BNB Chain’s ‘Pasteur’ Hard Fork Set for Aug. 25 — Validator Security and TPS Nearly Doubled — BigGo Finance

BNB Smart Chain (BSC) will activate the “Pasteur” hard fork on Aug. 25, aimed at strengthening validator management and cross-chain security while boosting transaction processing capacity. Unlike earlier hard forks this year that focused on shortening block production times, this upgrade emphasizes efficiently leveraging the processing speed already achieved while addressing vulnerabilities in the validation process.

According to the BNB Chain development team, the Pasteur hard fork is scheduled to go live on the BSC mainnet at 11:30 a.m. Korea time on Aug. 25 (2:30 a.m. UTC on Aug. 25). Regular users and most developers need take no action, but node operators must update their clients to v1.7.7 in advance.

The hard fork bundles three proposals under BEP-673: BEP-682, which strengthens cross-chain bridge validation; BEP-695, which improves the validator key rotation process; and BEP-675, which optimizes block construction to boost transaction processing efficiency.

The most notable change is a measure to block duplicate validator participation. Previously, if the same validator appeared multiple times in the validator list, there was room for voting power to be double-counted. After the update, duplicate validators will be filtered out, and the design will verify that a genuine majority of distinct validators participated in transaction validation.

The validator key management system is also being strengthened. Even if a validator’s key is changed, previously imposed sanctions remain in effect, and administrative authority over the replaced old key is revoked. This addresses two vulnerabilities that allowed validators to retain authority longer than intended.

Changes are also coming to the transaction processing structure. Previously, after a block producer processed transactions, validators would re-execute the same transactions in a double-execution process. Under the new structure, the block producer delivers the already-executed block to validators, who then review and sign it according to consensus rules before publishing, with full validation completed afterward. This is expected to significantly reduce the time required for validation.

According to measurements from the BSC test environment, validator processing time dropped from 125 milliseconds to 15 milliseconds, and transactions per second (TPS) increased roughly 88% from 1,237 to 2,324. Average block gas usage also rose from 46.35 million to 84.15 million, expanding the transaction volume each block can accommodate. However, these figures were measured in a test environment and do not guarantee actual mainnet performance.

The Pasteur hard fork has been running on the BSC testnet since July 21. The upgrade is viewed not as a short-term technical adjustment but as part of a long-term roadmap to expand network processing capacity.

In the first half of 2026, BSC reduced block production intervals to 450 milliseconds, cut in-memory finality to 650 milliseconds, and pushed transaction processing benchmarks to around 5,200 TPS. The goal for the second half is to double mainnet throughput once again. The BNB Chain team explained that this plan will lead to a 10x performance improvement across the network over the long term.

The Fermi hard fork conducted earlier this year dramatically shortened block production time to 0.45 seconds, while the Osaka and Mendel hard fork in April focused on stabilizing operations at that speed. Pasteur, by contrast, differentiates itself by prioritizing efficient use of current speed rather than increasing speed itself.