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BNB Chain Activates Fermi Hard Fork, Cutting Block Time to 0.45 Seconds

The upgrade pairs shorter blocks with stronger fast finality to preserve predictable confirmations during heavier network usage.

Overview

  • Fermi went live on January 14 at 02:30 UTC, and blocks are now being produced under the new consensus rules.
  • BEP-619 shortens block intervals to about 0.45 seconds while BEP-590 tightens fast-finality voting to make confirmations more reliable.
  • Validators and node operators were required to move to BSC v1.6.4 or later, with post-fork nodes regenerating snapshots and re-indexing as most apps require no code changes.
  • Daily active addresses have returned to roughly 2–3 million while TVL is near $7 billion versus more than $20 billion in 2021, a mismatch Fermi aims to manage by reducing congestion, failed transactions and MEV-driven instability.
  • BNB Chain teams are monitoring realized latency, throughput and stability, positioning Fermi as the base for a 2026 push toward near-instant confirmations and hybrid compute, and BNB rose about 2% to around $919 ahead of activation.