These days, with the Binance effect, Meme on BSC has once again gained market attention. The huge wealth effect and traffic have refocused the market on this five-year-old public chain. However, peeling back the performance and taking a closer look, what we actually see is a qualitative transformation of the ecosystem.

If the initial BNB Chain in 2020 mostly served as an alternative driven by ETH's high gas fees and inefficiencies, leading to initial user and transaction accumulation, then 2025 was a crucial year for BNB Chain to actively undergo a self-transformation.

Looking back on this year, BNB Chain is no longer just a cheaper alternative but has begun to possess the foundational capability to sustain real financial and payment scenarios in the long term.

User, liquidity, and transaction volume have all reached new highs, with TVL growing by 40.5%, the market cap of stablecoins on-chain growing by over 100% to $14 billion, and RWA asset size exceeding $1.8 billion.

In terms of outcomes, BNB Chain's on-chain activity is not a short-lived burst but shows a sustained and stable growth trend.

All-year-round core scenarios such as transactions, stablecoins, payments, and RWAs have maintained high-frequency usage, requiring the network to operate continuously under long-term high loads, rather than relying on sporadic peaks to prove performance. It is in such a real production environment that BNB Chain has withstood the test, running non-stop throughout the year and maintaining stable operation under a backdrop of high-intensity transactions and asset circulation.

Supporting this data is not a single technological breakthrough but a year-long continuous advancement of underlying engineering capabilities. In 2025, BNB Chain underwent deep iterations of its underlying protocols and clients, with block time and throughput capacity systematically restructured to give the chain itself the ability to execute high concurrency, low latency, and long-term scalable operations. Block time has been compressed from the previous 3 seconds to sub-second levels, finality significantly expedited, and network bandwidth expanded to over 133 million gas per second, allowing the chain to sustainably process up to 5 trillion gas in daily loads in high concurrency environments. Coupled with the seamless stablecoin payment network and the scaled introduction of RWA-compliant assets, BNB Chain has made a crucial leap in technology, assets, and ecosystem.

Multipronged drives have enabled BNB Chain to touch the threshold of a billion-user infrastructure. Moreover, it is no longer just serving crypto-native users but is beginning to provide a blockchain base that can be accepted and used by a broader audience and the real-world financial system.

The significance of 2025 for BNB Chain lies not in any extreme metric but in validating one thing: under real, sustained, high-intensity usage conditions, a public chain can operate as infrastructure, rather than remain in the theoretical performance stage. It is this experience that forms the real foundation of the 2026 technology roadmap, aiming for higher TPS, lower latency, fairer execution, and more advanced middleware and development tools.

2025 DAA Number One, Is Technology Still Important?

During the AMA session at the BNB Chain's fifth anniversary celebration, CZ mentioned that attracting more Web3 users to a project requires a strong and appealing product.

This statement neatly encapsulated the strategic theme of BNB Chain's development throughout 2025.

Going back to early 2025, in a landscape where modularity had reduced significant costs and L2 solutions were prevalent, the narrative of BNB Chain was not particularly exciting, and its moat was not very wide. BNB Chain was not eager to chase hot trends but instead focused on fundamental technological restructuring to lay the groundwork for its explosive growth and daily active user peak in the second half of the year.

Through the Lorentz and Maxwell hard forks, BNB Chain's block time was compressed from 3 seconds to 0.75 seconds, further to the upcoming Fermi to achieve 0.45 seconds. The network's throughput increased to the level of 133 million gas/s, transaction confirmation time reached the sub-2-second range, MEV sandwich attacks reduced by 95%, and transaction costs significantly decreased in high-concurrency environments.

For some users, these changes might seem like just "faster" parameters. However, in practical terms, the shortened block time enabled high-frequency interactive applications to be usable for the first time. The increased throughput allowed the chain to handle sudden surges in traffic without congestion. The reduced confirmation time and fees directly altered the average user's psychological expectation of whether on-chain operations were worthwhile.

In other words, the first-half efforts addressed a core contradiction of BNB Chain: how to achieve performance comparable to centralized servers without sacrificing decentralization.

