BNB Chain, closely linked to cryptocurrency exchange Binance, has surpassed Solana in daily fee generation, becoming the leading blockchain by this metric.
Data from analytics firm Nansen showed that the BNB chain’s daily fees surpassed $5.8 million on Feb. 13, outpacing Solana’s $3.3 million and amassing more than five times the total fees of Ethereum. The milestone marks the first time since Oct. 31, 2024 that a blockchain other than Ethereum or Solana has led the industry in daily fees.
A large portion of the fees generated on the BNB Chain can be attributed to PancakeSwap, a decentralized exchange that primarily runs on the BNB Chain.
PancakeSwap’s trading volume on February 13 was the highest among all cross-chain decentralized exchanges. The spike in activity wasn’t limited to the BNB Chain on the platform, as the chain also saw a recent surge in daily active addresses, surpassing both Tron and Ethereum to secure the second spot in that category.
However, with nearly 6 million active addresses last week, the BNB chain still lags behind Solana, which holds 35.8 million active addresses.
The surge in BNB Chain fee revenue and trading volume was driven in part by speculative meme coin trading, most notably the meteoric rise and fall of the Test (TST) token. Initially created as an educational token for the Four.Meme meme launchpad on the BNB Chain, TST experienced a speculative bubble that pushed its market cap to $500 million before it collapsed.
Although meme coins are often considered to lack intrinsic value, they have become one of the most popular use cases in crypto over the past year, attracting the attention of various figures, including former US President Donald Trump, who endorsed a pair of meme tokens. BNB Chain has expressed its support for the meme coin system as part of its 2025 roadmap.
The native token of the BNB chain, BNB, priced at $666.73, has seen a 15% increase in value over the past week. This growth has enabled BNB to overtake Solana’s SOL token to become the fifth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap.