BNB surges to new highs on on-chain activity and Aster growth

BNB, the native token of the BNB Chain, surged to fresh all-time highs this week as onchain activity across the network accelerated, driven in part by strong demand for the newly launched Aster decentralized exchange and a series of protocol upgrades. Traders and analysts pointed to record user engagement, rising decentralized finance activity and growing derivatives interest as the immediate drivers of the rally.

BNB Chain reported a sharp increase in monthly active addresses in recent weeks, with onchain metrics cited in various data snapshots ranging from about 52.5 million in September to roughly 60 million in early October. Those gains coincided with Aster’s rapid growth: the protocol’s total value locked jumped roughly 570 percent to about $2.3 billion, according to DeFiLlama. Network-level changes also reduced transaction costs, with a new standard minimum gas price of 0.05 Gwei adopted across major wallets and services, lowering median fees and supporting higher transaction throughput.

The network hit new usage milestones as gas consumption topped 5.02 trillion in a single day, according to BscScan, and swap-related transactions accounted for a large share of activity....