BNB Smart Chain, the decentralized finance (DeFi) platform, is set to undergo a scheduled hard fork upgrade called Planck at block height 27,281,024. The upgrade is expected to occur on April 12 at approximately 13:30 (UTC), as per the latest announcement.
According to the core team, the Planck hard fork upgrade will enhance the security and stability of the network. The upgrade requires more than half of all validators to upgrade to keep making blocks successfully.
If the existing full nodes in the network do not upgrade, they will not be able to receive and execute further blocks normally after the hard fork block height.
According to the announcement post, for full node operators, the release is breaking, and they need to switch to v1.1.21. As a developer, no changes to the EVM module are required.
Upcoming Changes For BNB Smart Chain Network
In addition to the Planck hard fork upgrade, two BEPs are set to be introduced. BEP-171 introduces several security enhancements for the cross-chain bridge between BNB Beacon Chain and BNB Smart Chain.
These enhancements include an upgrade to IAVL proof verification, a timer lock for massive funds cross-chain transfer, and the ability for cross-chain channels to be automatically paused by forged proof detection.
The announcement post further stated that BEP-172 introduces an update for Parlia consensus to improve the stability of the network. It changes the timestamp and delays setting for off-turn validators.
When the validator, in turn, misses its turn to commit a block, the block mined by the off-turn validator selected randomly would be committed as soon as possible.
There are also notable changes to the platform’s features, including the deprecation of “–diffsync” and the addition of a debug API callTracer option “withLog” to collect logs emitted during each call.
Bugfixes include fixes for crashes on nil access when TxPool shutdown and boundary checks for security, as per the post.
Nevertheless, the BNB Smart Chain hard fork upgrade, along with the two BEPs and additional changes, aims to enhance the platform’s security, stability, and functionality.
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