introduced its vision and roadmap for the year.
• pNetwork released a BSC-Ethereum bridge, enabling major cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens to be tokenized and moved onto BSC.
• ChainIDE, WhiteMatrix's cloud-based Integrated Development Environment to support the development of smart contracts on BSC.

February

• DIA (Decentralised Information Asset) executed the integration into BSC, opening the path to bringing DIA’s open-source oracles to the efficiency-geared BSC.
• 1inch Dex aggregator bridged to BSC.
• BSC was the leading DeFi network in terms of volume and active users by this time: more than 108,000 Unique Active Addresses at the end of February on the BSC network, a 27% monthly increase. Compared to ETH 67,00 Unique Active Addresses, a 9% decline compared to January.
• BSC hit a milestone of 1 million wallet addresses.
• BSC processed over 1 million transactions within a day for the first time.
• Launched the Most Valuable Builder (MVB) program designed to find the best projects and fuel their growth and development, eventually attracting over 310 contracts.
• Alpaca Finance, the 1st leveraged yield farming protocol, went live on BSC.

March

• The Graph, an indexing protocol for querying networks like Ethereum and IPFS, supported BSC on its hosted service solution for querying blockchain data.
• The Gnosis Safe was the first project on BSC with a different and more secure approach for managing funds.
• DeFireX launched farming on Ethereum directly from BSC.
• Binance backed Tokocrypto, the first Indonesian Defi Project on BSC.
• Brave (BAT) explored multiple blockchains as a part of its Themis initiative and is now also available on BSC as wrapped BAT. BAT holders can use multiple bridges that connect Ethereum and BSC ecosystems to participate in the DeFi ecosystem on BSC.
• Soteria brought mutual insurance to BSC. This fully decentralized protocol covers losses caused by hacker attacks or smart contract vulnerabilities.

BSC has proven to be a competitive rival in the crypto market in just the first three months of the year. BSC focused on accelerating DeFi development. 

The ecosystem is becoming increasingly appealing to developers, with over 290 projects partnered and deployed on BSC.

April

• The Paid Network entered BSC with their products. They secured a portion of the $100 million Binance Accelerator fund for further development. 
• Juggernaut, an NFT DeFi protocol, secured an undisclosed amount of investment from the $100 million fund accelerator set up by Binance. 
• Belt Finance announced that their Total Value Locked (TVL) hit $1.2 billion with users' participation in a short period. Belt Finance v2 Launch, Increasing, and Innovating BSC Yields.
• The OddZ Finance BSC Bridge went live. Oddz Finance joined the extensive list of projects successfully bridged to the BSC network.
• Binance Bridge v3 went live. In addition to new pegged assets, one of the core improvements with Binance Bridge V3 was improved user experience.
• Chainlink VRF went live on BSC, bringing verifiable randomness to BSC Developers.

BSC experienced a tremendous expansion rate in April, with many projects integrated daily. BSC has occasionally surpassed Ethereum in terms of daily users and executed transactions, indicating that it attracted a large number of users and cash flows from other ecosystems.

May

• PancakeSwap announced the Beta Phase of their new Prediction market tool is now live.
• BSC daily transactions exceed 10 million for the first time.
• MOBOX launched its first NFT game, ‘Momo token master’.
• PancakeSwap was integrated into MetaMask’s built-in token swap feature, joining the likes of Uniswap, AirSwap, 0x API, 1inch.exchange, Paraswap, Totle, and dex.ag as a source of decentralized liquidity on the platform. 
• The yield farming protocol Alpaca Finance witnessed extraordinary growth with a surge in both users and transactions rocketing the TVL on the platform to beyond $2 billion. 
• The DeFi Protocol Lab, the innovative team behind DUSD and ibBTC, had secured an undisclosed amount of investment under the $100 million fund set up to boost the DeFi ecosystem on BSC.
• NFTb secured investment under the $100 million fund set-up to boost the BSC ecosystem.

June 

• Refinable, which describes itself as the “first major NFT marketplace on BSC” joined the Most Valuable Builder (MVB) II program hosted by Binance. 
• MVB II, “The Big Bang of NFTs”, officially launched.
• ApeSwaps, a decentralized exchange that allows investors to sell, buy or stake their crypto, crossed a $100 million market cap.
• After adding new BEP20 tokens, Coin98 provided a step-by-step guide on using their wallet on BSC.
• NFTs were trending on BSC. BakerySwap leads the NFT marketplace landscape in BSC with over 500,000 NFT transactions. Maye Musk NFTs and Mystery box went live on BSC.
• Binance Chain learn and earn offered $25,000 in rewards to users who want to learn DeFi.
• BSC selected 20 projects for Most Valuable Builder (MVB II) out of 400+ applicants in the second phase of MVB II: The Big Bang of NFTs.

