BNB, originally known as Binance Coin, is the native cryptocurrency of the Binance ecosystem. Launched in July 2017 by Changpeng Zhao and the Binance team, BNB was initially created as an ERC-20 token on Ethereum to facilitate trading fee discounts on the Binance exchange.
In 2019, BNB transitioned to Binance's own blockchain, the Binance Chain, and now powers the BNB Chain ecosystem, supporting a wide range of applications beyond Binance's exchange.