BNB Chain vs Arbitrum Nova

The BNB Chain, formerly known as Binance Smart Chain (BSC), is a blockchain platform introduced by the cryptocurrency exchange Binance. Its native token, BNB, serves various roles within the ecosystem. BNB acts as the network's transaction fuel, similar to gas on Ethereum, and grants users governance rights to participate in on-chain decision-making. In September 2020, Binance introduced the BNB Smart Chain alongside the BNB Beacon Chain, extending BNB's functionality. The BNB Smart Chain supports smart contracts and staking, offering an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible infrastructure. This dual-chain design aims to provide a high-performance, cost-effective environment for the blockchain community, ensuring compatibility with existing Ethereum tools and dApps while improving scalability and user experience.

Arbitrum Nova is a high-performance alternative to Arbitrum One's chain. While Arbitrum One implements the purely trustless Rollup protocol, Arbitrum Nova implements the mostly trustless AnyTrust protocol. The key difference between Rollup and AnyTrust is that the AnyTrust protocol introduces an additional trust assumption in the form of a Data Availability Committee (DAC). This committee (detailed below) is responsible for expediting the process of storing, batching, and posting child chain transaction data to Ethereum's parent chain. This lets you use Arbitrum in scenarios that demand performance and affordability, while Arbitrum One is optimal for scenarios that demand Ethereum's pure trustlessness.