As BNB Chain logs high development activity, will the tides finally turn in its favor?

• There was a sharp jump in BNB Chain’s development activity.
• Large addresses began to accumulate BNB tokens in their portfolios.

Right from regulatory clampdowns to growing number of hacks, the Binance ecosystem faced numerous challenges in 2023. However, there were signs that the situation was easing out for the crypto behemoth.

BNB Chain [BNB] recorded a noticeable jump in transaction fees collected on the platform, clocking a weekly growth rate of more than 6%, according to Token Terminal. The jump was due to increasing network traffic as the number of daily active users on the chain rose by nearly 5% in the same time period.

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The recent move by BNB Chain to cut down its transaction cost by 40% could have played a big part in enticing users to its network. However, there was more to look forward to.

Source: Token Terminal

Another key upgrade in the pipeline

The BNB Smart Chain performed the ‘Luban’ hard fork on its testnet on 27 April, which was set to bring a host of enhancements and new features.

The most prominent among them was the BEP-126 which introduces fast finality mechanism. This modification would make it possible to reach block finality in two blocks, decreasing the likelihood of chain reorganization.

However, the fast finality capability won’t be fully activated until the Plato upgrade.

🚀 New features introduced on the #BSC testnet!

Beside the gas fee reduction on mainnet, we have a booming protocol with new upcoming features. Here's a quick overview of what's new on BSC Testnet this week:

🔗 Fast Finality Mechanism (Part 1)
* BEP describing fast finality…

— BNB Chain (@BNBCHAIN) April 27, 2023

Another enhancement, the BEP-174, will bring a new governance proposal to improve the management of the relayer whitelist by introducing Relayer Managers. Furthermore, BEP-221 will introduce a new precompiled contract to validate the CometBFT light blocks.

BNB whale accumulation increases but…

Though the Luban Upgrade was only launched on the testnet, there were reasons to believe that the upgrade would be live on the mainnet soon, as indicated by the jump in BNB’s development activity. This metric is an indicator of a network’s commitment to improve the capabilities of products.

How much are 1,10,100 BNBs worth today?

Big addresses reacted to these ecosystem updates and started to stack their portfolios with BNB tokens. The supply held by large addresses, which was stagnant until 22 April, showed an uptick of late.

Still, it was not enough to bring a change in investors’ perception. This was evident as the weighted sentiment trended in the negative territory. At press time, BNB exchanged hands at $320.52, down by more than 3% in the 24-hour period as per CoinMarketCap data.

Source: Santiment