BNB Chain activates Pasteur hard fork for BSC security and capacity

BNB Chain activated the Pasteur hard fork on the BSC mainnet on Tuesday. The upgrade strengthens BSC bridge, staking and governance security. The upgrade keeps the 450-millisecond block time unchanged. BEP-682 rejects duplicate validator entries during cross-chain light-block verification. BEP-695 tightens controls for validator key rotation, slashing and governance voting. The upgrade removes authority from old validator keys. The upgrade blocks restricted addresses from voting. BEP-675 changes how specialist builders submit blocks to validators. Under the new route, builders submit blocks that they have already executed. Validators check the blocks against consensus rules. Validators then sign and broadcast the blocks. Validators complete full execution verification afterward. Builders can continue using the previous route, which requires validators to execute transactions before signing. BNB Chain said the previous route sometimes left blocks underfilled because builders and validators repeated execution within the 450-millisecond block window. Tests on QANet increased throughput by about 88%, from 1,237 to 2,324 transactions per second. Average gas used per block increased from 46.35 million to 84.15 million. The block interval remained unchanged in the tests. The 100-million gas limit also remained unchanged. BNB Chain said the test results came from a controlled workload and were not mainnet measurements. BSC's Maxwell hard fork reduced average block time from 1.5 seconds to about 0.8 seconds in June 2025. BNB Chain said the subsequent Fermi upgrade reduced the block time to 450 milliseconds.