YZi Labs, formerly known as Binance Labs, in the venture office of Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao, will create a $1 billion fund to support long-term builders of the BNB ecosystem, the company announced Wednesday.
The fund will focus on builders developing on the BNB chain in areas such as trading, real-world assets, artificial intelligence, and distributed science (DeSCI) and finance (DeFi).
“The $1 billion funding scale testifies to YZi Labs’ commitment to supporting new and emerging projects built on the BNB chain,” a company representative said. Decryption.
“We welcome builders from all backgrounds. Even if your team has never built on BNB Chain before, if YZi Labs is aware of their potential and willing to build within the ecosystem, we will connect them to the BNB Chain core team. The BNB Chain core team provides dedicated technical support and resources to help onboard, deploy and integrate.”
Additionally, the company’s builder EASY resident program, which provides product launch and market support, will be integrated with Most Valuable Builder, the BNB chain’s flagship incubator program, starting October this year. The selected builders will earn direct support from BNB Chain and YZi Labs and funds up to $500,000.
The builder application is opened on a rolling basis.
The company’s announcement comes amid a surge in activity at the BNB chain, which recorded over 26 million transactions on Tuesday, marking its highest record since December 2023, according to data from Block Explorer BSCScan.
Memecoin in particular has skyrocketed on the platform, gaining momentum thanks to a reference to Mr. Zhao (“CZ”), well known among cryptocurrency participants. On this day, multiple tokens skyrocketed by more than 1,000%, with hundreds of millions of transactions.
BNB, the native token of the BNB chain, hit a record high this week. In the process, the asset surpassed Tether’s stablecoin USDT, becoming the third largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.
BNB rose nearly 28% this week, surpassing two biggest cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin and Ethereum, by market capitalization. During this period, these assets have only increased by 5.1% and 4.0% respectively. BNB is currently at $1,299, about 2.5% off its record high of $1,330.
