Binance Smart Chain – Devs Are Worried About Blockchain’s Unsustainability

Binance Smart Chain (BSC) has long been marketed as an Ethereum killer and a magical solution to the blockchain scalability problem. Its chief selling point has been low fees, fast tx processing, and Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatibility, allowing devs to seamlessly create and/or migrate across. However, there appears to be trouble in paradise and a recent Github issue “BSC is a lost cause #553” gives an insight into how bad things really are and why the developers are worried about the blockchain’s unsustainability.

The issue opened on Nov 16 and penned by a user Kaber2 starts with expressing surprise on Binance Smart Chain core devs, as the platform is securing billions in value and yet being maintained like an amateur project. Reportedly, the team’s conduct isn’t professional, updates are further deteriorating and the state of affairs is getting worse. The Binance Smart Chain blockchain appears to be having critical syncing issues.

Several other issues opened on the Binance Smart Chain Github point towards the same thing that nodes are crashing randomly, not syncing up and it’s not possible to run a full node anymore, meaning that independently verifying the blockchain isn’t an option, at this point. The developer community is further concerned because the core team is simply applying patches without review, no beta testing is being done, no description of what they are trying to do, or the problem it’s supposed to solve.

The general atmosphere apparent in Github is that there’s no core team response to the bugs/issues and repeated attempts to get their attention have been unfruitful. Despite Binance Smart Chain already being a Proof of Authority chain, the centralization is further increasing. In an extremely surprising move, the core devs have suggested that the fundamental feature of all blockchain platforms – the ability for transactions to be broadcasted to nodes be disabled, which can cause massive malfunction and defeat the whole purpose of a blockchain’s open and shared ledger.

It appears that there are no magical fixes to the blockchain scalability problem and any kind of shortcuts or magical fix is bound to run into critical problems sooner or later. The issue writer expressed deep frustration at Binance’s lack of interest in maintaining their project and concluded the post by mentioning “As someone else already wrote, the root cause of the problem is that you mindlessly increased the block size and reduced the block time without doing the actual work required“.

There's ultimately two paths to go down (assuming demand for blockspace continues to grow)

They continue raising the block size to keep fees lows, destabilizing the network until it halts

They cap/reduce the block size, leading to higher fees, defeating the value prop of BSC

Binance Smart Chain is effectively an Ethereum clone with enhanced block sizes and reduced block times, without any consideration of how the blockchain would react and without asking the question “If it were that simple, why didn’t the other smart contracts blockchains do it?” The developers are explicitly saying that it’s nearly impossible to work with the blockchain and they can’t recommend anyone else try to work with the BSC.