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What is BNB (BNB)?

BNB basic info

Name:BNB
Ticker:
Introduction:

Spooky season is finally here. After two years of pandemic and endless lockdowns, people are again flocking to cinemas, happily spending money to have their hair stand on end with horror movies. But why waste money on fiction when we can be spooked out by what really happens on the blockchain on a regular basis? Indeed, on October 6, just at the beginning of the spooky month, one of the biggest cryptocurrency hacks striked on BNB Chain, raking in nearly $600 million in just two hours.

What Happened During the BNB Chain Hack?

BNB Chain had been the favorite spot for IT people to showcase their hacking skills and perform no-blood massacres of the biggest DeFi protocols, but this time, it was the very chain that was targeted. The attack, in short, was an extremely sophisticated business, almost as much as the chain’s naming. It unfolded within a span of a few days with the involvement of numerous blockchains and DeFi platforms.

Everything started on a fine Autumn day of October 5. It was getting colder in the Northern Hemisphere. The leaves were greeting their last glorious moments on Earth with marvelous shades of yellow and red. The girls were whipping out their pumpkin spice lattes and wool blankets for #autumnaethestics. The war in Ukraine was going on and Europe was struggling with its energy problems. 101.5 BNB was sent from ChangeNOW.io to a certain wallet address for a premeditated attack. That address then used 100 BNB to register with BSC Token Hub, the bridge connecting BNB Beacon Chain (previously known as Binance Chain) and BNB Chain (previously known as Binance Smart Chain or BSC), to become a Relayer. The job of a Relayer is to deliver messages from BNB Beacon Chain to BNB Chain, and relay messages he did.

Two seemingly legitimate withdrawal proofs were sent to the BSC Token Hub on October 6. The bridge complied and released 2 million BNB in two transactions, one at 6:26 PM UTC and the other at 20:43 PM UTC.

People took a glance at the transactions and thought: “Is this Binance or some whales moving their assets in scale? Will there be waves or is it just another day?”

Then Tether blacklisted the wallet address out of the blue (09:24 PM UTC). The same people took another glance and wondered: “Menace or average? Could it be a wrong blacklist?”

Introduction image 0

The exploiter’s main wallet was blacklisted by Tether, which means USDT in this wallet is frozen. Source: Etherscan

And Tether never mistook a blacklist, it seemed.

Between those two transactions, the same wallet address had 15 failed attempts at requesting millions of BNB from the BSC Token Hub, and borrowed huge loans at Venus Protocol, the notorious protocol that is seemingly involved in almost every major hack on BNB Chain. 900,000 BNB was deposited into Venus to take out massive loans:

• 62.4 million BUSD

• 50 million USDT

• 13.7 million vBNB (approximately $129 million)

• 35 million USDC

Tether was quick to respond, but Binance was, too. The third largest public blockchain in the world halted all activities for about 8 hours. With only 26 active nodes, demanding the suspension of the whole chain was definitely no sweat for Binance. Thank God for decentralization! We only needed to contact 26 nodes to pause a decentralized public network for 197.3 million wallets.

Because of the quick response from Binance, the exploiter only managed to move $119.5 million to other chains:

• $66.9 million on Fantom

• $24.1 million on Ethereum

• $20 million on Avalanche

• $4.1 million on Polygon

• $3.3 million on Arbitrum

• $1.1 million on Optimism

Instead of dumping all the 2 million BNB in one go and causing a massive slump in price, the attacker opted to move the hacked amount around 6 multichain wallets, and use it on multiple DeFi platforms across seven blockchains to swap for different tokens, stake to earn rewards, and provide collateral for loans. The protocols utilized are:

• On BNB Chain: Venus Protocol and PancakeSwap

• On Fantom: Geist

• On Ethereum: Curve Finance and Uniswap

• On Avalanche: Platypus Finance

Among the $119.5 million bridged to different blockchains:

• $6.5 million in USDT was frozen

• $37.5 million in lending pools

• $16.5 million borrowed

• The rest remaining dormant in the attacker’s wallets

Introduction image 1

The exploiter’s main wallet analytics on October 17. Source: Nansen

After the 8 hours halt of the whole BNB Chain, onlookers watched and prayed that the attack was stopped. But that was all in vain. While there was no further bug exploitation on the BSC Token Hub, activities of the exploiter’s wallet addresses are still going on till today. For instance, on October 8, 33,771 ETH was moved between the attacker’s wallets on Ethereum.

The Aftermath of the BNB Chain Attack

After the main attack on October 6, or more like after the attacker showed few signs of another exploit, CZ posted some disputable tweets, saying that the $100+ million USD bridged to other chains and out-of-reach of the decentralized BNB Chain was only “a quarter of the last BNB burn”.

