BNB Chain Schedules Fermi Hard Fork for January Mainnet Activation

• The BNB chain upgrade will introduce a new indexing mechanism which allows users to access selected data, reduce storage, and other computing requirements.
• BNB Chain continues to expand amid rising competition, currently processing over 222 TPS with a theoretical capacity of 6,349 TPS.

On January 14, the BNB Smart Chain will undergo the Fermi hard fork, scheduled for mainnet activation. This development will happen after two months of testing on the smart chain testnet. According to the BNB community’s GitHub documentation, the Fermi upgrade will reduce block times to 250 milliseconds from the current 750 milliseconds.

Thus, it will support time-sensitive applications that require sub-second confirmation speeds. In order to address the surge in communication latency between nodes due to faster block production, the upgrade will introduce extended voting parameters.

The Fermi upgrade also brings along a new indexing mechanism that will allow users to gain access to only selected parts of the ledger. This will remove the need to download the full blockchain history. Besides, it will also reduce computing and storage requirements to a great extent.

The upgrade shows the broader trend among blockchain networks aiming for higher throughput and faster transaction speeds. Developers are looking to make distributed systems that are similar to the efficient centralized infrastructure available in traditional finance.

The BNB Chain will also play a major role in the growth of the tokenization industry as it supports major cross-chain activity, as mentioned in our previous story.

BNB Chain And Latest Development

Launched by crypto exchange Binance back in 2020, BNB Chain is a layer-1 blockchain governed by a broad community of users and validators. As per the data from BSC Scan, the network currently processes more than 222 transactions per second (TPS).

On the other hand, Chainspect noted that the maximum theoretical throughput for BNB Chain is 6,349 TPS. This shows the scope of further scalability from here on. Despite ongoing improvements, blockchain networks continue to lag behind traditional financial infrastructure in terms of transaction throughput. This brings limitations to their suitability for payments and high-frequency trading.

VISA, one of the world’s largest payment processors, has handled more than 1,700 TPS. It allows merchant payments to complete within seconds. In the latest development as reported by CNF, Visa has launched a dedicated stablecoin advisory division. As a result, banks, fintech firms, merchants, as well as businesses can understand and implement stablecoin solutions.

In recent months. BNB Chain activity has continued to grow, with active addresses reaching 2,871,208. This is at par with the active address count of high-throughput layer-1 blockchain Solana. Lower throughput and longer block times on blockchain networks also pose challenges for decentralized finance (DeFi) applications.