The cryptocurrency exchange Binance launched its first-ever soulbound token on the BNB Chain on the 8th of September, 2022. It goes by the name Binance Account Bound (BAB).
Soulbound tokens are non-transferable NFTs; as such, they’re unique and permanently attached to their owners. As a result, they’re used in applications where proof of identity is crucial, for example, in the case of educational credentials.
BAB owners can prove that they’re verified Binance users because only those who passed the identity verification process can mint it.
Why should you mint Binance Account Bound token?
As a BAB holder, you can participate in building the supporting projects and, in exchange, earn rewards. For now, 14 projects will adopt BAB tokens and provide perks exclusively to the holders. These include
- The Defi hub ApeSwap will set up a claimable NFT raffle.
- The cryptocurrency exchange ApolloX will introduce a reward program.
- The decentralized marketplace PearDao will distribute GameFi tokens that grant access to voting rights, exclusive NFT mints, and higher trading limits.
- The credentials infrastructure Galxe will add BAB holders to its database to strengthen protection against sybil attacks.
- X World Games will gift a one-time airdrop for logging into each game.
- CyberConnect, a decentralized social graph protocol, will leverage BAB tokens to signify that the linked social media profile belongs to a real person, not a bot. In addition, BAB will function as a POAP (proof of attendance protocol) for live events.
Other BAB partners include the metaverse platforms Ultiverse and P12, as well as play-to-earn game Summoner’s Arena, NFT art platform Liveart, GameFi platforms Tiny World and the Harvest, also MathWallet and OpenOcean.
You can follow the new partnerships on the Binance announcement page.
How to mint Binance Account Bound token?
You are eligible to mint BAB only if you’ve already completed the verification process. Once verified, you can mint BAB directly on Binance App. Since it serves as proof of identity, you can only mint one token.
Other requirements for minting are connecting a Binance Smart Chain (BSC) compatible wallet and verifying wallet ownership.
Note also that minting requires gas fees which, at the time of writing, equals approximately 1 BUSD, Binance’s stablecoin pegged 1:1 to USD. Binance deducts this gas fee from your spot wallet during the minting process.
How to view BAB tokens?
Your Binance Account Bound token will be issued to the wallet you connected while minting.
Remember that soulbound tokens are, in essence, NFTs. You need an NFT-compatible crypto wallet to view them.
In the case of BAB, if you want to use a third-party wallet, it must support NFTs on BSC. You should select BNB Smart Chain as the network in your wallet to view the token.
Revoking BAB
Since BAB is a soulbound token, i.e., non-transferable, you can’t send it to others. But what if you like to transfer it between your own wallets?
Binance devised a solution for this by allowing the owner to cancel the existing tokens and create a new one. BAB holders can do this by going to the “revoke BAB token” page on the Binance App and following the instructions.
There’s, however, a lock period of 72 hours. After that, you can mint a new BAB token by connecting the wallet where you want to store it.
Revoking is also necessary for the unfortunate event of losing your wallet’s private keys. Since you lose access to your wallet in such a case, all you can do is cancel the existing token and create a new one by revoking it, as explained above.
Final thoughts
For the web3 ecosystem, BAB is a significant advancement since it showcases some of the first real-world use cases of the soulbound tokens, which were first introduced as a conceptual idea by Vitalik Buterin.
