Binance’s BNB Chain rebounds amid institutional, DeFi adoption

Binance-affiliated BNB Chain has rebounded after a period of stagnation in 2023 amid accelerating institutional and decentralized finance (DeFi) adoption. 

During the past year, BNB Chain has benefited from multibillion-dollar inflows into DeFi, US exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and rising trading volume at affiliated centralized exchange (CEX) Binance. 

Consequently, the blockchain network’s native BNB token (BNB) has emerged as among the market’s most resilient cryptocurrencies, surpassing all-time highs in the first quarter of 2025 even as the broader crypto market trended downward. 

“This resilience isn't just about price action — strong fundamentals also back it,” Joao Wedson, CEO of investing analytics platform Alphractal, said in an April X post. “Binance has built a massive ecosystem where BNB is used extensively,” Wedson added.

Asset manager Standard Chartered expects the BNB token’s price to continue to rise, reaching highs of $2,775 by the end of 2028. As of May 7, BNB trades at around $600 per coin. It has a market capitalization of nearly $85 billion, according to CoinMarketCap.

Meanwhile, asset manager VanEck proposed on May 5 the first BNB ETF in the United States.

Related: Standard Chartered predicts BNB will more than double in 2025

Since the start of 2024, BNB Chain’s TVL has increased from around $3.5 billion to more than $6 billion, according to data from DefiLlama. It still hasn’t recovered fully to all-time highs of more than $20 billion in 2022.

As of May 7, BNB Chain ranks fourth among layer-1 blockchain networks by TVL, the data shows. 

According to Standard Chartered, BNB Chain’s “use cases remain almost entirely on decentralised exchanges [DEXs], lending protocols, and liquid staking. This makes it a much more concentrated and ‘old-fashioned’ smart contract platform than rivals,” it said in a May research note reviewed by Cointelegraph.

“While this caps upside potential, it also provides a degree of stability,” according to the asset manager. 

PancakeSwap is among BNB Chain’s largest DEXs, with roughly $1.5 billion in TVL, according to DefiLlama.

Institutional adoption is growing on the blockchain network, with performance partly driven by its ties to Binance, the network's affiliated CEX.

The exchange clocked an all-time high trading volume of around $76 trillion in 2024. It accounts for roughly 40% of spot trading volumes globally, according to Standard Chartered.

In addition, US President Donald Trump-backed stablecoin USD1 has been issued primarily on the BNB Chain. Data from BscScan shows that more than $2 billion worth of USD1 — or 99% of its circulating supply — has been issued on BNB Chain. 

Magazine: 12 minutes of nail-biting tension when Ethereum’s Pectra fork goes live