What does BNB Greenfield reveal about Zhao Changpeng’s ambitions?

On February 1, the BNB Greenfield white paper was released. This blockchain, which is positioned as a side chain of the BNB Chain, has the main function of synchronizing storage and computing on one chain. Because it is a side chain of the BNB Chain, it can directly receive its traffic and data. For Binance, taking storage into its own hands is conducive to the further improvement of its own ecology.

The industry also has high expectations for BNB Greenfield. The decentralized storage track has been developed for many years, and its main application is still limited to personal and small-scale data storage. With the development of Layer2 and Layer3, the requirements for the computing power of the storage public chain are getting higher and higher. The outbreak of large-scale applications in the industry must rely on the innovation of "storage", the cornerstone of the industry. The innovation of an industry giant in storage seems to be able to promote the development of the industry ecosystem to achieve a qualitative leap.

After carefully reading the BNB Greenfield white paper and comparing it with other storage projects in the industry, Golden Finance found that the BNB Greenfield that Binance is about to launch is not just a technological innovation. It reveals Binance’s ambition to further develop in the industry in the future: to seize the Web2 market, to help the industry realize the true assetization of data, and even to pave the way for Binance to develop in the socialfi field in the future...

Poor scalability is the pain point of decentralized storage industry

First of all, we need to make it clear that decentralized storage is the cornerstone of Web3.0.

The decentralized storage track, which exists as the cornerstone of the industry, has always been a red ocean of competition. Whether it is the old batch of storage projects represented by Storj, Sia, Arweave, and Filecoin, or the short-lived Swarm and Chia, they have all caused a lot of discussion at the level of technological innovation, and hope to bring some innovations to the storage track through their own efforts.

At present, decentralized storage is mostly an extension of the IPFS protocol (a network transmission protocol designed to achieve distributed storage, sharing and persistence of files). The well-known Filecoins is built on this protocol, while Crust, Storj, etc. support this protocol. The advantages of this storage method are: the storage fee is the lowest, and the storage database is decentralized. But it also faces problems: poor programmability, imperfect ecology, and weak computing power.

For this reason, most decentralized cloud storage at this stage is static storage, and data cannot be programmable. At present, the needs of some dapps that only need to store static content such as articles, videos, NFTs, etc. can be met by existing decentralized cloud storage projects. For example, Mirror, a well-known media platform project in the industry, stores data on Arweave. However, dapps that require high computing and real-time information processing are not suitable for storage in existing decentralized storage projects, such as gamefi and socialfi projects that require real-time interaction. In the last round of bull market, some metaverses that became popular, such as gamefi projects, were often criticized for their lag and other shortcomings, which are actually related to storage.

In the industry, this problem of storage is called low scalability. The pain points of decentralized storage must be solved with the development of web3. Existing storage projects are actually moving in this direction. For example, the leading storage project Filecoin has introduced the virtual machine FVM, which also introduced smart contract programming into its network, which can make decentralized cloud storage truly interactive.

BNB Greenfield is aware of these problems that exist in the industry. It has learned from the lessons and experience of other decentralized storage projects and designed it to be a blockchain that can both calculate and store data.

For developers, development will become easier, and there is no need to develop computing and storage on two chains separately. For individuals, since storage and computing are based on the same account, the user's data sovereignty can be more clearly defined.

Only through the confirmation and circulation of data can the data be maximized.

Based on the vision of its white paper, we can see that BNB Greenfield hopes to realize the assetization of data.

In the world of web2, data is also an asset, but due to the centralized storage of data, this asset is in the hands of large companies, and individuals cannot monetize their data. However, BNB Greenfield allows smart contracts to interact with users' own data assets, and ownership and reading permissions can be managed by the EOA wallet on the BNB Smart Chain in a financial way through NFT. In this way, data is not only in one's own hands, but also a channel is established for individuals to "sell" their own data.

In the white paper, it is clearly stated that future use cases of BNB Greenfield may include "authors can easily publish digitally and sell their works directly on the BNB Smart Chain through smart contracts."

For example, if the electronic version of a novel is put on a public storage chain, the public storage chain is just a decentralized storage tool for the author. However, this novel has multiple rights, such as copyright, copyright, film adaptation rights, etc. These rights are valuable and can create income in the future. After the rights are confirmed on the chain, they become assets.

This cannot be achieved relying solely on the existing public storage chain. It requires the cooperation of smart contracts and DAPP. What Binance is trying now is to turn data into assets through the combination of BNB Greenfield + BSC.

Why is the assetization of data important? This is because after the data is confirmed, it is promoted to circulate in the market and resources are allocated by the market, so that the value of data can be truly realized. Promoting the confirmation of ownership and liquidity of an item is actually the underlying law of the prosperity of capitalist society. Using blockchain to realize ownership and smart contracts to realize circulation, we can look forward to the day when personal data assets are truly in our own hands and can be used by individuals.

Zhao Changpeng’s ambition is not only in storage

In order to attract web2 developers and users, BNB Greenfield's API is designed to be similar to the popular cloud storage system. Its team also announced that the development of its test network was carried out in cooperation with Amazon Cloud Computing Services, NodeReal and Blockdaemon.

All of this shows BNB Greenfield's ambition to seize the Web2 market and users. BNB Greenfield improves its efficiency by sacrificing some degree of decentralization. In fact, it allows more Web2 users and applications to use it for storage.

In the industry, the data storage of large exchanges including Binance still relies on centralized storage service providers such as Amazon Cloud and Alibaba Cloud. It sounds absurd that web3 enterprises choose web2 centralized storage services. But this actually reflects the dilemma of the development of the decentralized storage track. Its data storage capacity, efficiency, and services cannot meet the needs of large enterprises. Binance "goes into the sea" and hopes to hold storage in its own hands, and no longer frequently "unplug the network cable" due to failures of external cloud storage.

BNB Greenfield does not issue new tokens. Users rent storage space and pay BNB. Nodes provide security for the public chain and earn BNB. Similarly, storage service providers also earn BNB. After BNB Greenfield goes online, we can see that for BNB, its valuation seems to be on a new narrative template. At that time, BNB will be used as a token for three public chains and will be applied in more scenarios. This is undoubtedly a big benefit to BNB. From the setting of this economic model, it is not difficult to see that Changpeng Zhao has been trying to empower BNB in ​​various ways.

Looking at the development of Binance, we can see that its ecosystem covers multiple sectors, including DeFi, NFT, GameFi, Metaverse, cross-chain, derivatives, infrastructure, etc., covering almost all areas of the on-chain world.

This time, the use cases mentioned in the BNB Greenfield white paper include "new ways of decentralized social media can be built on BNB Greenfield". This seems to indicate the direction in which Binance will focus its efforts next, and perhaps some energy will be placed on decentralized social networking. As the only existing blockchain application direction that has not yet achieved a big explosion, it is foreseeable that decentralized social networking will achieve leapfrog development in the next round of bull market.

Zhao Changpeng’s ambition may not only be to build a public storage chain, he also wants to firmly grasp any trends and opportunities in the industry in his own hands.