The results were clear to see, with stablecoin trading, DEX interactions, on-chain transfers, and other high-frequency activities experiencing rapid growth. BNB Chain became one of the chains with the highest number of daily active addresses across various time windows. According to the latest Token Terminal data, BNB Chain reached a daily active user count of 4.4 million, ranking first in the blockchain space. The daily average on-chain transaction count in 2025 stabilized at the tens of millions, reaching a historical high of 31 million transactions in a single day in October, a 150% year-on-year peak growth. Concurrently, TVL increased by 40.5% year-on-year, stablecoin market capitalization on-chain doubled, peaking at $14 billion.

Image Source: Token Terminal

Entering the second half of 2025, BNB Chain rapidly transitioned from an engineer to a product manager. Building on a strong foundation from the first half of the year, it successfully took on massive stablecoin payment and RWA demand.

$147 Billion Stablecoin Supply and 4 Million Daily Active Users

If cryptocurrency before 2024 was driven by speculation, 2025 shifted to a utility-focused stablecoin era. In this year, the stablecoin USDC issuer Circle went public, and Franklin D. Roosevelt with a managed asset size of $16 trillion introduced JUSD.

Stablecoins are evolving from mere transaction mediums to channels connecting the traditional financial and Web3 worlds. Stablecoins are no longer just tools for DeFi but are beginning to take on a role closer to real-world payments and fund circulation.

In this transformation, BNB Chain has become the fastest-growing platform with 2-second settlement and transaction fees as low as $0.005. The latest data shows that the value of stablecoins on the BNB Chain network has exceeded $147 billion, with BSC and opBNB serving over 4 million daily active users.

Image Source: Dune

The popularization of stablecoins depends not only on the assets themselves but also on their operating environment. If stablecoins are to serve billions of users, the chain itself must have characteristics such as low cost, speed, and seamless user experience. The upgrades in the first half of the year on BNB Chain laid the foundation for the widespread adoption of stablecoins.

Through initiatives like gas-free transactions, opBNB, and other expansion solutions, the cost of stablecoin transfers has been compressed to nearly zero, significantly reducing the barrier to using stablecoins for payments. On BSC and opBNB, stablecoin transfers are nearly instantaneous, providing a Web2-like experience for on-chain payments, salary disbursements, and merchant settlements.

The on-chain stablecoin supply on the BNB Chain has doubled to around $140 billion, making it one of the most active stablecoin networks globally. In this context, the stablecoin ecosystem itself has also begun to change. United Stables chose to issue the stablecoin U natively on the BNB Chain. Unlike traditional stablecoins relying on a single collateral asset, U adopts a multi-stablecoin reserve model, allowing mainstream dollar-pegged stablecoins including USDT, USDC, and USD1 to be directly used as collateral to mint U.

From an ecological perspective, the introduction of U is not an isolated event, but a natural outcome of the BNB Chain stablecoin system maturing. As the on-chain stablecoin scale continues to expand and address activity increases, the demand for unified liquidity and higher capital efficiency also grows. The multi-collateral model of United Stables is a response to this demand. United Stables' design reduces the efficiency loss caused by the repeated splitting between different stablecoins, helps integrate on-chain liquidity, and simplifies the path for funds to be used in trading, payments, and DeFi applications.

Image Source: BNB Chain

In 2025, a significant event occurred when Abu Dhabi MGX invested $2 billion in Binance through the stablecoin USD1. USD1 is an anchor dollar stablecoin launched by the Trump family-backed World Liberty Financial, backed by highly liquid assets, deployed on BNB Chain, ETH, and other mainstream blockchains.

This investment sent a clear signal that stablecoins are no longer limited to the crypto industry but have become a tool to connect traditional capital with on-chain finance. And BNB Chain is a crucial network for this channel.

In addition, BNB Chain, in collaboration with YZi Labs, launched a Builder Fund of up to $1 billion to accelerate the development of existing and future BNB Chain developers, especially those creating applications that can truly mobilize stablecoins. The fund not only provides funding but also offers technical incubation and compliance consulting.

