SEC Filing Document

Company: Grayscale BNB ETF
Ticker: GBNB
CIK: 2106762
Filing Type: S-1/A
Document Type: S-1/A
Date Filed: 2026-04-07
Accession Number: 0001193125-26-145494
Exchange: 
SIC Code: 6221
SIC Description: Commodity Contracts Brokers & Dealers
URL: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/2106762/000119312526145494/bnb_s-1_amendment_1.htm

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of the processing power on the blockchain. The BNB Chain ecosystem also has an on-chain governance mechanism whereby BNB holders are able to propose and vote on governance proposals and influence the network’s evolution. BNB holders can “self-delegate” to participate in voting directly or delegate their voting power to a validator or other community member to participate in voting indirectly. However, there can be no assurance that validators or other community members will act consistently with the preferences of delegators. Voting power is proportional to the amount of BNB a holder self-delegates or delegates to a validator or community member, meaning governance outcomes may be influenced disproportionately by large stakeholders. Governance decisions can cover network parameters (such as cross‑chain transfer fees), protocol upgrades, policy changes, and treasury management. Accepted proposals are executed through protocol updates coordinated by validators and core developers, and no single entity can unilaterally amend network rules.

Development of the BNB source code has increasingly focused on modifications of the BNB protocol to increase speed and scalability and also allow for financial and non-financial next generation uses. The Trust’s activities will not directly relate to such projects, though such projects may utilize BNB as tokens for the facilitation of their non-financial uses, thereby potentially increasing demand for BNB and the utility of the BNB Chain ecosystem as a whole. Conversely, projects that operate and are built within the BNB Chain ecosystem may increase the data flow on the BNB Smart Chain and could either “bloat” the size of the BNB Smart Chain or slow confirmation times.

Smart Contracts

The BNB Smart Chain was designed to allow users to write and implement smart contracts—that is, general-purpose code that executes on every computer in the network and can instruct the transmission of information and value based on a sophisticated set of logical conditions. Using smart contracts, users can create markets, store registries of debts or promises, represent the ownership of property, move funds in accordance with conditional instructions and create digital assets other than BNB on the BNB Smart Chain. Smart contract operations are executed on the BNB Smart Chain in exchange for payment of BNB. Development on the BNB Smart Chain involves building more complex tools on top of smart contracts, such as DApps and organizations that are autonomous, known as decentralized autonomous organizations (“DAOs”). For example, a company that distributes charitable donations on behalf of users could hold donated funds in smart contracts that are paid to charities only if the charity satisfies certain pre-defined conditions. As of January 2026, more than 6,000 DApps are currently built on the BNB Smart Chain, including DApps in the collectible non-fungible token, gaming, music streaming, and decentralized finance categories.

Additionally, the BNB Smart Chain has been used for decentralized finance (“DeFi”), or open finance platforms, which seek to democratize access to financial services, such as borrowing, lending, custody, trading, derivatives and insurance, by removing third-party intermediaries. DeFi can allow users to lend and earn interest on their digital assets, exchange one digital asset for another and create derivative digital assets. As of January 2026, approximately $6.9 billion was being used as collateral on DeFi platforms on the BNB Smart Chain.

In addition, the BNB Smart Chain and other smart contract platforms have been used for creating non-fungible tokens, or NFTs. NFTs allow for digital ownership of assets that convey certain rights to other digital or real world assets. This new paradigm allows users to own rights to other assets through NFTs, which enable users to trade them with others on the BNB Smart Chain. For example, an NFT may convey rights to a digital asset that exists in an online game or a DApp, and users can trade their NFT in the DApp or game, and carry them to other digital experiences, creating an entirely new free-market internet-native economy that can be monetized in the physical world.

Summary of a BNB Transaction

Prior to engaging in BNB transactions directly on the BNB Smart Chain, a user generally must first install on its computer or mobile device a BNB Smart Chain software program that will allow the user to generate a private and public key pair associated with a BNB address. The BNB Smart Chain software program and a BNB address also enable the user to connect to the BNB Smart Chain and transfer BNB to, and receive BNB from, other users.

