- Binance has announced that it will retire the BNB Beacon Chain (BEP2) by mid-next month and cease supporting deposits for all BEP2 tokens this week.
- The exchange has also started migrating assets from the Beacon Chain to its BNB Smart Chain and will continue with the process for the next month.
Binance is sunsetting the BNB Beacon Chain (BEP2), nearly four years since it first launched, the exchange announced this week.
As Crypto News Flash reported, the BNB Chain team has been working for months on phasing out BEP2. In early January, it introduced BEP333: BNB Chain Fusion, a proposal to eliminate the Beacon Chain gradually. The initial target date was April this year, but the team extended the deadline.
Binance announced Wednesday that the deadline is now set for June.
Starting today, #Binance will start migrating assets from BNB Beacon Chain (BNB) to BNB Smart Chain (BSC).
The migration will continue over the next few weeks, with completion aimed at June 2024.
More details here ⤵️https://t.co/o6SwsO4j6d
— Binance (@binance) May 15, 2024
The team stated:
As the BNB Chain team will be completing its sunset of BNB Beacon Chain (BEP2) by June 2024, Binance will stop processing deposit requests for all BEP2 tokens excluding BEP2 Binance-pegged tokens (B-tokens) at 2024-05-15 00:00 (UTC).
The exchange called on users to deposit BEP2 B-tokens into their accounts before the process is completed mid-next month.
It stated, “B-tokens credited into Binance accounts can then be withdrawn via its native network or other networks supported by Binance.”
On Wednesday, the exchange ceased supporting deposits for all BEP2 tokens; users can now only deposit BEP2 B-tokens. The team is working on integrating all BEP8 and BEP2 assets into the BNB Smart Chain to support cross-chain withdrawals.
In an accompanying blog post, the BNB Chain team revealed that this month would see a sunset fork which would “disable governance and delegation on Beacon Chain, automatically undelegating assets and halting further delegation activities.”
Next month, a second sunset fork would finally retire Beacon Chain, disconnect all cross-chain communication with BSC and archive its data.
Binance Reveals Key Advancements in BNB Chain
Away from retiring the BNB Beacon Chain, the network is seeing significant developments. One is the Tycho hard fork, set to compete around mid-June, which will introduce support for blob transactions. Just like in Ethereum, blob transactions use temporary memory segments (the blobs), reducing operation costs and enhancing efficiency.
3/8: Blob Transactions, enabled by BEP-336, are set to revolutionize BSC's landscape, enhancing L2 Rollups, enabling Data Markets, and empowering Dapps.
— BNB Chain (@BNBCHAIN) May 15, 2024
While both BSC and Ethereum will now support blob transactions, their implementation will be significantly different. On Ethereum, the blobs are housed at the consensus layer, while with BSC, they are embedded directly into the nodes.
Other important updates include the Erdos hard fork, which will enhance developer capabilities and improve the user experience. It’s set to be completed on May 29.
Meanwhile, the network continues to grow rapidly. In the past year, gaming projects on the BNB Chain have doubled to 565. On average, the top ten games attract over 33,000 monthly users. Additionally, BNB Chain continues to dominate the blockchain user base segment.
With an average of 1.4 million DAU, BNB Smart Chain stands as the largest Layer 1 blockchain by daily active users, fostering collaboration, innovation, and overall growth
BNB trades at $568, dipping 2% in the past day amid a 9% increase in trading volume.
