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$6.2 billion worth of Binance’s BNB token “Magically” Appeared Onchain
If a blockchain is meant to keep a permanent, immutable record of transactions, shouldn’t it do so? Except that some transactions are more traceble than others, especially on BNB Chain.
TLDR:
- US$6.2 billion of BNB tokens “magically” appear in a Binance Chain (BNB Beacon Chain) wallet without any transaction reflecting their transfer in.
- Token movements between the Binance Chain (BNB Beacon Chain) and Binance Smart Chain (BNB Smart Chain) have periodically not had transaction hashes to identify such transfers.
- Attempts to run a blockchain node on Binance Chain (BNB Beacon Chain) have proved futile as there are “breaks” in the chain every 24 hours.
By now, there are serious questions hanging over the “blockchain-ness” of cryptocurrency exchange Binance’s various blockchains (BNB Beacon Chain, BNB Smart Chain), and whether or not they’re really operated as blockchains or somewhat more cynically as nothing more than centralized databases with a veneer of “decentralization.”
In order to make sense of the madness, it’s important to start from the beginning — Binance’s BNB token.
Launched in 2017, Binance’s BNB was intended to have a maximum supply of 200 million, as recorded in its whitepaper, of which 100 million was for the initial coin offering to outside investors, 80 million to the founding team (over a four year vesting period) and 20 million for angel investors.
In 2019, Binance launched the Binance Chain (since renamed to BNB Beacon Chain), which uses the Cosmos SDK and was intended to support decentralized exchanges, primarily Binance’s DEX.
So far so good.
Then in 2020, Binance went ahead with its Binance Smart Chain (since renamed to BNB Smart Chain), an Ethereum clone that could support smart contracts.
The importance of the two Binance chains and their relationship with each other will become apparent shortly.
In mid-December 2022, Twitter user @cryptohippo65 noted that 22 million BNB tokens had…
