On July 12, BNB Chain announced that the mainnet blockchain is expected to have a scheduled hard fork upgrade at block height 328,088,888.
Considering the current speed of block generation, the hard fork is forecast to occur on July 19, it added. BNB Chain was formerly known as Binance Smart Chain (BSC).
The hard fork has been dubbed Zhang Heng after a Chinese polymathic scientist and statesman who lived during the Han dynasty.
The upgrade will introduce BEP-255, which proposes “implementing on-chain asset reconciliation on BNB Beacon Chain to improve security.”
It explained that “user balance changes are tracked in each block and will be reconciled to identify issues” before adding:
“When there are reconciliation errors, the blockchain will panic and stop producing new blocks.”
There is also a bug fix for a security issue called “Rogue Key Attack,” it noted.
The team explained that no action needs to be taken by BNB holders, but full node operators need to switch to v0.10.16.
Last month BNB Chain went through another hard fork called Luban which introduced three evolution proposals (BEPs).
According to DeFiLlama, BNB Chain is the third largest in terms of total value locked with $3.3 billion. There are 626 protocols running on the network, which has around 1.38 million active users, it added.
However, BNB Chain TVL has declined by almost 30% since the beginning of this year. Additionally, it is down 85% from its all-time high of $22 billion in May 2021.
The largest protocol on the network is the PancakeSwap DEX which has almost half of the total value locked.
BNB prices are down 2.3% on the day to trade at $243 at the time of writing. The asset surged 6% on July 10 as users loaded up on BNB to partake in the Arkham token sale, which begins on Binance Launchpad on July 17.
However, BNB has lost 21% since the SEC sued Binance in early June. The exchange token, which the regulator alleges is a security, is also down 64.5% from its May 2021 all-time high of $686.