BNB Chain Q3 Report: Tokenized Stock Trading Volume Reaches $25.6 Billion, On-Chain Daily Active Addresses Drop 14%

Written by: Blockworks

Translated by: AididiaoJP, Foresight News

The BNB Chain Q3 Holder Report presents a mixed picture: tokenized stocks and RWAs pushed trading volume and revenue upward while network efficiency improved; however, daily active addresses and stablecoin supply both declined simultaneously. Growth was driven mainly by a few asset categories and applications, rather than broad-based prosperity.

Key Performance: Double Growth in Trading Volume and Revenue

In Q3, trading volume for tokenized stocks on BNB Chain reached approximately $25.6 billion, nearly 11 times the $2.4 billion in Q2. Of this, DEX channels contributed $24.4 billion, while Ondo Global Markets contributed $1.2 billion.

Network revenue (REV) rose to $54.2 million, a 54% quarter-over-quarter increase. Breakdown: transaction fees accounted for $49.1 million, and MEV payments totaled $5.1 million. Quarterly transaction count reached 1.51 billion, up 7.5% QoQ.

The Pasteur hard fork went live on the BSC mainnet on August 25. Within a week, the new block production path generated approximately 98% of blocks, with each block packing 28% more gas on average compared to the old path.

Tokenized stock supply reached $1.13 billion by quarter-end, double the $560 million at the end of Q2, marking an all-chain high. According to tracked data, it accounts for about 39% of the $2.89 billion supply of cross-chain tokenized public stocks. Among tracked chains, BNB Chain also accounted for over half of tokenized asset DEX volume.

Non-stablecoin RWA supply grew 24% to $4.96 billion, including $3.77 billion in tokenized Treasuries.

Holder net income reached $45.1 million, up 57% QoQ. Since BNB does not mint new tokens to pay validators, this revenue was not diluted by inflation. The 36th quarterly auto-burn executed on July 15, destroying approximately 1.6158 million BNB (worth about $932 million at that price), reducing total supply to 133.2 million.

Where Revenue Grew: Fees and MEV Jointly Drive Increases

REV (network revenue) grew faster than transaction count because both transaction count and average fee per transaction increased. Quarterly transactions grew 7.5%, while average fee per transaction rose 43% to $0.032; median fee increased from $0.0027 to $0.0038. Average daily gas consumption rose 47%, with fee increases concentrated in August and September.

The largest single contributor was the trading platform GMGN. Its routing paid $8.8 million in network fees in Q3, up from $2.2 million in Q2. The additional $6.6 million accounted for over a third of the $17.9 million increase in quarterly trading fees. Approximately 90% of GMGN's Q3 fees came in August and September, coinciding with a surge in token launches on Flap.

Stablecoin transfers remain within the subsidy scope. Zero-fee campaigns for USDC, USD1, and U were first extended to September 30, then to October 31, meaning fee growth came from other paid on-chain activities.

BNB Income Statement. Source: Blockworks

Revenue distribution maintains its original structure: delegator rewards take $40.1 million, real-time burn via BEP-95 accounts for $4.9 million, validator commissions total $4 million, and MEV payments are $5.1 million. 10% of trading fees are burned under BEP-95, while the remainder flows to stakers after deducting validator commissions. In Q3, blocks where builders paid validators accounted for approximately 73% of the quarter, down from 77% in Q2.

BNB: Daily Revenue Distribution | Q3 2026 | Value Flow Share. Source: Blockworks

Validator operator revenue reached $9.1 million, up 39% QoQ, comprising $4 million in commissions and $5.1 million in MEV payments. MEV payments grew 28%, while commissions rose in line with fees. The Pasteur upgrade required all mainnet nodes to run v1.7.7 clients, delivering the fork as scheduled.

BNB: Validator Node Operator Revenue. Quarterly Data | Q3 2025 - Q3 2026. Data Source: Blockworks

Holder net income—combining BEP-95 burns and delegator rewards—was $45.1 million in Q3, up from $28.8 million in Q2. Net income equaled 92% of trading fee revenue, consistent with the previous two quarters. As fees increased, the 30-day net staking APR rose from 0.70% at the end of Q2 to 1.15% by quarter-end.

