Binance's August Hard Forks to Improve Blockchain Compatibility and Security

Binance’s BNB Chain has planned two hard forks in August – Plato on August 10 and Hertz on August 30. The first has taken place and introduces the standard BEP-126. The two hard forks are aimed at reducing the risk of malicious blockchain reorganization and making BNB Chain more compatible with other Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) blockchains.

BEP-126 involves execution of a “fast finality mechanism,” which is expected to do away with the ability of reverting blocks.

Access to instant, accurate data

BNB Chain solution architect Arno Bauer talked to Cointelegraph about the network upgrades. The new mechanism will help stabilize block production while giving users access to accurate and instant data from the latest finalized block.

Finality is key to maintaining trust. It refers to the point where a transaction block or an individual transaction can’t be changed or reversed any more. BEP-126 uses a series of measures to ensure fast finality. Validators start by proposing a block and propagating it to other validators. They create a vote message by signing for the block. Then, voting aggregation occurs. Validator votes are gathered and grouped if the direct parent block has enough.

Specific rules

Validators may not publish two separate votes for the same block height. Attestation in the child block’s header justifies a block. The block is finalized if both it and its direct child are justified.

The fork is the longest chain, including the highest justified block, even the difficulty sum of the other chain forks is higher. There are different requirements for producing and finalizing blocks regarding how many validators are needed.

Finally, BNB Chain validators get rewards for voting. Validators that break the vote rules are slashed, not unlike Ethereum’s proof-of-stake system.

According to Bauer, the fast finality mechanism ensures higher security for decentralized applications (DApps), while faster transaction finality improves BNB Chain DApps’ responsiveness and efficiency.

Proposal BEP-255 prevents exploits

On July 19, BNB Chain introduced Proposal BEP-255 as part of another hard fork. It gives BNB Chain the ability to terminate production of new blocks if it senses a threat.