BNB Chain Enhances Security & EVM Chain Compatibility Through Hard Fork

Binance’s BNB Chain Upgrades for Improved Security and EVM Compatibility

Binance’s BNB Chain is undergoing two significant upgrades aimed at enhancing network finality and compatibility with other EVM-based blockchains.

The proprietary BNB Smart Chain (BSC) by Binance is scheduled to undergo two hard forks in August 2023. These upgrades are designed to mitigate the risk of malicious blockchain reorganization and enhance compatibility with other EVM-based blockchain networks.

Plato Upgrade – August 10

The first upgrade, known as Plato, took place on August 10 and introduced the implementation of BEP-126. This evolutionary proposal brings forth a fast finality mechanism that effectively prevents block reversion.

Arno Bauer, Senior Solution Architect at BNB Chain, discussed the specifics of these network upgrades with Cointelegraph. The fast finality mechanism serves to decrease the likelihood of chain reorganization, stabilize block production, and enable users to access accurate information from the most recently finalized block in real-time.

Finality is a fundamental concept in blockchain technology, denoting the point at which transactions or blocks become immutable. This concept is crucial for maintaining trust and preventing double-spending within blockchain systems.

BEP-126 achieves fast finality through a series of steps:

• Validators propose a block, which is then shared with other validators.
• Validators sign the block using their private keys to create a vote message.
• Vote aggregation takes place, gathering validator votes into a pool and aggregating them if the parent block has sufficient votes.

Validators adhere to specific voting rules, such as not publishing multiple votes for the same height. Finality rules dictate that a block is ‘justified’ if it contains an attestation in the child block’s header, and it’s ‘finalized’ if both justified and its direct child is justified.

The longest chain is determined by the fork containing the highest justified block, even if other forks have a higher difficulty sum. Producing and finalizing blocks have varying validator requirements.

BNB Chain validators are rewarded for voting, while those violating vote rules face slashing, akin to Ethereum’s proof of stake protocol.

Hertz Upgrade – August 30

The Hertz hard fork, scheduled for August 30, aims to align the BNB Chain with the latest developments in Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) blockchains. Bauer emphasized that BSC needs to update its block and transaction structures, as well as its base EVM, to match Ethereum’s Berlin and London forks.

Bauer highlighted that the fast finality mechanism will create a more secure environment for decentralized applications (DApps), leading to quicker transaction finality and improved responsiveness and efficiency of DApps operating on the BSC.