BNB Chain to activate Pasteur hard fork on August 25

BNB Chain has announced that the Pasteur hard fork will be activated on the BNB Smart Chain on August 25 at 2:30 a.m. UTC. The upgrade, coordinated under BEP-673, combines three distinct proposals to enhance security and network throughput.

Key security improvements include BEP-682, which tightens cross-chain bridge verification by rejecting duplicate validator signatures to prevent the inflation of voting power. Additionally, BEP-695 strengthens staking and governance by ensuring retired consensus keys lose administrative authority and that blacklisted addresses are barred from signature-based governance votes.

To improve capacity, BEP-675 modifies the block production process. By allowing builders to submit fully executed blocks for validator review, the network aims to reduce processing time without changing the existing 450-millisecond block interval or gas limits. Testing indicated that validator processing time could drop from 125 milliseconds to 15 milliseconds, significantly increasing transaction throughput.