Cryptocurrency research firm Messari has revealed that Binance’s smart contract blockchain endured a tough run in Q2
Messari has shared a report detailing that Binance Smart Chain is slowly losing its status. Ethereum, in the meantime, has flourished and is regaining its spot as the go-to decentralised finance platform. The analytics firm also noted that decentralised exchanges surpassed the 10% share in trading volumes of centralised exchanges for the first time since November last year.
Binance Smart Chain, a blockchain affiliated with the now troubled Binance, is feeling the effects of the market slump and other external battles that the parent firm has been enduring. The company has been on the radar of regulators in the US, UK, Japan and Thailand in the last few months.
In Thailand, the Securities and Exchange Commission has taken the path of pressing criminal charges against the exchange, while in the UK, the Financial Conduct Authority asked for consumer caution and also banned Binance Markets Limited, a company incorporated in the UK. Cut-off by partners such as UK bank Barclays, and payment processor Clear Junction, Binance has struggled to regain its ground.
In the report, Messari highlighted the state of decentralised exchanges. DEX platforms typically allow investors to buy and sell their digital assets without an intermediary and are different from the contemporary crypto exchanges such as Kraken and Coinbase. The volumes of traded assets in DEXs bettered in Q2, reaching $405 billion, representing a significant rise of 83% from Q1.
However, as the quarter has progressed, the volumes have experienced a decline with BSC suffering the biggest blow. Compared to the same period (Q2) last year, the volumes being traded in DEXs rose 117X from the then $3.4 billion. Still, Messari noted that trading of more than 50% of the $405 billion volume was done in May. The May numbers fell by more than half in June.
“Combined with a series of hacks and exploits on BSC leading to hundreds of millions of dollars in losses, BSC saw speculation dry up dramatically in June”, Messari observed.
Uniswap, which runs on the Ethereum blockchain, released Uniswap V3 in May, and the new version has taken off quite well, according to the report. The launch of Uniswap V3 brought to an end the brief period that PancakeSwap enjoyed at the top. The new V3 already has more than 40% of the DEX market share, establishing itself as the preferred platform. Messari further points out that Polygon has been a huge success and is part of entities slowly pushing out Binance’s BSC.
“The rise of Polygon also played a significant role in eating away Binance Smart Chain’s share of decentralised exchange volumes. As the party shifted towards Polygon […], BSC was squeezed out of the picture”.