Bnb Chain Fermi Hard Fork Scheduled For January Activation 2025

The mainnet rollout follows the Fermi testnet activation in November, further reducing block times on the layer-1 blockchain network.

The BNB Smart Chain’s Fermi hard fork has been scheduled for mainnet activation on Jan. 14, following about two months in the testnet phase.

Fermi will lower the block interval to 250 milliseconds from 750 milliseconds to support “time-sensitive” applications that require sub-second block times, according to the BNB community’s GitHub page.

The upgrade also introduces extended voting parameters to make up for the communication lag between nodes due to the shortened block times.

A new indexing mechanism is included for users who only need a portion of the ledger’s total data, instead of downloading the entire block history, a process that consumes ample computing resources.

The upgrade reflects the constant shift of blockchain networks to higher throughput and transaction speeds in a push to make distributed systems on par or better than their centralized counterparts in the traditional financial system.

The BNB Smart Chain is a layer-1 blockchain network launched by cryptocurrency exchange Binance in 2020, but has since become a decentralized ecosystem governed by a community of validators and users.

BNB chain is currently processing about 222 transactions per second (TPS), according to block explorer BSC Scan.

However, the protocol has a maximum theoretical TPS of 6,349, according to data from Chainspect.

Blockchain protocols are lagging behind traditional financial infrastructure in terms of throughput, limiting the usage of these networks for payments or high-frequency trading.

Source: CoinTelegraph