Bachelor Thesis
Exploring the Consensus Mechanism of the BNB Smart Chain
Binance is a company operating a large global cryptocurrency exchange, allowing its users to buy and sell various cryptocurrencies. More recently it has also launched a blockchain ecosystem consisting of different components.
One such component is the “BNB Smart Chain”, an EVM-compatible blockchain product, launched in September 2020. It claims to be compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), have low fees and fast transaction times, and experience rapid growth.
Its consensus mechanism seems to be based off of a fork of Ethereum, with changes to certain components such as how the set of validators is chosen. However there is little in-depth technical documentation, and barely any scientific research, on the topic of this chain.
In this thesis we would like to investigate and formalize its consensus mechanism. We want to focus on how it differs from Ethereum, and learn why these changes were made.
References
[1] BNB Smart Chain Documentation
[2] BNB Smart Chain: Consensus
[3] BNB Smart Chain: Whitepaper