BNB Chain is preparing to increase its block production speed by about 40% by rolling out its third major network upgrade called Fermi on January 14th.
This update aims to make the network faster and more predictable for developers and users.
Danny Cooper, team leader at Vanguard Vantage, a sub-DAO of Venus Protocol within the BNB Chain ecosystem, said that while this change may seem small, it will make the network more “responsive and resilient,” especially during times of high volatility. Cooper said the improvements will reduce wait times during peak trading hours and improve the user experience.
The update comes at a time of growing Wall Street interest in cryptocurrencies and an intensifying race to improve blockchain speed and transaction capacity. Within the framework of the long-discussed “blockchain triad” (the necessary trade-off between decentralization, scalability, and security), BNB Chain has so far adopted an approach that prioritizes speed and scalability.
As this debate continues, on January 3, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin claimed that technological innovations such as PeerDAS and zero-knowledge virtual machines are helping overcome the trilogy.
The BNB chain continues the tradition of naming upgrades after scholars. The latest upgrade is named after Enrico Fermi, an Italian-American physicist known for developing the world's first artificial nuclear reactor. The previous two major upgrades were named after Blaise Pascal and James Clerk Maxwell.
The Fermi update does more than just reduce block times. The goal is to make confirmations more predictable by reducing network finality time to about 1 second. This is expected to reduce risks such as slippage in unstable market environments.
*This is not investment advice.