BNB: Token Holder Net Income. Quarterly Data | Q3 2025 - Q3 2026. Data Source: Blockworks

Fuller Blocks, Declining User Activity

BSC processed 1.51 billion transactions in Q3, a 7.5% QoQ increase, averaging about 16.4 million daily, with observed load averaging around 190 TPS.

The incremental volume came mainly from a few applications. Prediction market Predict.fun processed 45.3 million transactions, up from 2.2 million in Q2, accounting for roughly 40% of the net increase. GMGN trade routing, LiFi cross-chain bridge, and MEV bots added another 45 million combined; direct transactions to the USDT contract decreased by 20.9 million.

The team's capacity figures are based on benchmark tests: client upgrades in the first half raised baseline throughput from ~2,800 TPS to ~5,200 TPS. In the Pasteur testnet, BEP-675 removed one redundant execution before validators package builder-proposed blocks, boosting throughput by 88% from 1,237 TPS to 2,324 TPS. The direct effect visible on mainnet is denser blocks: the BidBlock V2 path packs 28% more gas per block on average, and network utilization exceeded 95% post-fork. Validators increased the gas limit target to 70 million before September 15, with next steps targeting 80 million, and even 90 million.

Failed transaction ratio dropped from 8.6% in Q2 to 6.4%.

BNB Chain Transaction Volume. Quarterly Report | Q3 2025 - Q3 2026. Data Source: Blockworks

However, user activity is declining. Average daily active addresses in Q3 were 2.1 million, down 14% QoQ from 2.43 million in Q2; quarterly peak was 2.76 million. New address creation averaged 482,000 daily, a 27% decrease. Most of the decline occurred in Q2: DAU fell by ~18% from April to June, and dropped another 9% into September.

Transaction count still grew because each active address transacted more: averaging 7.8 daily vs. 6.3 in Q2. Contract deployments rose against the trend to 12.3 million for the quarter, up from 4.5 million in Q2; average daily independent deployers reached ~5,100, a 13% increase. ERC-4337 smart accounts had an average daily active sender base of ~62,000, up 85%; according to BNB Chain statistics, active wallets with EIP-7702 delegation averaged ~940,000 daily, close to double Q2's 474,000.

BNB Chain: Daily Active Addresses. Daily | Q3 2026. Data Source: Blockworks

Regarding fees, average cost per transaction rose from $0.022 in Q2 to $0.032, with the median increasing from $0.0027 to $0.0038. July's average was ~$0.019, rising to $0.041 by September, moving in tandem with daily gas consumption. Pasteur retained the 450-millisecond block interval while increasing per-block capacity; memory finality approached ~650 milliseconds; prior to the BSC fast finality upgrade, this figure was ~45 seconds. Since the launch of stablecoin zero-fee campaigns, over $4.5 million in user gas fees have been covered.

BNB Chain: Transaction Fee Costs. Daily | Q3 2026. Data Source: Blockworks

Regarding supply and staking, total supply was 133.2 million BNB at quarter-end, down from 134.8 million at the end of Q2. Excluding quarterly auto-burns, BEP-95 destroyed an additional 7,400 BNB (~$4.9 million) this quarter, representing a 47% growth in burned BNB quantity. Cumulative destruction since BEP-95 launched totals ~291,000 BNB. Staked BNB stood at 24.9 million at quarter-end, down from 25.7 million in Q2; staking rate dropped from 19.1% to 18.7%, while net staking APR rose to 1.15%.

BNB: Total Supply and Staked Amount. Quarterly Data | Q3 2025 - Q3 2026 | Quarter-end. Data Source: Blockworks

Tokenized Stocks: Largest Increment, but Highly Concentrated

Trading volume for tokenized stocks in Q3 reached ~$25.6 billion, compared to $2.4 billion in Q2. DEX channel volume jumped from $113 million in Q2 to $24.4 billion. bStocks launched on June 11, making Q3 its first full quarter.

