A Brief Introduction

Binance Smart Chain is a blockchain service by Binance that runs in parallel to the Binance Chain, which is the home of Binance’ BNB currency and was launched in September 2020. It’s an independent blockchain that could run even if Binance Chain went offline, so it’s not a “layer two” or off-chain scalability solution.

BSC allows developers to build their own decentralized apps using smart contracts. The original Binance Chain wasn’t built to allow such functionality, but the Binance Smart Chain has been designed to provide the same fast transactions and at the same time expanding the available features and capabilities. 

BSC is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which means it’s capable of running dapps ported over from Ethereum (creators of dapps on other blockchains can port them over to Binance Smart Chain with relative ease).

Binance Smart Chain utilizes a hybrid of delegated Proof of Stake and Proof of Authority which it calls “Proof of Staked Authority” (similar consensus mechanism to the one utilized by EOS as participants must stake BNB to be nominated for a network validator role).

The advantages of Binance Smart Chain

• Cheap transactions. In times of high congestion of the Ethereum network, the same transaction could cost a lot more on Ethereum compared to BSC.
• Gas prices on BSC are relatively constant and the average transaction fee has hovered around $0.15.
• Faster adoption than the organic growth of a smart blockchain project since BSC is backed by a big entity like Binance.
• Developers have established several cross-chain bridges so BSC users can easily move tokens from one blockchain network to another.

To conclude, more efficient blockchains that enable faster and less cost intensive operations of DeFi applications is a positive development for the entire ecosystem.

How to Receive BNB and BEP20 Tokens using MetaMask

Configuring your BSC wallet:

You might notice straight away that we’re still dealing with an Ethereum wallet. At best, this won’t work with Binance Smart Chain DApps. At worst, you could lose funds by sending them to addresses you can’t actually use.

Let’s change that. We want to access the Settings to point the wallet towards Binance Smart Chain nodes.

On the Settings page, we want to locate the Networks menu.

We want to click Add Network in the top-right corner to manually add the Binance Smart Chain one – it doesn’t come packaged with MetaMask. Below are the parameters to fill in.

Mainnet 

Network Name: Smart Chain

New RPC URL: https://bsc-dataseed.binance.org/

ChainID: 56

Symbol: BNB

Block Explorer URL: https://bscscan.com

Once you Save the Network and return to the main view, you’ll notice two things: the network has automatically been set to the one you just entered, and the units are no longer denominated in ETH, but in BNB.

Your Binance Smart Chain (BSC) wallet is now ready to receive BNB and BEP20 tokens only! Remember you will need to have some BNB in your wallet to pay for the transaction costs (Gas fees) if you want to perform a transfer or buy any BEP20 token (since BSC requires BNB to pay for any transaction executed on the network).

More info:  https://academy.binance.com/en/articles/connecting-metamask-to-binance-smart-chain