BNB Chain Fermi Upgrade Slated for January 2026 Rollout

The BNB Smart Chain's Fermi hard fork is scheduled to activate on the mainnet on January 14, 2026, following a two-month testnet phase. The primary goal of the Fermi upgrade is to lower the block interval from 750 milliseconds to 250 milliseconds, which will support time-sensitive applications requiring sub-second block times. To manage the communication lag caused by the shorter block times, the upgrade also introduces extended voting parameters. Furthermore, a new indexing mechanism will be included, allowing users who only need partial ledger data to avoid downloading the entire block history, thus conserving computing resources. This upgrade reflects the broader industry trend of blockchain networks striving for higher throughput and transaction speeds to compete with centralized financial systems, as BNB Chain currently processes around 222 TPS but has a theoretical maximum of 6,349 TPS.

(Source：Cointelegraph)