BNB Chain flips Solana in daily fees, beats out all chains

Binance-backed BNB Chain steals some of Solana’s memecoin thunder to lead all chains in fees.
Binance-backed BNB Chain steals some of Solana’s memecoin thunder to lead all chains in fees.

Binance-linked BNB Chain leapfrogged Solana in daily fees to lead all blockchains, according to Nansen data.

BNB Chain generated over $5.8 million in daily fees on Feb. 13, surpassing Solana’s $3.3 million and totaling more than five times the sum of Ethereum.

This marked the first time since Halloween 2024 — when Bitcoin had a standout day — that a blockchain other than Ethereum or Solana led the industry in daily fees.

BNB Chain leads all chains in daily fees. Source: Nasen

PancakeSwap leads decentralized exchange volume

A major chunk of BNB Chain’s activities came from PancakeSwap, a decentralized exchange (DEX) that operates on multiple chains but generates most of its trading volume on BNB Chain. On Feb. 13, PancakeSwap outperformed all DEXs across all chains in trading volume.

On the eve of Valentine’s Day, Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao revealed that his dog’s name is Broccoli, triggering a flood of memecoins named after his Belgian Malinois. Zhao clarified that he did not intend to launch any memecoins of his own.

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BNB Chain’s rising activity was not isolated to memecoins based on Zhao’s pet. In fact, it has been surging recently, even surpassing Tron and Ethereum in daily active addresses to claim second place in that category, Nansen data shows. Still, its almost 6 million active addresses over the past seven days remain far behind Solana’s industry-leading 35.8 million.

BNB Chain’s memecoin surge boosts activity

On Feb. 9, BNB Chain ranked second in fee revenue, trailing only Solana. A key driver behind this was the meteoric rise and fall of the BNB-based “Test” (TST) token.

TST was originally intended as a tutorial token for BNB Chain’s memecoin launchpad, Four.Meme. However, once traders spotted the token’s name, speculation took over, pushing its market cap to $500 million before it crashed.

Memecoins are often considered useless with no intrinsic value. But ironically, they have been among crypto’s most popular use cases over the past year. Even world leaders have jumped on the trend, including US President Donald Trump, who has backed a pair of meme tokens.

Solana has been the dominant chain for memecoins, with speculative trading playing a major role in driving Solana’s rise in key blockchain metrics like fees. BNB Chain pledged support for the meme ecosystem in its 2025 roadmap.

The native token of BNB Chain (BNB) is up 15% over the past week. The token, which is used for transaction fees on the blockchain as well as within Binance’s exchange ecosystem, recently overtook Solana’s SOL to become the fifth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.

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