Notably, BSC launched the MVB II program, "The Big Bang of NFTs". BSC gradually developed end-user applications and began to conquer the NFT market. NFTs should be seen as a second DEFI marketplace for unique and irreplaceable assets.

During Bitcoin's big drop on May 19, 2021, the TVL of BSC dropped from $40 billion to just $17 billion. This was also a slowdown of DeFi on BSC, which had been on the rise since the beginning of the year.

July

• A collaboration between PancakeSwap and Chainlink paid off, paying winners with PancakeSwap’s ‘provably fair’ V2 Lottery.
• 1inch Exchange launched a $3 million Ecosystem Development Fund to expand DeFi. A new program of investment aimed to accelerate growth and development, incentivizing developers to build on 1inch protocols.
• The leveraged yield farming protocol Alpaca Finance made a significant statement by integrating TUSD through a $20 million deal to increase the liquidity for its new pools.
• Rabbit Finance launched garden yield farming as TVL crosses $1 billion.
• Beefy Finance crossed 100,000 users as BIFI Token consolidated among catalysts.
• PancakeSwap offered $5 million in CAKE Prizes through relaunched "v2" lottery system.
• Bsc launched a $10 million Joint Bug Bounty fund.
• In July, BSC volume was mostly contributed by upcoming GamingFi projects such as CryptoBlades, MyDeFiPet, MOBOX, XworldGame, BunnyPark, and more. Interestingly, 6 out of the top 10 most contributing projects in the BSC ecosystem were also winners from the Most Valuable Builder Program II: Big bang of NFTs. 
• Tranchess fully launched, bringing what many claimed was a hugely rewarding financial model to the DeFi ecosystem.
• BUSD reached a $10 billion market cap milestone and entered the top 10 crypto rankings.

• InsurAce expanded DeFi protection by listing Mirror Protocol with a capacity of $8,000,000.
• Binance.US took the same path as Coinbase as its founder Changpeng Zhao ‘CZ’ said the U.S. based entity was eyeing an Initial Public Offering (IPO).
• Binance Labs announced strategic investments in NFKings, NFT Creatives, and Production Company.
• Binance Exchange completed a $400 million quarterly BNB token burn. Binance continued to burn BNB, successfully completing their 16th burning of BNB tokens to date.

August

• BSC announced Most Valuable Builder (MVB) III with Infrastructure, NFT, and DeFi lego projects invited to participate.
• Binance NFT Marketplace recorded $25,000,000 in sales after 2 months of launch.
• Binance hosted an AMA to explore the Metaverse With CZ, Maye Musk, and more.
• ApeSwap crossed 1 million monthly active users over 28 days is massive, as many protocols never come close to hitting such a number. 
• Binance P2P expanded its risk roadmap. Binance expanded its robust risk management measures and security features.
• Deri Protocol launched the first permissionless derivatives market on BSC.
• Tranchess TVL surpassed $1 billion.

September

• Decentral Games, a leading metaverse-native GameFi DAO, had secured investment under our $100 million Accelerator set up to boost BSC.
• Biswap launched a $10 million Global Incentive Program on BSC.
• 1inch integrated into BitPay to provide users with seamless token swaps.
• BiSwap passed the 1 billion transactions milestone and was listed amongst the top DEXs on BSC in a mere few months after its launch.
• Binance Labs and Multicoin Capital Co-Led $6 million Series A for LayerZero, an omnichain interoperability protocol that unites decentralized applications across disparate blockchains.

October

• Moralis acts as a blockchain node provider and allows users to deploy BSC projects without requiring them to run a BSC node.
• Featured by Binance officially partnered with Balmain and Altava on its innovative attempt to bridge the gap between the fashion world and Non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
• BSC received a $1 billion Growth Fund to bring the next 1 billion crypto users. 
• BSC introduced and proposed the new Binance Evolution Protocol, BEP-95. This BEP introduced a real-time burning mechanism into the economic model of BSC, making BNB’s tokenomics more dynamic.
• Dune Analytics integrated BSC data. This opened up BSC’s vibrant ecosystem of DeFi, NFTs, and Gaming for rich insights and analysis.
• MCDEX, the decentralized derivatives exchange, secured an investment under the recently launched $1 billion Growth Fund set up by BSC to enhance the development of the platform integrated with the BSC ecosystem.

