What Has Binance in Store for the BNB Mainnet in 2022?

Binance released its BNB mainnet roadmap for 2022. The roadmap includes major updates that are due for the blockchain. Remaining competitive in cryptocurrency markets is a must. Evolving to meet clients and investors' needs is among the key elements in today's markets.

The Binance smart chain (BSC) is known for its low gas fees, fast transactions and reliability. These are the key developments Binance has for BNB in 2022.

source: Binance

In collaboration with NodeReal, Binance will be looking to up the gas capacity to 200 million. In other words, the maximum amount of gas (tx fees) in a single block will have a cap of 200 million.

It may achieve less congestion on the network and faster confirmations. This will also allow more transactions in a single block, which may in turn limit higher fees due to a network congestion. Validators and node runners will enjoy a reduced disk footprint.

BEP-127 allows Binance smart chain (BSC) Mainnet validators to run emergency maintenance without negatively affecting the performance of the network. Additionally, validators can avoid mainnet forks and enable temporary maintenance modes.

BEP-131 proposes to increase BSC Mainnet validators. The number of validators will increase from 21 to 41. In addition, it will modify the validator consensus module by providing a dynamic adjustment.

Competition will increase as smaller candidate validators have the ability to earn rewards. As a result, the network will be more decentralized, secure and stable.

BNB Beacon chain will make the Binance decentralized exchange (DEX) available to developers. Moreover, developers will gain access to the DEX matching engine code and may freely build on the code.

Deciding to open-source the beacon chain may attract more attention.

BEP-126 will implement BLS-based multi-signature for the peer-to-peer (P2P) channel. The final transactions' confirmation time will be reduced to 2 blocks, assuring a faster transaction time.

New dApps can be developed in the BNB Sidechain (BAS). It has a full Ethereum compatibility (EVM) and is based on Proof of Stake (PpS). In other words, developers will not require to learn a new language, which is time consuming.

A bridge between BAS and BSC Mainnet is part of the integration, allowing bridging for BEP-20 and BEP-121.

Transaction fees can be customized and a custom validator set. Binance assures that dApps on BAS should expect lower or zero transaction fees with no congestion. Projects that are based on Solana (SOL) that recently experienced a fairly significant outage may be among the first to consider migrating.

Binance claims that BAS is an optimal solution for projects with high network usage, such as GamFi and SocialFi. META Apes, Project Galaxy and Metaverse World will be the first decentralized applications to be deployed on BAS.

ZK-rollup-based applications operating on their own sidechain is an additional improvement. In the first phase, the rollup will be on BSC for BEP20 and NFTs that are on BAS.

In the second phase, specific applications will be the focus, dedicated to ZK Rollup via generic circuit generators. Devs will access native token bridges as well as circulation between BSC and zkBAS.

ZkBAS has the capacity to maintain 10,000 transactions per second (TPS). The development of zkBAS is a collaboration between the BNB team and Zecrey.

Although it is still being researched, a blockchain storage system may reduce operational expenses and hardware requirements for validators. Binance is striving to add decentralized storage for non-ledger data.

Jan Gottschalk, the CEO of Blockchain & Real Estate Consulting in Hamburg expresses his views on the future of cryptocurrencies and how cryptocurrencies will be used by car manufacturers. "We expect the user of crypto assets to tenfold within the next 5 years.

"As there are no Google, Amazon or Facebook yet, well BTC and ETH might be settled but there is a long list of competitors behind them, we will see a couple of new blockchains rising Solana-like, with high profits."

Gottschalk adds that pump and dump schemes are still present, so advisory is crucial.

Regarding institutional crypto investors and stablecoins, Gottschalk said, "The market itself has not reached institutional investors in Germany and most of the other European countries, because of regulatory barriers, volatility, missing knowledge and research capacities."

"What we will see are more and more banking services to be found on blockchain. Car manufacturers will use blockchain for autonomous cars paying there parking tickets.

"New stablecoins by the ECB and other bigger banks in Europe on [a] Euro basis will be released and more and more funds investing into crypto under the supervision of the BaFin in Germany, the FMA in Liechtenstein and especially the CSSF in Luxemburg will be set up.

"This will lead to a more and more professionalized market, and perhaps lower volatility but high profits because of the steady cash-flow. IOT; WEB 4.0; Smart cities and the Metaverse will all be connected, and Blockchain will be the bridge between the parts."

While smart cities may sound far-fetched, a South Korean project is already working a smart city, powered by blockchain technology. Based on the roadmap, the smart city in South Korea is expected to be completed in Q4 of 2023.

Regarding crypto fraud, which is the new 'digital pandemic', the Federal Trade Commission report stated that over $1 billion in cryptos were stolen from 46,000 individuals since the beginning of 2021. 70% used Bitcoin to pay the scammers, followed by UST and ETH. The 25-40 age group is 3 times more likely to be scammed.