• The mainnet of the beacon chain will experience a hard fork upgrade at block height 328,088,888.

• The upgrade also includes a bug fix aimed at resolving a vulnerability known as the Rogue Key Attack.

The BNB’s Beacon Chain is set to undergo the “ZhangHeng” upgrade soon, as confirmed by an announcement on the project’s blog on July 12. According to the post, the mainnet of the beacon chain will experience a hard fork upgrade at block height 328,088,888 on July 19, 2023, at 6:00 UTC.

The announcement emphasizes that this upgrade will implement two significant changes. Firstly, the introduction of BEP-255 will enable on-chain asset reconciliation on the BNB Beacon Chain. This addition aims to enhance security by monitoring balance changes of users in each block and comparing them to identify any inconsistencies. If any reconciliation errors are detected, the blockchain will cease the production of new blocks.

Bug Fix and Security Enhancement: Resolving the Rogue Key Attack

The upgrade also includes a bug fix aimed at resolving a vulnerability known as the Rogue Key Attack, which poses a risk to the accuracy of the network’s Fast Finality mechanism. To address this issue, the upgrade clears all existing vote addresses during the hard fork, requiring validators to add their vote addresses again after the upgrade.

The firm stated that validators must re-add vote addresses as part of the hard fork process. Additionally, the hard fork aims to enhance the chain’s capabilities in handling intricate business rules and logic. While the upgrade primarily focuses on enhancing overall security, it will have no direct impact on most users. Users who hold BNB or utilize exchanges or hardware wallets supporting BNB do not need to act unless their service provider specifically instructs them to.

However, node operators must take proactive measures prior to the hard fork. It is necessary for them to update their software version to v0.10.16 before reaching the block height of the hard fork. Failure to upgrade promptly will require node operators to initiate a recovery process.

BNB Chain clarified that full nodes that do not undergo the necessary upgrade would lose the ability to process subsequent blocks following the hard fork block height.

The BNB Chain provided comprehensive instructions for node operators on ensuring compliance with the hard fork upgrade. However, it highlighted that BNB tokenholders utilizing platforms such as Binance.com, centralized exchanges, or cold wallets do not currently need to take any action.

Furthermore, on June 19, BNB Chain introduced opBNB, a novel layer-2 scaling solution compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine. opBNB is built on Optimism’s OP Stack.

BNB Chain: Developed by Binance as a Decentralized Community Project

This upgrade pertains to BNB Chain (BNB), which presently holds the position of the fourth-largest blockchain based on its market capitalization, with a total supply valued at $38 billion.

BNB Chain was established and developed by the prominent cryptocurrency exchange Binance. While it operates as a decentralized community project, Binance is noted as one of several contributors, as stated on the company’s website.

It is worth noting that Binance and affiliated entities faced a lawsuit filed by U.S. securities regulators in June. In that case, the regulators identified BNB as one of the assets classified as a security.