Author: Nancy, PANews

At the recent Web3 Carnival in Hong Kong, Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, revealed even greater ambitions. Its two leaders, Richard Teng and He Yi, announced that Binance is transforming from an exchange into a financial super-application, aiming to serve the daily financial needs of 3 billion people worldwide.

Behind this statement is the fact that the crypto industry is accelerating its penetration into the mainstream world, and user experience is becoming a new watershed.

From Peter Steinberger and Andrej Karpathy to Elon Musk and Jensen Huang, tech giants have all offered similar assessments: traditional apps are coming to an end, and agents are reshaping how software interacts. This change is essentially rewriting the gateway to the digital world.

Web3, however, has long been hampered by the entry point problem. Despite the continuous enrichment of asset types and the expansion of application scenarios, the industry as a whole has failed to bridge the gap between early adopters and mass users, causing many potential users to be deterred by the complex on-chain experience.

Today, Binance is striving to become a super gateway to the Web3 era, significantly lowering the barriers to entry and propelling crypto assets from niche tools to everyday life. This evolution is driven by the maturation of the crypto industry, evolving user needs, and changes in the external environment.

Over 700 million users, with a 65% first-time churn rate.

The number of users worldwide who have used crypto assets has surpassed 700 million. If we turn back the clock to 2021, this number was only about 100 million. In just five years, it has increased more than sevenfold.

The user base continues to grow, and the ecosystem's boundaries are constantly expanding. Tokenization, stablecoins, ETFs, DeFi, prediction markets, and on-chain payments are rapidly penetrating TradeFi, and traditional institutions are increasingly appearing in the crypto ecosystem. Crypto assets are also entering the mainstream investment landscape, while traditional assets such as stocks, gold, and foreign exchange are being gradually introduced onto the blockchain.

The boundaries between the crypto world and traditional finance are becoming increasingly blurred, and crypto is gradually becoming part of mainstream infrastructure.

However, growth does not equate to activity. Only 30 to 40 million users are truly active on the blockchain. Beneath the seemingly prosperous surface of the industry, a large number of accounts remain dormant, failing to develop stable usage habits or accumulate sufficient network effects.

In comparison, the number of global internet users has reached 6 billion, but encrypted users account for only about 11.7%. In terms of retention, the initial churn rate for Web2 products is typically between 5% and 10%, while for Web3 products, this figure is as high as 65%.

Users came, but didn't stay. This wasn't due to insufficient market demand, but rather to a series of invisible barriers that deterred many users.

For most non-technical users, wallet management, private key security, and transaction processes remain too cumbersome and error-prone, and the experience is far from the smoothness of traditional apps. At the same time, the dual barriers of complex financial knowledge and technical jargon further increase the cost of understanding, keeping a large number of users out.

Risks further amplify this hesitation. Frequent hacking attacks and fraud incidents, coupled with the lack of insurance and safety net mechanisms similar to those in traditional financial systems, and the highly fragmented nature of multi-chain and multi-protocol systems, continuously lengthen the operational path, increasing the cognitive burden and psychological cost on users.

As a result, most people only scratch the surface, deterring even more ordinary users who haven't yet entered the field. Funds are hesitant to invest deeply, and user retention is insufficient, ultimately severely limiting the industry's liquidity and ecosystem vitality.

In a sense, what Web3 currently lacks most is not more new applications or narrative hype, but a reliable, secure, and simple one-stop entry point that allows ordinary people to take the first step without any burden.

This entry point needs to possess three capabilities simultaneously: first, aggregation, integrating functions scattered across different chains and protocols into a single interface; second, simplification, transforming complex technical processes into an understandable and operable product experience; and third, trust, providing users with basic security boundaries and risk expectations.

On this basis, more ordinary users can truly enter and remain in crypto finance, thereby promoting financial equality.

This entry point represents not just an upgrade in product form, but a transformation in the industry's growth model. It not only opens a convenient and secure door for ordinary people, but also injects a continuous stream of fresh blood and sustained liquidity into the entire crypto industry.

No longer just an exchange, the "elephant" is about to lead the dance.

“Cryptocurrency and traditional finance are rapidly merging,” Richard Teng revealed at the Hong Kong Web3 Carnival. On one hand, many traditional financial institutions are quickly bolstering their capabilities by acquiring Web3 companies, banks are experimenting with tokenized deposits, and are considering entry points in the face of the rise of stablecoins. On the other hand, the Web3 industry is also moving into the Web3 domain. For example, as traditional financial infrastructure becomes obsolete, stablecoins are becoming a viable alternative; currencies based on blockchain and cryptocurrencies will become the native currencies of AI; and Binance is launching products such as precious metals and stock tokens.

He Yi also outlined a strategic vision for the future of the industry. The world has entered a period of rapid transformation with a sense of impetus. The AI ​​singularity may quietly arrive one day while we are eating, drinking, and sleeping. Global foreign exchange is expected to migrate entirely to blockchain, asset trading will operate 24/7, and the financial landscape will undergo a fundamental restructuring. Binance has chosen to embrace the productivity leap brought by AI and is taking concrete actions to promote the deep integration of Crypto and TradeFi.

