Binance Tightens Grip on Web3 Wallet Market—Leaves Competitors Scrambling

Another quarter, another dominance play by Binance. The crypto behemoth’s Web3 wallet just ate more market share—because apparently, decentralization means letting one exchange call all the shots.

Key moves: Seamless BNB chain integration, predatory fee structures (disguised as ’user incentives’), and that classic crypto growth hack: making competitors look like dial-up wallets in a 5G world.

Meanwhile, traditional finance bros are still trying to figure out if Web3 wallets work with their Bloomberg terminals. Spoiler: They don’t.

The chief reason behind the expansion of the wallet service is the zero-fee campaign started in March, which is expected to run until September. The campaign has already led to noticeable results in terms of BNB Chain daily users and trading volumes through the native wallet. 

Binance Wallet reaches peak trading volumes

On May 7, daily trading volumes for Binance Wallet reached an all-time high of over $574M. The daily result reflects several months of growth, mostly driven by wallet-based swaps and DEX activity. 

The wallet flipped MetaMask as the go-to wallet for fast swaps, especially after the zero-fee campaign. Over that period, MetaMask has carried significant fees for routing and a worse swap price compared to other wallets. 

The low fee policy seems to work for Binance, with new plans to further lower gas expenses for traders and token users. Binance Smart Chain may go through another fee reduction, boosting on-chain usage. 

Binance’s Web3 wallet is also the hub for new token sales for all accounts that hold 3 BNB in their wallets. Regular new TGE events and airdrops, as well as the daily Binance Alpha curated tokens reflects demand for new assets and a loyal community.

Binance Smart Chain boosts DEX activity

Binance Smart Chain showed rapid growth in its DEX activity. In the past week, volumes expanded by 18.8%, reaching a total of $2.09B. With this activity level, Binance Smart Chain is closing in on solana with $2.89B in weekly DEX trading volumes. 

The chain routinely surpasses Ethereum, which achieves $1.79B in weekly DEX activity.

The growth on BSC is driven by the PancakeSwap market, which grew by over 23% in a week. BSC DEX activity started to pick up in April, as daily volumes broke consistently above $1B. In the first week of May, BSC posted outlier DEX volumes, the highest seen since March. 

BSC DEX activity peaked around January 22, with $4.4B in total volumes. BSC has achieved consistent growth, though still not breaking its 2021-2022 trading records. The current increase in activity tracks the performance of wrapped BTC, stablecoin, as well as top BSC versions of meme tokens like PEPE, as well as native memes from Four.meme.

As a result of the renewed interest and demand for swaps, the native BNB token expanded to a one-month peak. BNB traded at $614.59, setting up expectations for a more significant breakout.

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