Crypteconomy powerhouse Binance is the newest major player in the bitcoin mining industry.
On Monday, April 27th, the popular cryptocurrency exchange announced the launch of Binance Pool, a crypto mining platform that will support both proof-of-work (PoW) and proof-of-stake (PoS) projects.
The new service’s first enterprise is a bitcoin mining pool, which is already running and currently the 12th largest active pool according to BTC.com in contributing 1.22% of the Bitcoin network’s total hashrate at the time of this article’s writing. More pools are coming too, Binance said.
In a separate and more in depth introduction post, the exchange giant explained Binance Pool would offer miners the benefit of directly and easily using their mined crypto within the exchange’s wider service offerings:
With Binance Pool, we aim to establish a comprehensive platform for miners that will bring more possibilities to the mining industry by bridging traditional mining and financial services. By leveraging the benefits of an exchange platform, Binance Pool offers users lower fees and more comprehensive services to increase opportunities and enable miners to earn more. Binance Pool connects miners to Binance’s suite of financial products, including Binance Futures, Spot & Margin trading, Binance Lending, and Binance Staking.”
For Binance’s first bitcoin mining pool, the service will use what is known as a Full Pay-Per-Share (FPPS) payment method. This simply means that if a participating miner finds a block, the pool will distribute not only the bitcoin block reward but also the transaction fee reward that came with the found block.
The roll out comes after Binance founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao teased the discovery of Binance Pool’s first block on Friday, April 24th.
The first block ever mined by the @Binance Mining Pool. Still in closed-beta. Going live soon.
As always, LOWEST FEES of any mining pool.
If you wish to join, email: [email protected] pic.twitter.com/uewbRM6UIy
— CZ Binance ???????????? (@cz_binance) April 24, 2020
The move also comes after some of Binance’s biggest competitors, namely Huobi and OKEx, launched their own mining pool arms over the past two years.
Per BTC.com, Huobi and OKEx are currently tied for 7th place regarding the largest active bitcoin mining pools, so a major thread to watch going forward is if Binance Pool can eventually overtake its direct competition thanks to Binance’s wider global reach.
Lots Going On Around Binance Lately
Binance has been behind a flurry of big headlines in recent weeks. Beyond Binance Pool, the exchange also just launched a new social payments app called Bundle aimed at the African market.
“We built Bundle with the digitally native African user in mind … They prefer their financial services delivered digitally via mobile apps as opposed to visiting brick and mortar bank branches,” Bundler founder Yele Bademosi said at the time.
Moreover, earlier this month Binance also launched support for bitcoin options trading on the exchange’s mobile apps. This April we’ve also seen the crypto exchange confirm its blockbuster acquisition of CoinMarketCap and announce the development of Binance Smart Chain (BSC), an Ethereum-like smart contract platform that will use the BNB token as its native currency.
Zooming out, the BSC initiative may be the most notable headline around the Binance ecosystem this year. It, along with Binance Pool, shows the exchange is going for an “all of the above” approach to the cryptoeconomy’s various sectors. As Binance explained of the project upon its whitepaper release:
“Today, the community-driven BCDC proposes the idea of a parallel blockchain to the current Binance Chain, called Binance Smart Chain, which will retain the high performance of the native blockchain while supporting an intuitive version of Smart Contracts functionality at the same time. This innovative solution brings the interoperability and programmability of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) to Binance Chain.”
Efforts like this, for better or for worse, will continue to make Binance a major force to be reckoned with in the space going forward.
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