BNB Chain activates Pasteur hard fork to strengthen bridge security
BNB Smart Chain activated its Pasteur hard fork on mainnet, strengthening bridge, staking, and governance security while increasing block capacity without changing the 450-millisecond block time. The upgrade combines three proposals: one prevents duplicate validator entries in cross-chain bridge verification, another tightens controls on validator key rotation, slashing, and governance voting, and a third changes how block builders submit blocks. The new block-building route lets builders submit already executed blocks. Validators then verify the block against consensus rules, sign and broadcast it, and finish execution checks afterward. BNB Chain says this reduces redundant work that previously limited how full blocks could get within the short block window. Builders can still use the older route. In QANet tests, throughput rose by about 88%, from 1,237 to 2,324 transactions per second, and average gas use per block increased from 46.35 million to 84.15 million, with block time and gas limit unchanged. These were controlled test results, not mainnet measurements.
