The emergence of BNB-ETF and the hard fork
Pascal hard fork
In March 2025, the BNB Chain team successfully conducted a hard fork on the core network, which includes the EIP-7702 enhancement proposal. This proposal introduces smart account functionality with support for gasless transactions, as planned for the Ethereum platform as part of the upcoming Pectra update scheduled for May 2025.
In addition, the EIP-7702 will enable batch transactions. After the update, users can combine multiple transactions, such as smart contract authorizations, swaps, and transfers, into a single transaction, making decentralized applications more efficient.
In addition to Pascal, the BNB Chain team has planned two more updates in 2025 — Lorentz and Maxwell. The Lorentz update has already been released on the main BNB Smart Chain and OpBNB networks. The main goal of this hard fork is to reduce block processing time to 1.5 seconds, which will improve the throughput of blockchain networks and the performance of decentralized applications (DApps) powered by BNB Smart Chain and OpBNB.
The Maxwell update, scheduled for June 2025, aims to further reduce block mining time to 0.75 seconds, half the time after the Lorentz update. In this way, BNB Chain developers are improving the performance and scalability of the BNB Smart Chain and OpBNB platforms.
BNB-ETF on the horizon
Major investment firms have already launched their Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Ripple (XRP)-based exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Some are even applying to launch Solana-ETF and Dogecoin-ETF.
However, well-known investment company VanEck has become the first to apply to launch a spot BNB-ETF. In late March, the company registered the VanEck BNB ETF Trust in the US state of Delaware. Launching the spot BNB-ETF will open up access to the Binance Coin asset to investors, including institutional investors, on regulated traditional stock exchanges. This could substantially boost the value of the BNB cryptocurrency, which hit an all-time high (ATH) of $793 in December 2024.
Earlier in March, VanEck registered another trust to launch the Avalanche (AVAX) cryptocurrency ETF. The blockchain is being partnered with well-known and large companies such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Grayscale Investments.
Another token burn and $917 million in cuts
In April 2025, the BNB Chain team completed the 31st quarterly Binance Coin burn, reducing the token supply by another 1.57 million BNB, valued at just under $1 billion.
The Binance Coin burn is part of BNB Chain's deflationary strategy, which aims to gradually reduce token issuance to 100 million BNB. Reducing the token supply increases the asset's value in the long run.
According to the CoinMarketCap monitoring service for May 2025, the current token supply is 140.88 million BNB. This means that the BNB Chain team has another 40.88 million BNB to burn, or about 30% of the circulating token supply in the market, to reach its ultimate goal.
BNB Chain meme token boom
Launched in July 2024, the Four.meme platform for issuing tokens based on the BNB Smart Chain blockchain has caused a stir among users and investors, leading to increased activity on the network.
According to the analytical service Token Terminal, as of the beginning of May 2025, the number of daily active users, 2.5 million, ranks second after Solana, whose figure reached 2.7 million. At its peak in January of the same year, the number of daily users of BNB Chain reached 6.4, and the network ranked first by this indicator.
As in the case of the Solana and Toncoin ecosystems, this rapid growth of activity was influenced by users' high interest in meme tokens. One notable event was the launch of the Broccoli (BROCCOLI) meme token, which appeared after former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao published his dog's nickname. The success of the sensational BROCCOLI meme token sparked a new wave of token launches in the BNB Chain ecosystem.
In March, amid the popularity of the MUBARAK token, the BNB Chain ecosystem even surpassed the Solana platform in terms of daily trading volume, which reached $1.63 billion.
User activity growth has also led to an increase in other indicators, such as total locked value (TVL) and trading volume on decentralized exchanges.
According to DeFi Llama data for May 2025, since July 2024, after the launch of the Four.meme platform, BNB Chain's TVL has grown by almost 35% — from $4.3 billion to $5.8 billion. According to this indicator, BNB Chain ranks fourth in the overall ranking of blockchain ecosystems, behind only Ethereum, Solana, and Bitcoin.
