Binance, the largest crypto exchange in the world, has announced the launch date of their Binance Chain testnet for public testing, indicating that their blockchain is nearing completion and their decentralized exchange (DEX) will be launching soon.
Finally got a date. Targeting to release Binance Chain testnet (@binance_dex) for public testing on Feb 20th. This is a testnet, your feedback would be most valuable.
— CZ Binance (@cz_binance) February 12, 2019
The Binance Chain testnet will go live on February 20, and the CEO of Binance, Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, notes that public feedback will be much appreciated to further develop and refine the project.
What Is Binance Chain?
Binance Chain is the exchange’s proprietary public blockchain, which will be used primarily to run a decentralized exchange (DEX) for the trading and transferring of blockchain-based assets (cryptocurrencies).
CZ announced Binance’s plans for their own public blockchain and Binance DEX a year ago, and in August he stated that Binance Chain will host millions of coins and thousands of blockchains. Clearly, the blockchain is poised to be of very high quality and performance to handle such large amounts of liquidity.
The Binance DEX will use Binance Coin (BNB) as its native token, meaning BNB will be swapped from its current ERC20 state to the Binance Chain once launched. BNB will then be used on the DEX as a base trading pair with the crypto assets listed on the exchange.
Inside Details on Binance Chain
CZ recently went live on Periscope, a live video-streaming app where he talked about the upcoming Binance Chain, DEX, and testnet launch on February 20. Getting into the technicalities of Binance Chain, CZ compared their blockchain to be more similar to NEO or Ripple, rather than Bitcoin.
“I think for the testnet right now we elected to run eleven test nodes. I think any number is fine. The number of validators in our network will be small, mainly for performance reasons. So it will not be as big as the Bitcoin network with thousands of nodes. It is going to be more like NEO…or even Ripple…smaller number of nodes and each node will be rather large.”
Moreover, Binance Chain will not support smart contract functionality and will therefore not be used for decentralized applications (dapps). The exchange wants to first focus on building a stable and high-performing blockchain for their DEX.
Speaking on this matter, CZ said:
“In the Binance Chain, there is no smart contracts. We just have an interface for you to issue a token then you can trade it. Binance Chain is a very simple chain in terms of application but it can handle very large loads. It is our opinion that the load is more important than features.”
Will Binance Chain and their DEX be a massive success? Will it see more trading volume than their centralized exchange? Let us know what you think in the comment section below.
