The BNB Smart Chain is set to implement its Fermi hard fork on January 14, aiming to enhance its performance significantly. This upgrade follows a two-month testnet phase that began in November and is designed to decrease block times from 750 milliseconds to 250 milliseconds, catering to applications requiring rapid transactions.
In addition to faster block intervals, the Fermi upgrade will introduce new voting parameters to address communication delays between nodes. A new indexing mechanism will allow users to access specific ledger data without needing to download the entire history, thereby conserving computing resources. Currently, BNB Chain processes around 222 transactions per second (TPS), while its maximum potential TPS is estimated at 6,349.
As the BNB Chain evolves, its active address count has reached 2,871,208, nearing that of the high-throughput blockchain Solana. This growth reflects the ongoing efforts of blockchain networks to improve transaction speeds and compete with traditional financial systems.