Do such words as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Web3, and NFT ring any bells to you? We would be quite positive that ‘yes’. There are very few people around the world who have never heard about Bitcoin and the stories of how early crypto enthusiasts overnight from simple coders became rich people. Since that time, the buzz around cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin, dApps, NFT, DeFi, ICO, and other realities of Web3 has never been muted. What we see is that they are only changing the volume from too loud to bearable and back to ear-shuttering again. One of the recent news coming from the Web3 battlefield is the growth of DeFi and dApps acting as gateways to the DeFi ecosystem. Some traditional financial institutions acknowledge the potential Web3 solutions and predict some crypto projects becoming new eBays and Amazons in the future.
What are Blockchain, Ethereum, and Binance?
Blockchain is the technology of making blocks and writing there all the transactions taking place. Participants in blockchain activities are auditing transactions and verifying them independently and anonymously. The first ever blockchain is Bitcoin which acts as a distributed ledger for Bitcoin digital currency. Since 2009 when Bitcoin was launched and until the end of 2021, the total value of all bitcoins is estimated to be over $1.03 trillion.
Nevertheless, Bitcoin is not the only blockchain in the Web3 ecosystem, another growing and actively developing blockchain is Ethereum. It was conceived by a Russian-Canadian programmer in 2013. Two years later Ethereum became the first blockchain to unleash the power of smart contracts which triggered the development of various decentralized applications (dApps). Ethereum has a large community of developers, its development languages, and support from companies all around the world.
At the same time, the Ethereum blockchain experiences some issues, mostly this is network congestion and connected slow speed of transactions and huge gas fees irrespective of the sum of transactions. That’s why some Web3 service providers started looking for a more economically sustainable Ethereum alternative, which at the same time could enable dApps creation.
One of the most successful blockchain projects which created its own blockchain for dApps development is Binance, an online cryptocurrency exchange. It is also one of the first exchanges which facilitated blockchain adoption for millions of users by providing cryptowallets to store digital currencies.
What are Binance Chain and Binance Smart Chain?
Binance exchange introduced the Binance Chain in 2019 with the idea to facilitate reliable, fast, and decentralized transactions. It was mainly developed to reinforce trading, that’s why quite soon its scalability issues became obvious. Moreover, Binance Chain didn’t have the capacity for smart contract development and was not compatible with Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which is a very important part of smart contract creation. EVM is a sandboxed environment for smart contract development and testing. That’s why Binance Smart Chain (BSC) came into existence in 2020 and became the robust platform for DeFi, DAOs, and other dApps development with low transaction fees and only 3 seconds for block development.
The two blockchains: Binance Chain and BSC work in parallel, when BSC is in charge of scalability, while Binance Chain is responsible for high throughput. Such a successful tandem couldn’t help but be noticed by blockchain enthusiasts, which made it one of the most popular mainstream blockchains of Web3. As for the end of 2021, BSC had more than 120 million addresses registered with a volume of transactions of around 14 mln a day.
Why build a DApp on Binance Smart Chain?
Binance application development offers several advantages, including:
- faster transactions,
- lower transaction fees,
- high level of security,
- fast and easy deployment,
- interoperability with other blockchain networks,
- access to a large and growing user base.
One notable feature of Binance Smart Chain is its ability to integrate smoothly with the Ethereum ecosystem. This has resulted in many popular DeFi projects migrating to the Binance platform. DeFi, short for decentralized finance, refers to financial applications that operate on blockchain technology without intermediaries, allowing users to have greater control over their assets. By migrating to the BSC ecosystem, DeFi projects provide their users with access to a broad range of decentralized exchanges (DEXs), yield farming platforms, lending and borrowing protocols, and more.
How to build a DApp on Binance Smart Chain?
Everyone knows that Web2 app development is easier than Web3 or dApp development. The first one has all the needed tools and frameworks settled and ready to use, while the latter due to its nascent nature is still in its infant state. To some degree dApp development still lacks fundamental middleware and tooling. Also, Web3 differs from Web2 in more than one development environment; it means that different blockchains have their characteristics, bringing different development environments. Binance Smart Chain made its tooling compatible with the Ethereum blockchain, which is the leading blockchain enabling dApp development, thus managing to combine the cost-effectiveness of the network with the advanced development capacities.
Similar to traditional apps, dApps are made of three main elements: backend, smart contracts, and user interface (UI). Let’s discuss these main elements of dApp development in detail.
DApp user interface
Front-end development in Web3 is similar to the one in Web2, analogous tools and programming languages are used. UI for Web2 and Web3 should be clear and user-friendly, and similar guidelines and principles should be followed. The most popular tools for Web3 front-end development are JavaScript, CSS, and HTML. Also, app developers should master Web3.js, a special library that helps to connect the UI of the app and smart contracts enabling dApp functionality.
Binance smart contract development
Smart contracts are the pillars of the financial ecosystem in Web3. Binance Smart Chain development includes smart contract creation for Decentralized Finance, centralized and decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges, Web3 multi-level marketing, and dApps. Smart contract development needs professionals skilled in Solidity and Viper as well as some Python smart contract development frameworks such as Brownie. Also, the project requires a clear understanding of smart contract use cases as well as the company’s business goals. Starting from the idea, the smart contract architecture is created, then the smart contract is built. Later on, during the stage of the audit, it’s crucial to fix errors and optimize Binance smart contracts to ward off vulnerabilities.
DApp back-end development
Building server connections for your dApp is one of the most difficult tasks in Web3 development. This is a time-consuming process, requiring skilled developers and a lot of resources. Moreover, the database connected to Web3 dApp should be scalable and operate cross-chain, which means built in an agnostic fashion. This lets dApps grow and operate on other blockchains welcoming more users from other networks. At the same time, there are some companies, for example, Moralis, specializing in codeless dApp back-end integration.
Basic Binance Smart Chain DApp development tools
To create, deploy, and interact with binance DApps, you will need a few essential tools.
- Binance Smart Chain Wallet. This is a browser extension wallet that connects users to DApps on the Binance Smart Chain. It allows them to manage accounts and sign transactions seamlessly and securely.
- Binance Smart Chain Testnet. Testnet allows developers to test and debug their DApps in a safe environment before deploying to the mainnet, minimizing risks and ensuring stable functionality.
- BSC Studio. It’s a powerful and easy-to-use graphical integrated development environment that allows for developing smart contracts on BSC. BSC Studio runs on both web and desktop environments and supports all major OSs.
Types of Binance-based DApps
Binance Smart Chain development embodies mostly DeFi dApp development enabling such types of apps as staking platform development, DEX and CEX, yield farming, token development, NFT, Binance trading app, and wallet development. Binance chain and BSC allow the following functionality for the dApps:
- BNB Sending and receiving;
- new token issuing;
- token sending, receiving, burning/minting, freezing/unfreezing;
- sending orders to sell or buy assets via on-chain trading pairs creation.
Also, Binance could host gaming platforms, such as BLINK and RocketGame.
Summary
Binance dApp development is a new trend in the Web3 ecosystem and it has great potential for bringing functionality similar to Ethereum-based dApps. Developers skilled in Ethereum dApp development find no difficulties switching to BSC. Another good point is the low transaction fees on BSC, which are around 20 times less compared to fees on Ethereum. The speed of new block creation, which is only 3 seconds, is also a big advantage that allows fast-paced dApp infrastructure creation.
If you are interested in Binance application development and would like to discuss it, let us know by sending a line or scheduling a call with our experts. Itexus could be either a valuable consultant partner for your development team or get all the needed work done for you.