BNB Chain to Receive ‘ZhangHeng’ Upgrade: Everything to Know

Binance's BNB Chain, which is estimated to handle around 4.1 million daily active addresses, is gearing up to receive a network upgrade. The name of this upgrade is ‘Zhangheng' and it is scheduled to be deployed on July 19. The main aim behind this upgrade is to improve the security features on the BNB Chain and slash the chances of notorious cyber actors trying to exploit any vulnerabilities if any. The name of the upgrade is a tribute to Zhang Heng, a Chinese polymathic scientist.

A mechanism named ‘BEP-255′ will be introduced on the BNB Beacon Chain, which would ‘execute on-chain asset reconciliation' leading to an improved security on the network.

Developers behind the blockchain will add a ‘panic' mode to the blockchain, which will stop the production of new blocks if any threats or issues are identified during the reconciliation.

This panic mode will affect BNB Chain-related deposits and withdrawals, and downstreaming services until the issue is resolved.

“This drastic action is necessary to protect the chain and its users, so core developers and community members should investigate the issue as soon as possible,” a Coindesk report quoted developers on GitHub as saying.

The holders of the BNB Chain's native BNB token will not be impacted by this blockchain transition. Node operators, however, are required to switch to version 0.10.16.

“New rules and logic changes will occur for this upgrade at block height of 328,088,888. After the upgrade kicks in, the blockchain can handle a series of new business rules and logic. If you fail to upgrade your software on time, your node will not sync with the upgraded BNB Beacon Chain peer/validator nodes. You will not be able to connect or send transactions,” said an official blog by Binance.

Binance launched its blockchain in 2019.

As of Thursday, July 13, Binance Smart Chain transactions per day is at a current level of 4.160 million, up from 4.045 million yesterday and down from 4.162 million one year ago, shows the data by YCharts.