On Sept. 6, Binance top-notch crypto exchange ecosystem announced the mainnet launch of Binance Smart Chain with smart contracts and Binance Coin (BNB) staking. Mostly, this release was welcomed by the blockchain community, but some experts criticize Binance Smart Chain design.
What does it take to build a public chain?
Jay Hao, CEO of Malta-based OKEx cryptocurrencies exchange that delivers spot and futures trading services, claimed that Binance Smart Chain should not be treated by experts and users as a "public" or "decentralized" one.
1/ To be called a public chain, a #blockchain needs to have 2 features: open source & open nodes.#Binance recently built a new chain where they are the sole validators (owning complete on-chain governance rights), yet the chain was promoted as a 'decentralized smart chain.'
— Jay Hao @OKEx (@JayHao8) September 13, 2020
He emphasizes that Binance (BNB) has developed a new "chain" acting as its one and only validator. The Binance team possesses exclusive on-chain governance rights. Despite this fact, the new product has been introduced as a "decentralized smart chain."
Also, Mr. Hao recalled a recent controversial decision by Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao. CZ assisted in recovering 800 BNB (about $20,000), sent by mistake to a contract address on Binance Smart Chain.
Mr. Hao interprets this policy as "allowance to change the on-chain data" anytime without decentralized governance.
New race of "Ethereum killers"
Finally, Mr. Hao added that Binance's approach to its new product as a "public chain" not only damages the crypto community, but it may also cause a regression of the entire decentralized financial instruments (DeFi) segment.
Binance Smart Chain is very dangerous competitor of all existing dApp hosting platforms due to its full compatibility with Ethereum (ETH), the most recognized and well-documented smart contract platform.
As covered by CryptoComes previously, the former leader of Monero (XMR) protocol, Riccardo Spagni (@fluffypony), admitted that Binance Smart Chain will likely replace Ethereum (ETH) with Polkadot (DOT) as another potential target of dApps migration.