BNB Smart Chain (BSC) has been very busy these last few months making lots of moves. Some of these strategic moves are based on tech. For example, they are sunsetting the BNB Beacon Chain to move forward only with BNB Smart Chain. Other moves are strategic based on moving BSC forward in a crowded marketplace of Layer 1 chains.
This most recent move by BNB Smart Chain looks like it’s a shot fired directly at Ethereum while it’s down and some of the emerging Layer 2’s coming onto the market.
Gasless Promotion
BNB Smart Chain announces the Gas-Free Carnival. This promotion is going on now until mid-October or early November or until users spend all $50,000 in gas fee rebates. The goal is to use BNB partners to move stablecoins to BSC or its Optimism-based opBNB Layer 2. The stablecoins involved are:
- USDT
- USDC
- FDUSD.
For those unfamiliar with the 3rd one, FDUSD is the 1:1 backed stablecoin issued by First Digital Labs. As stablecoins go, they are the #4 ranked coin by market value after USDT, USDC, and DAI.
First Digital is the issuer just like Circle issues USDC and Tether issues USDT. FDUSD is the #35 coin by market value, according to CoinGecko. More importantly, they are Binance’s main stablecoin partner since they had to shut down BUSD due to regulatory issues in the US with issuer Paxos.
Before we get into how to move stablecoins onto BSC without gas, first let’s look at the other strategic partners in this promotion. The CEX partners include:
- Binance (naturally)
- Bitget
- Gate.io
- and MEXC
So that’s a pretty inclusive list of top exchanges where people trade. More details in a second. And the wallet partners are Bitget Wallet (the decentralized wallet), and Safepal. The networks, as stated above, are BSC or opBNB. The bridge partner is Celer and its cBridge. Since bridges are a specific target for hackers you should DYOR for which bridges to use. The Celer Bridge is the only one eligible for this promotion.
3 Ways to Go Gasless
Now that you know who is involved, let’s look at how you can use them to go gasless.
Option 1: Withdraw Stablecoins from a CEX partner to BSC or opBNB
With this option, you are withdrawing from one of the 4 partner exchanges to your own wallet of choice with no gas payment of BNB required by the exchange. Pretty simple and straightforward. Gas prices are rarely higher than 50c for this type of transaction so costs are low, especially compared to Ethereum, although gas prices there are under $1 for the first time in a long, long time.
And even at BSC’s lower costs, it’s still more than FREE. And with this promotion, you can withdraw for free. For Binance, Bitget, and Gate.io, the promotion is going on NOW until mid-October. Then in mid-October, MEXC’s part of the promotion kicks in and you can withdraw for free from there.
Option 2: Free Transfers to Bitget Wallet or Safepal Wallet
And this one is just what it sounds like. You can transfer the 3 stablecoins to either wallet without paying BNB gas. BNB Smart Chain is paying $25,000 to each wallet to cover gas fees during the promotional periods. Bitget Wallet has this promotion from NOW until mid-October. Then in mid-October for a month until mid-November, Safepal has the exclusive on free transfers. Or until the money runs out.
You can do up to 6 Free transfers per day. However, you are limited to 2 free transfers per stablecoin. So that’s 2 for USDT, 2 for USDC, and 2 for FDUSD.
These are 2 high-quality wallets so you may have them anyway. Or maybe it’s a good excuse to give one of them a try. Also, one important thing to note. This has to be from wallet to wallet. Swaps on dApps like PancakeSwap do not count. Why? Because PancakeSwap has to charge its fees for swapping tokens. So only direct transfers from one wallet to another. And only on BSC. The opBNB L2 is not involved in this one.
Option 3: Bridge Assets for Free Using Celer cBridge
The last option is to bridge your assets using Celer’s Bridge. Here you are bridging from one of 5 chains to BSC. The 5 chains are:
- Ethereum
- Polygon
- Avalanche
- Arbitrum
- and Optimism.
None of these names should surprise you as they are the biggest chains that hold the most assets within EVM other than BNB Smart Chain. The goal here is pretty clear. Take your existing stablecoins on other EVM chains and transfer them to BSC to try the options there instead.
From now until mid-October, you can transfer any of the 3 stablecoins from the 5 above to BSC. Only this direction. Bridging from BSC to Polygon is not eligible. Only bridging assets to BSC are eligible for the no bridge fees. This is done through a combination of fee discounts and rebates.
You can visit this page anytime through November 19th to view and claim your rebates.
Celer is generously donating $150,000 in bridge base fees to make this free for users.
Why Offer Gas-Free Transactions When Fees Are Already So Low?
It’s a fair question. What do Binance and BNB Smart Chain think they are getting with this offer?
Despite all the good publicity that Solana is getting and how they are dominating memecoins now, there is still far more activity, TVL, and fees on Ethereum and EVM than there is on Solana. But Solana is indeed gaining ground.
BNB Smart Chain is targeting money that’s already in EVM but on other chains. In some cases, it’s an introduction to say “hey we have a great fully-operating EVM chain, too”. But in most cases, it’s a reminder that BSC is here still doing its thing years later.
The BSC ecosystem has some good promotions going on now, too, especially for stablecoins. Some of them include:
- 21% for FDUSD on Venus Protocol. Demand for FDUSD is particularly high here. And a respectable 4.3%-5.5% for USDC and USDT on Venus
- Same on AAVE. 17% for FDUSD while offering between 2.8%-3.8% for USDC or USDT
- Stargate Bridge is offering pools paying 7% for both USDC and USDT. An excellent return
- and USDT-FDUSD paying 10% among other great deals on PancakeSwap.
There are liquidity pools through the BSC ecosystem that need these stablecoins, and FDUSD in particular. This is why the offers are so good. It’s also an opportunity for you to put your stablecoins to work.
If you have USDT, USDC, or FDUSD sitting there and not doing anything, this is a good opportunity to earn with low risks on one of the best operating chains in crypto.
Disclaimer
The information discussed by Altcoin Buzz is not financial advice. This is for educational, entertainment, and informational purposes only. Any information or strategies are thoughts and opinions relevant to the accepted risk tolerance levels of the writer/reviewers and their risk tolerance may be different than yours. We are not responsible for any losses you may incur due to any investments directly or indirectly related to the information provided. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are high-risk investments so please do your due diligence. Copyright Altcoin Buzz Pte Ltd.
