As Binance turns 2, we celebrate its birthday by reflecting on its top 10 achievements during the past two years (i.e. since it went live on 14 July 2017).

Just 165 days after Binance was launched, it became the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange (by trading volume), and it has successfully managed to maintain this position since then:

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Now, let’s look back at some of Binance’s most impressive achievements in its first two years of existence.

Trust Wallet

  • Trust Wallet was launched in November 2017 as a non-custodial open source cryptocurrency wallet app that supported Ethereum and Ethereum-based tokens (ERC20, ERC223 and ERC721).
  • Binance announced on 31 July 2018 that it had completed the acquisition of Trust Wallet.
  • Soon after it was acuired by Binance, support for other coins started to appear, and Trsut Wallet turned into a multi cryptocurrency wallet. 
  • Currently, Trust Wallet provides support for 35 blockchains—including Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ethereum (ETH), XRP, Stellar (XLM), Litecoin (LTC), Ethereum Classic (ETC), TRON (TRX), Wanchain (WAN), Dash (DASH), ICON (ICX), EOS, , Kin (KIN), Nimiq (NIM), Aion (AION), Tezos (XTZ), Dogecoin (DOGE), Binance Chain (BNB), Cosmos (ATOM), Qtum (QTUM), and Zilliqa (ZIL)—as well as 20,000+ ERC20-compatible, ERC223-compatible, or ERC721-compatible Ethereum tokens (such as Basic Attention Token or Augur):

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Binance Labs

  • Binance Labs, “the venture arm of Binance and an initiative to incubate, invest, and empower blockchain and cryptocurrency entrepreneurs, projects, and communities”, was launched in February 2018.
  • What it does is provide project teams with seed funding, mentorship, networking opportunities, and other resources (such as “support for startup formation, regulatory/legal advice, recruiting, technical execution, fundraising, marketing/PR”).
  • One of the projects backed by Binance Labs is Elrond (ERD).

Binance Info and Binance Academy

  • On 20 September 2018, Binance announced version 2.0 of Binance Info, which is “designed to enable users to quickly learn about each project and the network and services it provides.”
  • Binance said at the time that Info 2.0 “may be the most comprehensive compilation of third-party rating reports on blockchain projects that’s available,” and that for this upgrade, it had “compiled resources from more than 50 rating agencies, capital and media across the globe to build a library of nearly 1,000 reports.”
  • On 2 October 2018, in a Medium blog post, Binance said that Binance Info is “a comprehensive, objective information service platform focusing on project details, news, market data, ratings, and reports on crypto assets,” and that its “coverage spans multiple data sources and rating agencies, putting it in a position to be the trusted hub of cryptocurrency information.” 
  • On 14 August 2018, Binance announced the launch of Binance Academy, which it called “an educational initiative to provide free resources for the next generation of blockchain enthusiasts.” 
  • On 11 December 2018, Binance announced that version 1.0 of Binance Academy had gone live, and that “more than 450 blockchain and cryptocurrency articles and videos across 15 popular languages” had been released on this day.

Binance Research

  • Binance introduced its analysis division, Binance Research, on 6 December 2018, and said that Binance Research would provide “quality analysis on cryptocurrencies and the blockchain projects they represent.”
  • Binance Research says that its free institutional-grade reports, which are compiled following consultation with the senior management of project teams, offer: strategy insights (“granular detail on commercial & go-to-market strategy”); proprietary data (“accurate usage & adoption metrics”); full transparency (“verified token economics, governance & planning”); and code overview (“private code development progress overview”).

Binance Launchpad

  • It was on 15 November 2017 at the Bitcoin Future Conference where Changpeng Zhao (aka “CZ”), Co-Founder and CEO at Binance, introduced Binance Launchpad for the first time:
  • In December 2017, Binance Launchpad was successful in selling US$6 million worth of BREAD tokens within 216 seconds and $3.4 million worth of GIFTO tokens in 98 seconds.
  • However, it was not until January 2019 when Binance’s token launch plaform really started to make a name for itself. On 3 January 2019, Binance announced that one new token would be launched every month in 2019, starting with BitTorrent (3 February 2019) and Fetch.AI (2 March 2019). 
  • Since then, there have been four other highly successful initial exchange offerings (IEOs) on Binance Launchpad: Celer Network; Matic Network; Harmony; and (most recently) Elrond.

Binance Charity Foundation

  • Binance’s charity wing, Binance Charity Foundation (BCF) was launched in 2018. 
  • BCF is “dedicated to making global sustainable development more efficient and impactful with the use of blockchain” since Binance believes that “the use of blockchain technology on the charity ecosystem will result in a more efficient and transparent system of distributing donations to those who need it the most.”
  • In July 2018, Helen Hai, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) Goodwill Ambassador for industrialization in Africa and a 2015 Young Global Leader (YGL) of World Economic Forum, was hired to lead BCF. 
  • The main goals of BCF are: “Improve the transparency of philanthropy donation”; “Accelerate global sustainable development”; and “Expand the use case for cryptocurrencies”.

Fiat-to-Crypto Exchanges 

  • On 15 October 2018, Binance announced the official launch of the Binance Uganda crypto exchange, and said that Ugandan Shillings (UGX) based trading pairs would be offered for Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH).  
  • On 16 January 2019, Binance announced the launch of Binance Jersey, its first fiat-to-crypto exchange in Europe, and said that this exchange would initially be offering the following trading pairs:  BTC/GBP, ETH/GBP, BTC/EUR, and ETH/EUR.
  • Earlier this month (on July 10), Binance announced the official public launch of Binance Singapore, a fiat-to-crypto platform for buying crypto with Singapore Dollars (SGD). Binance Singapore allows residents of Singapore to buy and sell Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), and Binance Coin (BNB) using the following trading pairs: BTC-SGD, ETH-SGD, and BNB-SGD.

Binance Chain

  • This is what the Binance team wrote about Binance Chain on 13 March 2018, the day that the development process for this project was officially launched:

As a public blockchain, Binance Chain will mainly focus on the transfer and trading of blockchain assets, as well as provide new possibilities for the future flow of blockchain assets. Binance Chain will focus on performance, ease-of-use, and liquidity. Binance Coin (BNB) will be upgraded to exist on its own blockchain mainnet, becoming a native coin. At the same time, Binance will transition from being a company to a community.

  • The main design goals for Binance Chain were no custody of funds, high performance, low cost, ease of use, fair trading, and the ability to evolve over time. 
  • Here are the things you can do on Binance Chain: “Send and receive BNB”; “Issue new tokens”; “Send, receive, burn/mint and freeze/unfreeze tokens”; “Propose to create trading pairs between two different tokens”; and “Send orders to buy or sell assets through trading pairs created on the chain”.
  • Binance Coin (BNB) is the native asset on Binance Chain.
  • On April 18, Binance announced that the Binance Chain mainnet had been launched.

Binance DEX

  • On April 23, less than a week after the launch of the Binance Chain mainnet, Binance announced that its decentralized exchange (DEX) platform, Binance DEX, which is built on top of Binance Chain, had gone live after a two-month testing period, and that trading would start within a few days.
  • On April 25, Binance DEX listed its first trading pair: MITH/BNB.

Margin Trading

  • On July 11, Binance announced the official public launch of its Margin Trading service.
  • Margin trading is now available to all eligible users―with the exception of the residents of the United States and five other jurisdictions)―on Binance’s centralized exchange platform (Binance.com), which is now sporting the new Binance 2.0 user interface:

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