Calculated by tracked chains, total tokenized asset DEX volume reached $45.8 billion in Q3, with BNB Chain capturing $24.4 billion—over half, up from less than 1% in Q2. Ranked behind are Robinhood Chain at $10.2 billion and Solana at $6.4 billion, all excluding meme coin pairs. Ondo Global Markets contributed $1.2 billion, down from $2.3 billion in Q2.

Trading peaked in late July. For two consecutive weeks, tokenized stock pairs accounted for 62% to 65% of BNB Chain's entire spot DEX volume; on July 26, single-day DEX volume for the category hit $1.2 billion. QQQB was the primary driver of this peak. As the bStocks token tracking the Invesco QQQ ETF, it accounted for ~80% of bStocks DEX volume that quarter. SpaceX's SPCXB, SPYB, NVDAB, BNCB, and GMEB made up the rest of the volume; 87 bStocks traded during the quarter. Native, an RFQ platform that opened the QQQB pool on July 22, captured ~36% of bStocks volume. After mid-August, weekly volume mostly ranged between $600 million and $1.1 billion, with one week in early September reaching $2.1 billion.

BNB Chain: Tokenized Stock Volume by Trading Venue. Quarterly Data | Q3 2025 - Q3 2026. Data Source: Blockworks

Supply and distribution expanded synchronously. Tokenized stock supply reached $1.13 billion by quarter-end, double Q2's $560 million, marking an all-chain high; it represents ~39% of the $2.89 billion tracked cross-chain supply of tokenized public stocks. bStocks supply hit $810 million by quarter-end. Ten new bStocks listed on July 9; on July 14, tokenized SK Hynix simultaneously launched via three issuers: bStocks, Ondo, and xStocks. Lending integrations followed: Sixpence allows holders to borrow against supported tokenized stocks; K3 Capital launched a USDT credit market collateralized by bStocks on Euler; APRO began publishing price feeds for 12 bStocks. By quarter-end, there were ~1.8 million tokenized stock holders on BNB Chain, accounting for 38% of the cross-chain total and the highest all-chain.

BNB Chain: bStocks DEX Stock Volume. Q3 2026 | Top 10 by bStocks DEX Volume among 87 bStocks | Percentage of bStocks DEX Volume in Parentheses. Data Source: Blockworks

Non-stablecoin RWA supply grew 24% to $4.96 billion. Tokenized Treasuries grew 29% to $3.77 billion; yield-bearing stablecoins grew 9% to $1.19 billion, with Ondo's USDY launching on BNB Chain on August 4. From January to mid-September, BNB Chain added $3.62 billion in RWA value, leading all chains concurrently.

BNB Chain: RWA Supply by Asset Category. Quarterly | Q3 2025 - Q3 2026 | Quarter-end, excluding stablecoins and tokenized stocks. Source: Blockworks

DEX Structure Shift: Meme Fades, RWA Enters

Total spot DEX volume in Q3 reached $75.7 billion, up 28% QoQ, marking the first increase after four consecutive quarterly declines. Structural changes were significant.

Tokenized asset pair share rose from 0.2% to 32.3%; meme coin-to-tokenized asset pairs formed their own category, accounting for 1.2%. Meme coin share dropped from 12.6% to 5.8%, and project tokens fell from 29.1% to 14.0%. Stablecoin conversions grew 31% to $9.6 billion, stabilizing at 12.6% share; BNB/stablecoin pairs accounted for 21.5%.

BNB Chain: Spot DEX Volume (by Pair Classification). Quarterly Data | Q3 2025 - Q3 2026. Data Source: Blockworks

Trading venues also became more distributed. PancakeSwap's share dropped from 76.9% to 56.7%; Uniswap held steady at 15.2%; Native rose from under 1% to 12.7%. By mechanism, RFQ venues executed 16.1% of volume (up from 1.1% in Q2); proprietary AMMs accounted for 5.4%; concentrated liquidity AMMs dropped from 93.7% to 74.2%.

BNB Chain: Spot DEX Volume by Trading Venue. Quarterly Data | Q3 2025 - Q3 2026. Data Source: Blockworks

Regarding derivatives, HertzFlow's on-chain perpetual contracts on BNB Chain surpassed $100 million in cumulative volume in September. Aster became one of the trading venues for bStocks this quarter, including SpaceX's SPCXB. Centralized derivative volumes cooled alongside spot: CEX futures volume dropped 17.5% to $50.1 billion; spot fell 16% to $20.2 billion; the futures-to-spot ratio remained around 2.5x. Binance accounted for roughly two-thirds of both, with open interest at ~$1.05 billion at quarter-end.

