Binance Starts Building Its Own Blockchain and Decentralized Exchange

Binance announced on March 13, 2018 that it had begun developing Binance Chain, a public blockchain intended to support the transfer and trading of digital assets. The exchange also said BNB, then an ERC-20 token on Ethereum, would be upgraded to become the planned network’s native coin.

That distinction matters: the March 13 record was a development announcement, not a mainnet launch. Binance did not publish running code, a production network, a launch date, validator design, consensus specification or completed token-migration procedure in the announcement. What it did publish was a strategic commitment to build exchange infrastructure at the protocol layer rather than rely only on its centralized trading venue.

An exchange proposes its own settlement layer

Binance framed the project around performance, ease of use and liquidity. Its stated premise was that centralized and decentralized exchanges would coexist and complement each other. Binance Chain was therefore presented as infrastructure for moving and trading blockchain assets, with a decentralized exchange as the clearest intended application.

The proposal addressed a visible trade-off in cryptocurrency markets in March 2018. Centralized exchanges could concentrate orders and provide a familiar trading experience, but users depended on an operator for custody and execution. Decentralized exchanges aimed to reduce that dependency by allowing users to transact through blockchain-based systems, yet contemporaneous implementations commonly faced thinner liquidity and less polished interfaces. Binance’s announcement amounted to a claim that it could bring more of the centralized-exchange experience to an on-chain venue.

That claim was prospective. The announcement supplied goals, not evidence that the design could meet them. Without published technical details, users could not yet evaluate throughput, governance, validator independence, listing controls, cross-chain asset handling or the degree to which the future exchange would actually reduce reliance on Binance.

BNB moves from platform token toward protocol asset

The BNB commitment was the announcement’s most concrete economic element. Binance said the Ethereum-based token would eventually exist as the native coin of the new mainnet. That would change BNB’s technical role: instead of remaining solely a token issued on another network and associated with Binance’s exchange, it was intended to become the base asset of Binance Chain.

On March 13, 2018, however, no completed migration had occurred. BNB remained an ERC-20 token, and holders had no announced event-day conversion timetable in the cited notice. Treating the proposed native coin as already operational would collapse a future plan into a present fact.

Contemporaneous reports described a sharp BNB price response after the announcement, but the surviving articles use different percentage figures and do not provide a common exchange, quote currency, timestamp convention or start-and-end window. Coinburn therefore makes no calculated market-return claim for March 13. The defensible conclusion is narrower: reporters observed a positive reaction, while the exact magnitude cannot be standardized from the cited records alone.

Why the announcement mattered

The significance was institutional as much as technical. An exchange operator was proposing to own or organize more of the stack beneath asset issuance, transfer and trading, while tying its existing token to that infrastructure. If delivered, the plan could make Binance simultaneously a centralized marketplace, a blockchain sponsor and the steward of a native asset used within the new network.

That combination also created unanswered governance questions. Binance said it wanted to move from a company toward a community, but the March 13 announcement did not define who would control software changes, validators, listings or emergency decisions. The central fact for the date is therefore neither a completed decentralization nor a demonstrated public network. It is Binance’s verified decision to start building a purpose-designed chain and decentralized exchange, with BNB designated for eventual native status.