Each BNB Smart Chain address, or wallet, is associated with a unique public key and private key pair. To receive BNB, the BNB recipient must provide its public key to the party initiating the transfer. This activity is analogous to a recipient for a transaction in U.S. dollars providing a routing address in wire instructions to the payor so that cash may be wired to the recipient’s account. The payor approves the transfer to the address provided by the recipient by “signing” a transaction that consists of the recipient’s public key with the private key of the address from where the payor is transferring the BNB. The recipient, however, does not make public or provide to the sender its related private key.

Neither the recipient nor the sender reveals their private keys in a transaction, because the private key authorizes transfer of the funds in that address to other users. Therefore, if a user loses his or her private key, the user may permanently lose access to the BNB contained in the associated address. Likewise, BNB is irretrievably lost if the private key associated with them is deleted and no backup has been made. When sending BNB, a user’s Binance Chain software program must validate the transaction with the associated private key. In addition, since every computation on the BNB Smart Chain requires processing power, there is a transaction fee involved with the transfer that is paid by the payor. The resulting digitally validated transaction is sent by the user’s BNB Smart Chain software program to the BNB Smart Chain validators for transaction confirmation.

BNB Smart Chain validators record and confirm transactions when they validate and add blocks of information to the BNB Smart Chain. When a validator is selected to validate a block, it creates that block, which includes data relating to (i) the verification of newly submitted and accepted transactions and (ii) a reference to prior blocks in the BNB Smart Chain to which the new block is being added. The validator becomes aware of outstanding, unrecorded transactions through the data packet transmission and distribution discussed above.

Transactions on the BNB Smart Chain require the payment of gas fees denominated in BNB, which vary based on network demand and transaction complexity. From January 1, 2025 through the date of this prospectus, publicly available data indicates that typical transaction fees on the BNB Smart Chain have generally ranged from less than $0.05 for simple transfers during periods of low network activity to approximately $0.50 or more during periods of increased congestion, although higher fees are possible for complex smart contract interactions.

Upon the addition of a block of BNB transactions, the BNB Smart Chain software program of both the spending party and the receiving party will show confirmation of the transaction on the BNB Smart Chain and reflect an adjustment to the BNB balance in each party’s BNB Smart Chain public key, completing the BNB transaction. Once a transaction is confirmed on the BNB Smart Chain, it is irreversible.

Slashing on the BNB Smart Chain may occur in connection with validator misbehavior, including double-signing blocks, prolonged downtime, failure to properly validate transactions, or other violations of protocol rules. Penalties may include temporary removal (or “jailing”) from the validator set, forfeiture of a portion of the validator’s self-bonded stake, or loss of staking rewards. In certain cases, slashing penalties are enforced automatically pursuant to protocol rules, while in other cases validator removal or related penalties may occur through network governance or validator coordination mechanisms.

Some BNB transactions are conducted “off-blockchain” and are therefore not recorded in the BNB Smart Chain. These “off-blockchain transactions” involve the transfer of control over, or ownership of, a specific digital wallet holding BNB or the reallocation of ownership of certain BNB in a pooled-ownership digital wallet, such as a digital wallet owned by a Digital Asset Trading Platform. In contrast to on-blockchain transactions, which are publicly recorded on the BNB Smart Chain, information and data regarding off-blockchain transactions are generally not publicly available. Therefore, off-blockchain transactions are not truly BNB Smart Chain transactions in that they do not involve the transfer of transaction data on the BNB Smart Chain and do not reflect a movement of BNB between addresses recorded in the BNB Smart Chain. For these reasons, BNB Smart Chain transactions are subject to risks as any such transfer of BNB ownership is not protected by the protocol behind the BNB Smart Chain or recorded in, and validated through, the blockchain mechanism.

BNB Value

Digital Asset Trading Platform Valuation