The Cheems moment for retail and institutions: How BNB Chain is building a true symbiotic ecosystem

The cryptocurrency market in 2025 has witnessed an interesting phenomenon: while Meme coins (including star projects like Cheems) continue to attract retail attention on BNB Chain, traditional giants such as BlackRock, Circle, and China Merchants Bank International are quietly deploying assets on the same chain. This is not a collision but a sophisticated triangular complementarity—retail brings heat, institutions bring depth, and project teams serve as the hub connecting the two. BNB Chain is evolving into a unique ecosystem capable of accommodating both market speculation and institutional capital.

Dual-track Growth in 2025: From Meme Explosions to Stablecoin Accumulation

Data best tells the story. In 2025, BNB Chain delivered a comprehensive growth report:

• Total independent addresses surpassed 700 million, with over 4 million daily active users
• Daily transaction volume peaked at 31 million in October
• TVL increased by 40.5% year-over-year
• Total market cap of stablecoins doubled to $14 billion
• On-chain compliant RWA assets reached $1.8 billion

Behind these cold numbers lie two parallel narratives.

The first is a resurgence of retail enthusiasm. In the first half of 2025, platforms like Four.meme drove multiple Meme rallies, with projects like $FLOKI, $Cheems, and $BROCCOLI rapidly exploding, once again bringing BNB Chain into retail focus. This wave was special—it not only increased trading volume but also attracted new users. High-leverage platforms like PerpDex and treasury products from ListaDAO allowed retail users to engage in short-term speculation and earn passive income, forming a complete trading ecosystem.

The second is steady institutional asset onboarding. The popularity of stablecoins continued to rise, with $USDC, $USDT, and $USD1 widely used for payments, lending, and yield products. More importantly, institutions like Circle and BlackRock are bringing yield-bearing stablecoins and money market funds onto the chain, making BNB Chain one of the first platforms to host such assets. This signifies that real, long-term, cash-flow-backed assets are now settling on-chain, moving beyond mere speculation.

What makes BNB Chain unique is that these two threads do not interfere but instead create positive feedback at the protocol level. Retail trading liquidity facilitates institutional asset entry, while the stability provided by institutional assets opens up more possibilities for retail strategies.

Why Are Traditional Financial Institutions Choosing BNB Chain?

In 2025, a phenomenon worth noting is that top global asset management firms’ on-chain initiatives all point to BNB Chain.

BlackRock’s BUIDL fund chose it. As the world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock tokenized USD cash management funds and listed them on BNB Chain, signaling that this chain can meet the security, performance, and compliance standards required by institutions.

China Merchants Bank International issued a $3.8 billion CMBMINT money market fund on it. Allowing qualified investors to subscribe and redeem on-chain, which requires not only technical support but also a mature ecosystem.

Circle’s yield-bearing stablecoin USYC deployed over $1.4 billion on BNB Chain. These are not experimental deployments but substantial allocations.

Three core drivers underpin these institutional choices:

1. Perfect balance of performance and cost

BNB Chain is known for low Gas fees and high TPS. Compared to Ethereum’s congestion and high costs, BNB Chain offers a friendly transaction environment. For institutions, savings in cost and time per transaction can lead to significant benefits at scale. BNB Chain plans to increase TPS to 20,000, which is critical for high-frequency financial applications.

2. Large and diverse user base

Leveraging years of Binance’s accumulation, BNB Chain has the most diverse global user base—spanning Asia, emerging markets, and developed countries. This means that once institutional assets are deployed, they can immediately reach hundreds of millions of users. BlackRock’s BUIDL can also directly integrate with Binance CEX as collateral, further expanding reach.

3. Robust DeFi infrastructure and application ecosystem

After years of development, BNB Chain supports DEX, lending, derivatives, and more. Venus supports RWA and stablecoins as collateral for lending, ListaDAO integrates institutional stablecoins for mining yields, and PancakeSwap has launched perpetual contracts. Assets issued by institutions can seamlessly connect to various application scenarios, enabling plug-and-play functionality.

The Triangular Complementarity of Retail, Institutions, and Projects

With the influx of TradFi institutions, the user structure on BNB Chain has become more complex and interesting. The emerging phenomenon in 2025 is that three roles on the same chain meet their needs, coexist without interference, and develop collaboratively.

Retail perspective: trading enthusiasm remains

Projects like Cheems and other Meme coins surged, attracting many retail users, but their activity goes beyond speculation. They seek high leverage on PerpDex, engage in collateralized lending on Venus, and earn passive income in ListaDAO’s treasury. The environmentally friendly low Gas fee environment on BNB Chain allows them to perform multiple intra-day operations without worrying about transaction costs. The arrival of institutional assets even broadens their portfolio options—they can participate in DeFi with institutional stablecoins to achieve higher yields.