BNB: CEX Spot and Futures Volume. Quarterly Data | Q3 2025 to Q3 2026. Data Source: Blockworks

Stablecoins, Lending, Launchpad: Mixed Performance

Stablecoin supply stood at $13.22 billion at quarter-end, down 4.6% from $13.86 billion in Q2. USDT remained stable at $9.19 billion, USDC at $1.59 billion, so the decline primarily stemmed from USD1 dropping from $1.8 billion to $1.39 billion, accounting for ~64% of the $640 million drop. USDe fell from $243 million to $78 million, comprising the remaining 26%. This statistic only includes algorithmically pegged stablecoins; yield-bearing/RWA-dollar assets like USYC and BUIDL fall under RWA, while United Stables' native U is not yet included. Concurrently, DEX stablecoin conversions grew 31%, and zero-fee campaigns for USDC, USD1, and U continue until October 31.

BNB Chain: Stablecoin Supply by Asset Class. Quarterly | Q3 2025 - Q3 2026 | Quarter-end. Data Source: Blockworks

Lending deposits reached $3.57 billion at quarter-end, up 42% QoQ from $2.51 billion in Q2; outstanding loans grew 33% to $940 million. Utilization rate dropped from 27.9% to 26.2% as deposit growth outpaced loan growth. Tokenized stocks remain a small portion of the lending market: $62 million at quarter-end vs. $6 million at Q2's end, accounting for less than 2% of total deposits.

BNB Chain: Lending Deposits. Quarterly Report | Q3 2025 - Q3 2026 | Quarter-end. Data Source: Blockworks

Launchpad activity rebounded. Total token creations nearly tripled to 2.59 million; fees doubled to $17.7 million. Flap led in both categories: 2.02 million tokens and $15.3 million in fees. Four.meme issued 568,000 tokens with $2.3 million in fees, down from $7 million in Q2. August was the issuance peak, with Flap creating 1.4 million tokens in a single month, having started accepting tokenized stocks and gold as quote assets on July 29. From September 4, BNB Chain incentivized users holding bStocks-paired meme coins with a $4 million Stonks Szn campaign. Tokenized stock-to-meme pair trading volume reached ~$3 billion in Q3, with $2.1 billion on PancakeSwap v2 pools; tracked venue volume of $900 million was almost entirely on Flap's bonding curves. Meme coin DEX trading grew ~75% from July to September, but Q3 total remained 41% below Q2, which peaked in April.

BNB Chain: Launched Tokens via Launchpad. Quarterly Report | Q3 2025 - Q3 2026. Source: Blockworks

Product & Institutionalization: Agent Studio, ISO Certification, ETF Channels

The team released the H2 technical roadmap on July 8. H1 already reduced BSC block interval from 750ms to 450ms, cut memory finality from 1125ms to 650ms, and nearly doubled baseline throughput to ~5,200 TPS. H2 goals aim to double mainnet throughput again, while introducing dedicated lanes, enhanced transaction bundling, and improved isolation between busy applications. The BSC Rust client is now fully compatible with Reth v2.0; the planned BSC Payment Lane (launching Q4) will reserve minimum block capacity for qualified payments during congestion. The next-gen Layer 1 has entered public design phase: architecture community forum opened mid-July, targeting 100k+ TPS with <50ms confirmation time, with testnet expected before year-end 2026.</p>

Pasteur went live on testnet July 21 and mainnet August 25, encompassing three BEPs. BEP-682 rejects duplicate validator signatures in cross-chain verification; BEP-695 removes rotating-key validator admin permissions and tightens slashing/governance checks; BEP-675 introduces the BidBlock V2 production path. Post-fork, BidBlock V2 generated ~98% of blocks, packing 28% more gas per block on average.

