Solana Achieves Success in China That Binance Could Not

Solana has opened an office in Shanghai and is embarking on a tour across China. Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) wrote on X that he is surprised: Solana managed to both advertise in China and secure an office there, while BNB Chain has not yet succeeded. Zhao added that he hopes for the best: if one player is lucky, others might be too.

The different fates of the projects have a backstory. Binance was launched in Shanghai in July 2017. Two months later, the People's Bank of China and six other agencies banned ICOs and demanded exchanges cease operations. By that time, Binance had just conducted an ICO for the BNB token. The company moved its servers and team to Japan, then to Malta, and later abandoned having an official headquarters. In 2021, China declared all cryptocurrency operations illegal and shut down mining. Zhao mentioned that as early as 2022, Binance, like other offshore exchanges, was recognized as a criminal organization in China. In 2023, the Financial Times, citing internal documents, reported that Binance had concealed its presence in the country for several years, but the company denied this.

The BNB Chain ecosystem is closely associated with the Binance brand, which is primarily seen as an exchange by Chinese authorities. Solana, on the other hand, has a different reputation: the Solana Foundation is a non-profit organization from Switzerland. It enters China as a technology for developers, not as a trading platform. Cryptocurrency is banned in the country, but blockchain as a technology is supported.

The Solana Accelerate China tour will take place from October 16 to 22: October 16 in Shanghai, October 18 in Hangzhou, October 20 in Shenzhen, and October 22 in Beijing. Developers, startup founders, investors, and tech companies will be invited to the meetings. They will discuss blockchain infrastructure, applications, and collaboration with the Solana ecosystem, including topics such as decentralized finance, stablecoin payments, asset tokenization, AI, and applications for regular users. Solana's top manager Vibhu stated that the office is the highest commercial office space in the world.

Outside of China, BNB Chain and Solana are more partners than competitors. According to BeInCrypto, BNB Chain, Ethereum, and Solana account for 70% of the $3.9 billion tokenized stock market.