According to the development roadmap disclosed by BNB Chain, areas such as on-chain salary systems, programmable treasuries, stablecoin-native credit cards, invoice tokenization, CBDC bridging and custody, green finance, and supply chain automation are poised for explosive growth. These upcoming tracks share common characteristics of being efficient, automated, and globally accessible, rather than focusing on cryptographic attributes. Stablecoins in this context are positioned more as a general-purpose unit of the digital economy, and BNB Chain aims to become the underlying operating system that hosts these functionalities.

It is worth noting that the growth of the BNB Chain network's stablecoin ecosystem is not a single-point eruption but deeply tied to RWA.

BNB Chain and RWA Mutual Empowerment

This year, we are no longer discussing the feasibility of on-chain asset. Traditional financial giants such as BlackRock, CMB International, VanEck, Franklin Templeton, and others are transferring billions of dollars of assets to the blockchain. In this on-chain movement, BNB Chain has become one of the largest infrastructures for hosting RWA funds, leveraging its massive user base and ecosystem strategy.

BlackRock, with the technological support of Securitize and Wormhole, has deployed its USD institutional digital liquidity fund, BUIDL Fund, to the BNB Chain. This fund can also be used as collateral on the Binance trading platform. This means that on-chain funds are no longer obscure financial products but have become a liquidity layer in the cryptocurrency market.

CMB International is bringing its USD money market fund with assets under management exceeding $3.8 billion to the BNB Chain. Reportedly, this fund ranks first among similar funds in the Asia-Pacific region according to Bloomberg, and investors can subscribe to shares using stablecoins on the BNB Chain.

Image Source: BNB Chain

The deployment of various RWA assets on the BNB Chain is not a one-way benefit but rather a deeper two-way symbiotic relationship. RWAs and the BNB Chain are forming a mutually reinforcing feedback loop.

Asset on-chain is just the first step. If there is not enough trading depth and turnover rate, these tokens will only be on-chain digital certificates, unable to unlock true financial value. Liquidity shortage is the biggest pain point hindering the large-scale eruption of RWA.

As a mature ecosystem, BNB Chain provides three key elements for RWA assets: high throughput, low fees, and a massive user base. Compared to other expensive public chains, BNB Chain's low gas fees and high TPS make high-frequency trading and instant settlement possible, significantly lowering the barrier for user participation in RWA investments. Additionally, BNB Chain users are one of the most active groups in Web3, meaning that once RWA assets are launched, they can directly reach a massive pool of potential investors.

In fact, CZ had already revealed the key to the prosperity of RWAs on the BNB Chain during the AMA for BNB Chain's 5th anniversary: Without users, there are no transactions; without transactions, there is no liquidity.

When Ondo Global Markets announced the introduction of 100+ US stocks and ETFs to the BNB Chain and deep integration into the Binance Wallet, the market experienced a significant chemical reaction. Benefiting from the huge daily active users on the BNB Chain, Ondo's tokenized stock trading volume surged from a previous single-day peak of $84 million to $170 million.

Image Source: rwa.xyz

Looking back at the whole of 2025, standing at the beginning of 2026, it was a milestone year for BNB Chain, transitioning from participating in the public chain competition based on performance and cost to aiming for real-world usage scale, stable operational capacity, and compliant accessibility, benchmarking against the global traditional financial and internet payment systems. Over the past year, continuous high-load, zero-downtime operation, the scale-up of stablecoins and RWAs, and the systematic optimization of underlying performance and cost structure have collectively proven that BNB Chain is no longer stuck in the stage of technical feasibility.

Looking ahead, the development focus of BNB Chain will no longer just be about chasing higher metrics, but will be to further enhance execution quality and user experience on top of the existing scale, with faster confirmation speeds, lower usage costs, a fairer trading environment, and middleware and tool systems that are more friendly to complex scenarios such as stablecoins, RWAs, payments, and AI.

Looking forward to 2026, BNB Chain aims to solidify its sub-second performance, global payment capabilities, and compliant asset support as default capabilities, allowing developers to build applications with a Web2-like experience on top of it, and enabling ordinary users to use blockchain services without perceiving the underlying complexity. When blockchain is no longer seen as a new technology but naturally integrated into daily economic activities like the internet or payment systems, the widespread adoption of Web3 will truly arrive. In 2025, BNB Chain took a decisive step towards this direction.

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