BNB Smart Chain readies hard fork upgrade

BNB Smart Chain prepares for the Fermi hard fork on January 14. The upgrade will follow the Fourier hard fork on BNB Chain, completed on January 7. 

BNB Smart Chain will follow the overall upgrade of the Binance decentralized ecosystem. The Fermi hard fork is expected on January 14, with the main goal of decreasing block time and increasing transaction output. 

The hard fork will accelerate BNB Smart Chain to 0.45 second blocks, reaching a major protocol milestone. It builds on previous Pascal and Maxwell forks. 

The upgrade will push BNB Smart Chain closer to the limits of block propagation, retaining predictable uptime with a higher transaction load. Nodes will upgrade to version 1.6.4 and later 1.6.5 to run the updated network parameters. 

The BNB decentralized ecosystem gave way to Solana in terms of popularity, but remained a staple in trading and other apps. As Cryptopolitan reported, BNB Chain is fourth in terms of app revenues, standing behind Solana, TRON, and Ethereum. 

The chain moved ahead of Base, with $21M in revenues for the past month. The Opinion prediction market, GMGN perpetual futures DEX, and PancakeSwap are the biggest fee generators on the chain.

Op BNB Chain decreased block time with Fourier hard fork

Op BNB Chain also completed its hard fork, coming into force on January 7. The fork’s key change was PR #305, decreasing block time from 500 to 250 milliseconds. All nodes upgraded to propagate the new blocks. Op BNB Chain is one of the main Layer 2 networks, working to scale the overall ecosystem.

BNB Chain remains one of the most active networks, retaining relatively low transaction fees. Despite the leadership of Ethereum and Solana in terms of liquidity and trading value, BNB Chain leads in market share based on transactions and general on-chain activity. 

The Binance on-chain ecosystem carries up to 40% of overall traffic in early 2026. The increased demand was one of the main drivers for the network upgrades. 

BNB Chain takes up to 40% of overall traffic, though still standing behind Ethereum and Solana in terms of app fee generation. | Source: Dune Analytics.

BNB Chain and BNB Smart Chain carry a growing ecosystem of decentralized swaps, DeFi, wrapped tokens, and other apps. The chains also got a boost from Binance Wallet, one of the most widely used Web3 hubs. 

BNB falls despite network upgrades

BNB, the native token of the Binance ecosystem, fell below $900, despite the news of the network upgrades. The token reacted to the latest market downturn, where most assets lost their recent gains. 

BNB traded at $884.39, down by 3.5% in the past day. Its open interest also fell to $820M, as the utility token lost its directional moves from its 2025 rally. 

During the latest downturn, BNB mostly liquidated long positions, with a drop possible to the $840 level. Short liquidity is accumulating above the current prices, going as high as $960. A series of short liquidations may lift BNB in the short term. 

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