Regarding AI agents, BNB Agent Studio launched July 1. Builders can describe an agent using a single prompt in Cursor or Claude Code, then deploy it to BSC with its own ERC-8004 identity and wallet, running on AWS Bedrock AgentCore. Four versions released this quarter:

July 7: Agents can purchase CoinMarketCap data on-demand via x402, settled through Binance Pay's B402 channel;

v2, released Aug 13, enables agents to receive payment for their work and adds TypeScript support;

Altana joined as a wallet option on Aug 18, supporting user-defined spending limits; Azure became the second cloud option on Aug 20;

Turnkey was added in v3 on Sept 3, featuring a secure enclave policy engine that requires manual co-signing when thresholds are exceeded;

v4, launched Sept 22, added NodeOps deployment, eliminating the need for cloud accounts. The team also proposed the Agent Lifecycle Protocol open standard, with Agent Studio serving as the reference implementation. By early October, 330,604 agents registered on BSC via ERC-8004, representing ~61% of the 544,574 total across the network.

In security and compliance, BNB Chain obtained ISO 27001 and ISO 27701 certifications from the British Standards Institution (BSI) in August. The scope covers infrastructure for deploying/executing smart contracts, key management systems, and related processes—baseline standards long required by banks, asset managers, and government agencies.

Five days later, the team relaunched AvengerDAO as a builder-focused security program: a marketplace of 11 vetted security firms selected by the BNB Chain security team, rolling out five-domain security standard BNB-SS. Audited projects receive official badges and bug bounty support, with Lista DAO becoming the first member. BNB Chain security losses declined YoY consecutively: -85% in 2023, -69% in 2024, -56% in 2025.

Institutional access continues to advance. On Aug 26, BNB Chain joined the Mastercard Crypto Partner Program. Futu Financial became the first Hong Kong-licensed broker offering orderbook trading of BNB to professional investors; Kalshi launched BNB perpetual contracts for US traders in September. In a new digital asset index jointly launched by S&P Dow Jones Indices and Pantera Capital, BNB ranks second among 18 constituent assets filtered by protocol revenue.

European BNB ETPs managed a combined $17.1 million at quarter-end, up from $11.5 million in Q2, led by 21Shares' ABNB at $14.6 million; Valour added a second BNB product in July. In the US, VanEck's VBNB ended its first full quarter with $2.7 million AUM, experiencing $300k net outflows during the period; Teucrium's XBNB stood at $300k. Thomas Chen joined Sept 28 as Chief Business Officer, tasked with bringing more institutions and capital on-chain. BNB treasury company BNC held 515,500 BNB this quarter with no new purchases, raising its market cap-to-net asset value multiple from 0.40x at Q2's end to 0.62x.

BNB Treasury Company: BNC Holdings and mNAV. Daily | Q3 2026. Source: Blockworks

Four Things to Watch in Q4

Both core themes delivered results in Q3: tokenized stock trading reached ~$25.6 billion, nearly 11x Q2's figure; tokenized asset pairs approached one-third of spot DEX volume. Lending deposits grew 42%, with tokenized stocks in the lending market rising from $6 million to $62 million. Technically, Pasteur successfully made mainnet blocks fuller as planned, pushing gas limits to 70 million, and Agent Studio released four versions in one quarter. Revenue subsequently followed: REV grew 54% QoQ to $54.2 million; holder net income rose 57% QoQ to $45.1 million.

Two indicators moved inversely. DAU fell 14%, continuing the downtrend that began in Q2; stablecoin supply dropped 4.6%, mainly due to reduced USD1 balances.

Four things to watch in Q4. First, whether trading depth for tokenized stocks can hold steady after the July peak. Weekly DEX volume for the category has already settled near $900 million; whether trading can diffuse from QQQB to more assets remains to be seen. Second, the rest of the H2 roadmap: gas limits climbing further to 80M/90M, BSC Payment Lane, and the next-gen Layer 1 testnet before year-end 2026. Third, Agent Studio adoption: whether deployments will convert into paying agent activity. Fourth, how stablecoin supply behaves after the zero-fee campaign ends Oct 31. The 37th auto-burn will be calculated based on Q3 activity, marking the next step toward the 100 million BNB supply floor.