November

• BitTorrent and Tron integrated BSC into its cross-chain scaling solution.
• BSC Bruno Upgrade v1.1.5. This upgrade introduced the previously announced BEP-95 with a real-time burning mechanism.

• The total number of active daily addresses on BSC eclipsed 2,100,000 for the first time.
• BSC officially hit another milestone after breaking another record with over 14.7 million blockchain transactions in just one day. 
• Binance Labs made a strategic investment in Mbox to bring the gaming platform to the next level.
• Abracadabra.Money finally landed on BSC with 2 markets, Wrapped BNB and PancakeSwap.
• Binance NFT Marketplace introduced Initial Gaming Offering (IGO), a new initiative to build the first and largest gaming NFT asset trading platform for crypto games and traditional gamers.
• Crust Network, a decentralized storage network that underpins Web 3.0 style data and file architecture, partnered with BSC to introduce practical, powerful, and user-friendly IPFS-based decentralized storage solution packages to BSC users and developers.

Binance successfully implemented BEP95, which is a mechanism that allows 1 amount of BNB to be burned when making a transaction, which will promote the scarcity of BNB faster.

December 

• Tranchess became a validator on BSC with the launch of its new BNB fund.
• Chainlink Keepers went live on BSC for securely automating Smart Contract DevOps to remain dedicated to providing smart contract developers with the best infrastructure for building highly secure and fully-fledged dApps.
• BSC and Animoca Brands set up a $200m investment program for Blockchain Gaming Projects.
• Celer Network's cBridge reached $100 million in TVL and obtained a liquidity boost from the BSC $100 million Liquidity Incentive Program.
• Binance announced a security audit program ‘Project Shield’ to enhance user protection.
• Binance Labs led the recent $60 million financing round for Multichain, which was recently rebranded from Anyswap.
• Binance Labs participated in the $110 million Series C funding of Figment.
• Binance had been approved by Bahrain's Central Bank (CBB). CBB is the first regulator in the Middle East and North Africa region to accept Binance.

2022 Prediction

• BSC is now one of the world's largest decentralized blockchains, delivering innovative services to millions of users. BSC has grown over 7 million transactions and 1.3 million active users on a typical day, with over 1,150 dApps on the network. BSC will remain the industry leader of the crypto market in numbers of transactions, dApps, and active users.
• Crypto acceptance is currently estimated to be at 5% worldwide, according to CZ Binance. This indicates that we are still in the early stages of cryptocurrency adoption. So, Binance will continue working with regulators across the globe in 2022.
• In 2021, there were 2 very prominent events. Firstly, BSC received a $1 billion growth fund to bring the next 1 billion crypto users. Second, BSC and Animoca Brands set up a $200 million investment program for blockchain gaming projects. These 2 events show that BSC will continue to focus on NFTs and Metaverse.
• Currently, many talents from various industries, particularly from Silicon Valley, will join as founders or team members of many BSC projects. So, with a large pool of human resources, BSC will be able to upgrade its infrastructure in the near future. On the other hand, Infrastructure is also the segment with the most projects in the portfolio of Binance Labs.

• BSC's TVL grew from $0.3 to over $18 billion in 2021. DeFi will continue to lead in terms of TVL in the ecosystem. Many projects of BSC will deliver more modern financial services through innovative products.
• In the blockchain field, competition is constantly fierce, and users are becoming more demanding of product quality and experience. Projects on BSC that don't have much innovation and don't have many users will be heavily purged.
• One key factor in driving mass adoption of crypto is the availability of stablecoins such as BUSD that act as a bridge between fiat and crypto. BUSD's market cap grew by more than 220% ($4.5 million to $14.6 million) in 2021. We believe BUSD will help facilitate the transition to crypto for multi-million crypto users in 2022.

• The expansion of many projects in the BSC ecosystem has been pleasant to us. There are now three projects with a capitalization of over one billion dollars: BNB, BUSD, and CAKE. BSC is still in the process of laying the foundations. Many multibillion-dollar initiatives will emerge in the near future.

Disclaimer: Opinions are entirely based on BSC's status and what the ecosystem has done and is doing. Other factors like the Crypto market, in general, are not included. Everything in this sector is only our opinion and is not considered investment advice. Please DYOR (Do Your Own Research) before investing.

Conclusion

That is all about BSC in 2021 and some predictions in 2022. I hope that the BSC 2021 Report brings you valuable information to understand BSC better and have your own investment strategy in 2022. 

To read the full BSC 2021 Report, download it here: c98.link/Binancians-BinanceSmartChain2021Reportv1

For more 2021 Report of other Ecosystems, do not miss The 2021 Year In Review Report Series