And perhaps, in an effort to hail the decentralization of the suspended-by-19-validators network, he tweeted: “I am not that involved in the technical side of BNB Chain. Far less than Vitalik with ETH. The principles of issue handling are simple important: fast, transparent responsible. ?” Ah yes, definitely, Vitalik is so involved in Ethereum that changes on Ethereum are voted upon and decided by 426,000 validators, so hard forks sometimes result in the birth of a separate chain. Meanwhile, BNB Chain is so fast, transparent and responsible with handling issues that two hard forks were completed in the span of 4 days without prior notice to the community, and despite the Chief Scientist saying cross-chain activities resumed 6 days after the exploit, users still reported their tokens not crossing the bridge.

Nevertheless, the official BNB Chain exploit response started out with a sincere apology, owning their technical mistakes, and that sentence alone more or less had the ability to soothe the anxious souls following the third biggest exploit in blockchain history.

Soothed as we might have felt, just 4 days later, BNB Chain released another official response to the exploit, saying in bold that “The blockchain (BNB Chain) was not compromised and no users were affected.” Indeed, halting the whole blockchain for 8 hours and the bridge for 6 days affected no one; all activities were normal.

At 7 AM on October 13, Binance conducted its 21th quarterly burn, effectively removing 2.06 million BNB from circulation, which almost made it seem like the hack did not happen after all.

Yet, even with all these efforts, BNB price dropped 12.9% from October 6 to October 13.

Conclusion

The hack that happened on October 6 amounts to more than half a billion USD in value, but no one lost any money because of the hack itself, as the 2 million BNB was newly minted, and the hacker has not withdrawn his fund. That being said, many people suffered as the BNB Chain was suspended for 8 hours, as well as the bridge between BNB Chain and BNB Beacon Chain was stopped for almost a week.

This is another hack in a series targeting blockchain bridges recently. Ronin, Harmony, Solana, and Nomad were a few blockchains whose bridges were attacked. The non-stop exploits with total stolen value adding up to about $2.5 billion make blockchain bridge rightfully earn the name of “DeFi’s Achilles Heel” by Forbes.

The exploit on October 6 also realized the major issue of decentralization on BNB Chain. If it took only 19 nodes to stop the activities for nearly 200 million wallets, is it decentralized? Are 26 nodes enough to decide the doings of 200 million wallets? Why was the chain suspended for this hack, but not for other hacks? Will the chain be halted out of the blue like this again in the future? Binance says in their official response that the number of community validators will increase and the blockchain will become more decentralized “as we progress”, but a definitive plan of how these will be achieved is still somewhere beyond the horizon.

Probably the most incomprehensible thing out of this whole ordeal is the attacker’s activities. He preserved through 2 hours and 15 failed attempts to mint 2 million BNB, then went through a lot to disperse the fund over numerous blockchains before BNB Chain was halted. In spite of all the hard work, he has not cashed out a single cent from the exploit or used Tornado Cash to erase his trace. Is he trying to grow his money and cash out later, or is this exploit just an attempt to show BNB Chain its technical weak point, or was he merely messing around for fun? The answer, we can only know later.

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Current price:
All-time high:$720.67
All-time low:$0.09611

BNB supply and tokenomics

Circulating supply:144,099,580 BNB
Total supply:144,099,582.7 BNB
Max supply:0 BNB
Market cap:$85.02B
Fully diluted market cap:$85.02B
Token allocation:
ICO
50.00%
Founding Team
40.00%
Angel Investors
10.00%
Tokenomics:

Uniqueness

Binance is a unique ecosystem of decentralized, blockchain-based networks. The company has grown to be the leading crypto exchange in a number of countries, and their side organizations are attracting significant interest as well.

One of the biggest competitive advantages Binance has is its drive for development. While the company started only as a crypto exchange back in 2017, today, Binance has spread its services among numerous different spheres. According to the company website, its mission is to become the infrastructure services provider for the entire blockchain ecosystem.

Since launching the BNB, the exchange has also benefited from increased investor interest in the coin. BNB went through a significant price increase at the beginning of 2021, which has put it on the map of enterprise investors.

Measures like BEP-95 have upgraded the already deflationary tokenomics to make BNB even more deflationary. Following the proposal, gas fees on Binance Smart Chain have become even lower, as the network burns a part of the fees to decentralize further. The proposal was modeled after Ethereum's famous EIP-1559.

This has helped Binance overcome several exploits of protocols on BSC, such as a $200M exploit of Pancake Bunny and several hacks of Cream Finance. Despite these hacks, users return to Binance for its low fees and the abundance of lucrative meme coins in its ecosystem.

