BNB, formerly known as Binance Coin, is the native token of the BNB Chain ecosystem and was created by Binance in 2017. It started as an ERC-20 token on Ethereum through an initial coin offering and later moved to Binance's own blockchain. Today BNB is used to pay transaction fees on BNB Chain, which supports smart contracts and a large number of DeFi and gaming applications. It can also be used for staking, for discounts on some Binance services, and for payments. To reduce supply over time, BNB is permanently removed from circulation through regular token burns.