Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao has announced that February 20 is the target to release Binance Chain’s testnet for public feedback. The Chain is the native public blockchain the company has been working on to support the development of its new decentralized exchange Binance DEX.

“Finally got a date. Targeting to release Binance Chain testnet (@binance_dex) for public testing on Feb 20th. This is a testnet, your feedback would be most valuable”, Zhao tweeted (Feb 11).

A somewhat private version of the testnet has already been released to Binance partners for them to try, as revealed by Zhao in an earlier tweet (Feb 6) although he did not say exactly when.

Based on his other recent tweets and inaugural “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) live stream Q&A session, we know that Binance DEX is intended to support hardware wallets so that users’ private keys will not leave their devices. The listing fee for new coins on DEX will intentionally be “close to $100,000” to deter scams, Zhao has said. The fee will be adjustable over time.

Zhao also said the Binance Chain testnet will begin with just 11 validator nodes “mainly for performance reasons”, and Binance will need “guys who can run very fast validators” as these will be rather large nodes.

However, Bitcoinist has noted that Binance will have a lot of influence over the network in the beginning, ironically making it “more centralized” compared to others.

Binance’s native token has been performing strongly of late. Bitcoinist observed that  Binance Coin (BNB) has been rallying in the past month to increase about 60% of its value, hitting an absolute all-time high against Bitcoin (BTC) on Feb 11. BNB has also reportedly become the 10th largest crypto by market capitalization.