Token utility

As an exchange token, $BNB has been used for the following functions:

  • Exchange fee discount: since the launch of Binance, transaction fees on the exchange paid in $BNB have been subject to a discount.
  • Unique participation rights: $BNB can be used for additional services on the exchange, such as participation rights to Launchpad events (IEOs) and tickets for community listing voting rights.
  • Quote currency on Binance: $BNB has been used as an asset for trading cryptocurrencies on Binance. It has been one of the first quote assets on the exchange, alongside stablecoins (e.g., $USDT), $BTC, and $ETH.
  • Third-party uses: $BNB can be used on multiple platforms and services that are independently run by global companies. Its third-party set of use cases ranges from booking websites to financial services.

As the chain native token, $BNB will run on BNB Chain in the same way as $ETH runs on Ethereum. This means, $BNB is used to

  • pay most of the fees on BNB Chain
  • pay "fees" to deploy smart contracts
  • participate in on-chain governance

Links

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What is the development prospect and future value of BNB?

The market value of BNB currently stands at $85.02B, and its market ranking is #5. The value of BNB is widely recognized by the market. When the bull market comes, the market value of BNB will likely continue to increase.

Moreover, if BNB can play a greater role in practical applications, such as BNB builders fully leveraging the potential of BNB, partnering with more businesses, and increasing its user base, the long-term value of BNB will be significantly enhanced.

What will the price of BNB be in 2025?
Based on BNB's historical price performance prediction model, the price of BNB is projected to reach $863.3 in 2025.
What will the price of BNB be in 2030?
In 2030, the BNB price is expected to change by -9.00%. By the end of 2030, the BNB price is projected to reach $1,944.28, with a cumulative ROI of +246.83%.
Reminder: Just like all cryptocurrency investments, investors must closely monitor the market performance of BNB and be aware of the associated risks. The world of cryptocurrencies is full of uncertainties, so thorough research and preparation are essential.

Is BNB worth investing or holding? How to buy BNB from a crypto exchange?

If you want to buy BNB, the following information may be helpful for your investment decisions:
In the last seven days, the price of BNB has risen by 1.74%, leading to positive returns for most BNB investors. The market is currently optimistic about the price trend of BNB.
It is important to note that the current price of BNB has retreated by -18.13% from its all-time high. This coin is currently considered medium-risk, and its price may rebound or continue to fall.
Additionally, it's important to understand that each coin has its own optimal times for buying and selling. The optimal time to invest is dynamic: when a coin is undervalued, it's wise to adopt a buying strategy; when it becomes overvalued, you should decisively sell the coin.
To decide whether BNB is worth investing in, you need to consider various market factors such as the overall trend of the cryptocurrency market, the project's fundamentals, its current market valuation, and whether the current price is suitable for buying. If the project's fundamentals suddenly change or the price becomes excessively high, you should adjust your investment strategy and trading operations accordingly.
Your investment decisions should be based on your own risk tolerance, financial status, market analysis and research, especially the timing of your investments. Correct timing can ensure more reliable returns. Keep in mind that investing in BNB or any cryptocurrency comes with certain risks and uncertainties.
Regardless of your outlook on the development prospects and future trends of BNB, if you want to buy or sell BNB, you can consider Bitget for your trading needs. The best place to buy BNB is an exchange that offers hassle-free and secure transactions, combined with a user-friendly interface and high liquidity. Every day, millions of users choose Bitget as their trusted platform for crypto purchases.
Investing in BNB has never been easier. Simply sign up on Bitget, complete the identity verification process, and make payments using bank transfers, debit cards, or credit cards, all while ensuring security through crypto wallets. This is a widely adopted method to buy BNB. Here's a step-by-step guide on how to buy BNB on Bitget.

How to get BNB through other methods?

Using cash to buy BNB is not the only way to obtain BNB. If you have the time to spare, you can get BNB for free.
Learn how to earn BNB for free through the Learn2Earn promotion.
Earn free BNB by inviting friends to join Bitget's Assist2Earn promotion.
Receive free BNB airdrops by joining ongoing challenges and promotions.
All crypto airdrops and rewards can be converted to BNB through Bitget Convert, Bitget Swap, or spot trading.

What is BNB used for and how to use BNB?

The use case of BNB may expand as the crypto market and the project itself develop. Currently, you can use BNB to achieve the following goals:
Arbitrage by trading BNB: Since BNB is a frequently traded cryptocurrency, the price of BNB is always fluctuating. Earn more BNB by buying low and selling high on the exchange. Bitget spot market provides a variety of BNB trading pairs to fully meet your needs.
Earn by staking BNB: You can also generate income through financial management methods such as staking BNB or lending BNB. Bitget Earn offers a variety of financial products designed to help you earn more income from your BNB.
Send or pay BNB: If you want to give BNB to your friends, a charity, or a fundraiser, or you want to pay someone with BNB, you can quickly and easily send BNB to the recipient through their payment address.
You can also go to the official website of the BNB project to learn more about the use cases of BNB. For example, find out if the project supports the use of within its community or ecology, or if the project allows you to purchase physical or virtual products in .

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