The BNB chain mainnet is gearing up to launch a new feature that would give the blockchain the power to halt the production of new blocks. However, that would only be considered if a series of conditions are satisfied. As per the official announcement, the upcoming upgrade, dubbed ZhangHeng, is expected to take place at block height 328,088,888, and would probably occur on July 19 this year. At the same time, the hard fork upgrade would also introduce the Binance Evolution Proposal BEP-255.
Important information about our latest upgrade ⤵️https://t.co/4sJkTJbGeZ
— BNB Chain (@BNBCHAIN) July 12, 2023
It is believed that this would implement on-chain asset reconciliation to mitigate damage from possible cross-bridge exploits. At the same time, Binance made it clear that all user balance changes would be tracked in each block and would be reconciled to identify any issues via the use of BEP.
A Deep Insight Into BNB Chain Upgrade
The upgrade on the BNB chain also introduces a bug fix that addresses a vulnerability called the Rogue Key Attack, which might risk the accuracy of the network’s Fast Finality Mechanism. The upgrade fixes this by cleaning all existing vote addresses at the height of the hard fork, making it mandatory for validators to add vote addresses later on.
The story does not seem to end here as the hard fork update is also believed to enable the BNB chain of handling a series of increasingly complex business rules as well as logic. The BNB chain has established itself as the fourth-largest blockchain on the basis of market cap. Similarly, BNB currently has a supply valued at approximately $38 billion.
Following the initial announcement of the upgrade, Binance mentioned that the hard fork would require almost two-thirds of the validators to switch their software version to v0.10.16 beforehand. However, if this is disregarded, it is expected that a series of complications may arise.
It was made clear by the chain that the nodes that failed to upgrade would not be able to execute further blocks following the hard fork upgrade. Furthermore, the BNB Chain outlined a detailed set of instructions that explain what measures node operators could take to comply with the hard fork upgrade. However, no action is required from BNB holders that use Binance and other centralized exchanges or cold wallets.
