BNB Chain's Pascal Hard Fork Boosts Transaction Efficiency, DEX Activity Surges

BNB Chain has successfully implemented the Pascal hard fork, a significant upgrade aimed at enhancing transaction efficiency and improving compatibility with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). This upgrade integrates Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 7702, which introduces several advanced features. These include smart contract wallets that enable gasless transactions, batched approvals, and easier asset swaps. Additionally, EIP-7702 aims to simplify gas fees for users and allows for batch transactions, which can reduce processing times and relieve network bottlenecks.

The Pascal hard fork is part of BNB Chain’s broader strategy to attract a wider audience, including developers and regular users who may find transaction fees to be a barrier. The introduction of smart contract wallets is particularly innovative, as these wallets function as smart contracts on a temporary basis, making transactions gasless and enabling batch approvals and more seamless asset swaps. This improvement not only streamlines the user experience but also provides developers with more flexibility when building decentralized applications (dApps). For instance, users can batch multiple trades on a decentralized exchange (DEX) into a single transaction, saving time and gas fees.

Looking ahead, BNB Chain has planned two more major upgrades for 2025: Lorentz in April and Maxwell in June. The Lorentz upgrade aims to reduce block times to 1.5 seconds, while the Maxwell upgrade will further decrease block times to 0.75 seconds. These upgrades are expected to significantly improve transaction speed and overall network efficiency, reinforcing BNB Chain’s position as a scalable and high-performance blockchain platform.

The Pascal hard fork coincides with a surge in DEX activity on the BNB Chain network, driven by the growing popularity of memecoins. This influx of activity has led to a significant increase in DEX volumes, surpassing those of both Ethereum and Solana. The majority of this activity is attributed to the rise of memecoins, which have fueled a surge in trading on services like PancakeSwap. PancakeSwap, the BNB Chain-native DEX, has seen a notable increase in daily volume, surpassing Ethereum’s Uniswap with around $2.7 billion in daily volume generated.

The Pascal hard fork includes a series of Binance Evolution Proposals (BEPs) that optimize the network. These include BEP-439, which proposes precompiles for efficient BLS signature verification, and BEP-440, which stores historical block information in system contracts for better accessibility. BEP-441 adds EIP-7702 for the smart contract wallet feature, while BEP-466 ensures compatible block formatting. BEP-496 increases calldata cost to protect the network from denial of service attacks. Node operators, validators, exchanges, and infrastructure providers have been urged to update their systems to adapt to the Pascal hard fork, as failure to do so could cause nodes to fall out of sync. Developers have also been reminded to ensure their dApps comply with the new transaction structure introduced in the Pascal hard fork.