Institutional perspective: issuing assets and creating yields

Traditional institutions on BNB Chain act as issuers and capital providers. They bring real-world fund shares, bonds, and stablecoins onto the chain. The key innovation is that these assets are not static; they flow and appreciate on-chain. For example, the CMBMINT fund can be used as collateral in Venus and ListaDAO to generate yields; USYC stablecoin can be utilized across various DeFi protocols. Automated on-chain liquidation, real-time settlement, and decentralized processes significantly reduce traditional financial costs and time.

Project teams: connecting both ends

Native projects like PancakeSwap, Venus, and ListaDAO are evolving. They still serve retail users with trading, lending, and yield aggregation functions, but they are also actively connecting with institutional assets. Venus quickly supports CMBMINT as collateral, and ListaDAO deeply integrates USD1 stablecoin—this is not one-way adaptation but a two-way win. Projects expand their asset pools and trading pairs, while institutional assets gain liquidity and use cases.

The core enabling this coexistence is BNB Chain’s openness and compatibility. It is not a chain for a single user group but a platform that accommodates different roles. Retailers bring usage frequency, institutions bring capital volume, and projects weave them into a collaborative network.

Ecosystem Rebuilding Signal: From Traffic to Real Yields

After Meme hype subsides, projects within the BNB Chain ecosystem are undergoing profound transformation. This is not escape but evolution.

ListaDAO’s transformation is typical. It links USD1, U, and other stablecoins to create a complete “collateral-lending-yield” cycle, with TVL surpassing $2 billion. Users are no longer simply staking tokens for rewards but participating in a real, verifiable, cash-flow-generating ecosystem.

Aster expands from perpetual contracts to on-chain US stock derivatives and issues USDF stablecoin. Its evolution path is clear: from a simple trading platform to a diversified financial product line. Revenue no longer depends solely on trading fees but also on stablecoin issuance, lending interest, derivatives fees, and more.

PancakeSwap’s transformation is even more radical. It reduces CAKE inflation to protect the token price, retires inefficient staking products, launches stock perpetual contracts, and introduces AI-driven prediction markets like Probable. The DEX is transforming into a comprehensive financial platform.

These changes point to three clear signals:

1. Meme traffic cycle weakens, users focus more on sustainable yield structures

Relying on token issuance and trading volume to attract funds becomes less effective. Users now ask: Is this yield real? Where does it come from? How sustainable is it? Only projects that can answer these questions will survive longer in the new phase.

2. Combining with real assets to build robust product structures

On-chain products are actively integrating with traditional assets. Stablecoins, RWA, and institutional funds are becoming new foundational assets, providing real cash flows. This satisfies retail demand for stable yields and institutional needs for compliant assets.

3. Protocols begin to collaborate

A stablecoin can participate in lending, mining, and collateralization simultaneously, with asset pathways no longer isolated. This indicates that projects on BNB Chain are upgrading from competition to symbiosis.

The New Journey in 2026: From Asset On-Chain to Privacy Innovation

As 2026 approaches, the environment on BNB Chain has subtly changed.

The decline of Meme hype is superficial; deeper challenges include potential plateauing of user growth. The previous reliance on Meme-driven traffic is hard to replicate, and new institutional yield strategies are not yet fully mature. In this environment, BNB Chain needs to find new growth engines.

1. The preferred infrastructure for real asset on-chain

BNB Chain has demonstrated its capacity to host high-frequency trading and stable assets. With the growth of stablecoin market cap, RWA projects landing in large numbers, and more regions opening up to on-chain assets, BNB Chain is expected to become a priority platform in Asia-Pacific and globally. Future competition will shift from retail user acquisition to who can better host institutional capital.

2. Prediction markets and privacy tech as experimental fields

Beyond stablecoins and RWA, BNB Chain is exploring new tracks. Prediction markets are exploding in diversity: OpinionLabsxyz leads macro trading, Predictdotfun innovates by using prediction positions for DeFi capital efficiency, and Probable emphasizes zero-fee and gamified experiences. Privacy tech also gained momentum in 2025, and in 2026, BNB Chain may introduce zero-knowledge proofs and other privacy modules to help financial institutions manage data privacy.

3. Continuous protocol layer optimization to lower barriers

Technical upgrades will be key. BNB Chain plans to:

• Increase TPS to 20,000, reducing confirmation times to milliseconds, further lowering Gas fees
• Introduce privacy frameworks friendly to compliance, supporting high-frequency trading while maintaining DeFi composability
• Deploy AI Agent frameworks providing identity registration, reputation scoring, and other services

When retail funds meet long-term institutional capital, and native on-chain yields intersect with real off-chain cash flows, BNB Chain’s 2025 provides a positive answer: coexistence is possible, and collaboration is advantageous.

In 2026, a new chapter is opening. And BNB Chain will undoubtedly be the most watched stage in this experiment—not because it has the most Cheems fans, but because it has pioneered a new model of retail-institutional symbiosis. Coexistence may become the keyword for the next phase of the crypto ecosystem.