BNB Chain Saw a Major Uplift in Its Financial Metrics in Q1 2025, Total Fees Hitting $70.8M

In the first quarter of 2025, BNB Chain experienced a significant surge in its financial performance. As macroeconomic trends unfolded and crypto markets showed resilience, the blockchain ecosystem achieved notable milestones in its revenue generation and key metrics.

According to Messari data, BNB Chain's total fees reached $70.8 million in Q1, a 58.1% increase from the previous quarter's $44.6 million. This stellar performance was closely followed by a substantial 58% rise in BNB-denominated revenue.

The peak in total fees was attained on January 18 with a record high of 517 million. This surge was largely driven by the memecoin’s grass-roots virality.

Further analysis by Messari researcher Charles Wang reveals that the short-term boom can be attributed to both speculation momentum and sustained growth in wallet-level participation. Transactions between wallets saw a 122.6% quarter-over-quarter surge, contributing 19,266 BNB and outperforming DeFi in gas fee contributions.

Despite a 7.6% increase in revenue, Defi's market share slipped to 8.4%, overtaken by this new trend in peer-to-peer on-chain activity. Meanwhile, stablecoin transactions contributed 5,745.1 BNB, rendering a 5.2% revenue share, highlighting consistent user demand for asset transfers.

As BNB’s deflationary model continues to shrink the circulating supply with the assistance of the auto-burn, gas burn, and Pioneer Burn policies, the burning activity is heating up. At the end of Q1, the circulating supply was 142.5 million, presenting an annualized deflation of 4.6%.

The 30th burn of the quarter saw 1.6 million BNB, valued at $1.2 billion, being removed from circulation. The increasing use of gas burn, reaching 10% of the total gas fees, was crucial in sustaining this mechanism.

In terms of consensus, the BNB Chain, powered by its Proof-of-Staked Authority protocol, demonstrated increased decentralization. The Feynman update saw the number of validators increase to 45.

Healthy levels of validator participation were also observed, with 30.4 million being staked by the quarter’s end. Although the USD value decreased due to the price decline, the BNB Chain ranked third among all PoS chains in staked funds, surging past Sui.

February saw the Pascal hard fork bring the BNB Chain closer to Ethereum compatibility through EIP-7702 and BEP-439, introducing temporary smart contract functionality in EOAs and signature aggregation.

This technological advancement sets up BNB for increased support of dApps and user adoption. It also paves the way for two future upgrades, Lorentz and Maxwell, that will further drive scalability.

In the DeFi space, Kernel experienced a 655.6% surge in TVL following the launch of its restaking protocol. While there were declines in TVL at Venus Finance and PancakeSwap, Kernel’s stellar growth showcases the market demand for novel yield optimization innovations, especially those backed by incentives and converging funds.