Binance-founded layer-1 blockchain BNB Chain announced on Monday that it had launched a new layer-2 chain – opBNB. This L2 chain is designed to address the scalability challenges that have hindered the mass adoption of blockchain technology.
opBNB is an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible layer-2 chain. This means it works with Ethereum-based smart contracts, networks and ERC-20 token standards. The chain is powered by the Optimism OP Stack and is set to add security and scalability to the Binance blockchain network.
At the moment, the BNB Chain processes around 2,000 transactions per second, with an average transaction cost of $0.10. The development team expects opBNB to support more than 4,000 transactions per second, with an average transaction cost below $0.005. This improvement is made possible by the optimisation of data accessibility, the caching layer and adjusting the submission process algorithm to allow simultaneous operations.
In addition, the new L2 chain will enable the gas limit to be increased to 100 million per block from the 30 million Optimism currently allows. Data pulled from DefiLlama shows that BNB Chain is the third largest blockchain, behind Ethereum and Tron, in terms of DeFi total value locked, with a 24-hour volume of $264 million and roughly a million active daily users.
Optimism leverages Optimistic Rollups to scale transactions. It achieves this by automatically assuming the transaction data, which is processed off the root chain, is valid until it is invalidated. With the launch of opBNB, Binance is hoping to solve the scalability issues that have hindered the mass adoption of blockchain technology.
