Binance announces mainnet launch of blockchain platform ‘Binance Chain’

Leading cryptocurrency exchange Binance has launched its Binance Chain mainnet and plans to execute swap of its native coin, Binance Coin (BNB) on April 23.

Officially announced in March 2018, Binance Chain is Binance’s public blockchain platform. After months of development, Binance Chain and decentralized exchange Binance DEX entered public testnet phase in February this year.

In the official announcement dated April 18, Binance said that it would be producing blockchain with consensus from the genesis block and BNB will be created in the genesis block. CEO Changpeng Zhao said in a tweet that he has carried out the first transaction on Binance Chain:

Binance had previously announced that Binance Coin (BNB) will be moved to its own blockchain to become a native coin. Providing details on the conversion of the ERC20-based BNB into Binance Chain-based BNB (BEP2), Binance said:

“Binance.com will assist with the BNB mainnet swap on April 23rd, 2019 at the earliest. If everything works as intended, then users will be able to provide a Binance Chain address for BNB withdrawal requests. The withdrawal will then act as a mechanism to convert ERC20 BNB tokens into BEP2 BNB tokens native to Binance Chain.”

BNB (BEP2) coins will have an initial total supply of 200,000,000. Binance said that as more users convert to BEP2 BNB (native), it will release more BEP2 coins and burn proportional amounts of ERC20 BNB, thereby keeping the total supply constant across both networks.

“No initial trading pairs will be listed until the first batch BNB conversion has occurred,” it added.

In addition, Binance said that the Binance Chain Explorer and Web Wallet will be available to selected partners and beta testing for live testing first, and will be open to public access around April 23, 2019.