As the world's largest gateway to crypto assets, Binance is rapidly transforming from a simple trading platform into a comprehensive financial services provider. Its continuous ecosystem expansion and product innovation to address evolving needs have sparked debate. Some see it as a demonstration of its ecosystem integration capabilities, while others worry that the platform is attempting to control the entire crypto ecosystem.

However, as crypto gains traction on a larger stage, Binance, this "elephant," is adopting a strategy of expanding the pie rather than grabbing existing market share. Depending on the maturity of different sectors, it has taken two distinct expansion paths, reducing innovation risks for itself and the industry while preserving greater growth space for the entire Web3 ecosystem.

In the early stages, new concepts and applications are often accompanied by high uncertainty and a high failure rate. If Binance were to directly enter the market and build its own products at this time, it would not only require a large investment of resources, but the premature intervention of a large platform could also squeeze out entrepreneurial space, thereby inhibiting the industry's diversified innovation environment.

Therefore, Binance chooses to invest in and incubate projects through YZi Labs, bringing selected early-stage potential projects into the ecosystem. This helps projects gain initial attention and liquidity while avoiding the squeeze on the ecosystem caused by reinventing the wheel. Currently, YZi Labs has invested in hundreds of projects, managing approximately $10 billion in assets, covering Web3, AI, and related fields.

Once a particular sector matures and leading players emerge, Binance shifts from being a behind-the-scenes investor to an active participant. At this point, the logic for entering the market is no longer simply replication, but leveraging its own strengths to expand market share, rather than simply competing for existing market share.

As the largest traffic portal and distribution hub in the crypto world, Binance has served over 300 million users globally to date. Behind this success lies a long-established security reputation and risk control system, as well as continuously strengthened user education and product coverage capabilities. Such a low-friction, high-trust entry point is difficult for most vertical projects to replicate in the short term, enabling more ordinary users to learn about and experience new products and concepts in a relatively safe environment, thus bringing new users and liquidity to the entire industry.

For example, in the Perp DEX sector, Aster, supported by YZi Labs, continues to expand its market share, triggering a perpetual contract war and further expanding the overall market share. In the prediction market field, Binance Wallet integrates features such as Predict.fun, allowing users to directly access their spot or cash account balances within the app to trade future outcomes in areas such as sports, economics, world events, culture, and cryptocurrencies, significantly lowering the barrier to entry. In the tokenized stock sector, Binance partners with Ondo Finance, allowing ordinary users to directly trade over 100 tokenized US stocks through their wallets, including popular stocks such as Nvidia, Google, Apple, and Tesla. It has even recently launched star-studded pre-IPO assets such as SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic. As the integration of crypto and commodities becomes a trend, Binance has also launched trading products for crude oil, gold, and silver, with trading volumes exceeding those of many traditional commodity exchanges.

In addition, Binance continues to drive product innovation. For example, its Web3 wallet, embedded within the exchange's app, allows users to seamlessly cross-chain operations without managing complex mnemonic phrases, and this product has successfully captured a share of the wallet market since its launch. Furthermore, Binance has recently launched several AI-driven features and services to enhance the intelligence of cryptocurrency trading and asset management.

Of course, whether users stay long-term ultimately depends on product experience and market competition. A good entry point can significantly lower the barrier to entry for first-time users, but long-term use still depends on real value. Users will always vote with their feet.

With a target of 3 billion users, the ambition is to become the global financial infrastructure.

The ultimate form of finance is never about becoming more complex, but about becoming more inclusive. This not only reflects Binance's own strategic considerations for expansion, but also promotes the long-term healthy development of the Web3 industry.

"Exchange the World," Binance's classic slogan, is not only an ambitious marketing declaration but also an expression of its long-term strategic mission.

It means not only becoming a world-class exchange and building the world's most liquid and reliable trading infrastructure, but also changing the world through crypto technology, lowering the barriers to financial access, and enabling more ordinary people to have equal access to financial services.

At the 2026 Hong Kong Web3 Carnival, Binance Co-CEO He Yi clearly outlined Binance's long-term strategy.

She emphasized that technology should not be arrogant; its true value lies in how to better serve ordinary people. Binance's vision is to become a global financial infrastructure, evolving into a commercial company that serves the masses, much like the internet in its early days, gradually shifting from Silicon Valley's geek culture to companies like Google and Amazon, becoming a basic service reaching ordinary people worldwide.

In this narrative, the value of a super gateway lies not in locking in users, but in bringing more people into the Web3 world in an efficient and secure manner. Building on its existing user base of 300 million, Binance has significantly increased its target user group to 3 billion, equivalent to covering more than one-third of the global population. This upgrade is not simply about pursuing scale, but because if crypto financial instruments are mature and inclusive enough, they should serve a wider range of people.

For ordinary people, this means real change. Regardless of their country of origin or income level, they can equally and conveniently enjoy the financial freedom and efficiency improvements brought about by encryption technology.