The Countdown Has Begun for the BNB Chain Network Update Named Pasteur

The developers of the $BNB Chain network have launched the countdown to the Pasteur hard fork, which will introduce significant improvements including stricter bridge validation, more secure validator key rotation, and an increased block size.

The Pasteur hard fork differs from the two previous updates, which were focused on speed. The Fermi hard fork, activated in January of this year, reduced block generation time to 0.45 seconds, followed by the Osaka/Mendel hard fork in April, which stabilized the network at this level.

The $BNB Chain developers emphasize that Pasteur aims to more fully utilize speed and eliminate two ways in which a validator could hold power they should not possess. As a result, three proposals included in the fork are combined under BEP-673:

• BEP-682 provides stricter bridge validation;
• BEP-695 ensures the correct shutdown of validator keys;
• BEP-675 expands blocks at the same speed.

Additionally, BEP-682 and BEP-695 enhance the security of the bridge, staking, and governance, while BEP-675 ensures more complete block filling from 1237 to 2324 transactions per second in test networks. BEP-675 allows the proposer to send a block they have already formed. A validator verifies it for compliance with consensus rules, signs and relays it, and then completes full validation.

The Pasteur hard fork was launched in the BSC testnet on July 21 and will be activated in the main $BNB Smart Chain network on August 25, 2026. Node operators are strongly encouraged to upgrade to version 1.7.7 before this date.

The goal for the second half of the year for the $BNB Chain has been defined as doubling the throughput of the main network, leading to a tenfold improvement in performance. The Pasteur hard fork aligns with this stated goal.