BNB Chain Fermi Hard Fork Set for January 14, Slashing Block Time to 250ms
BNB Smart Chain will activate the Fermi hard fork on January 14, 2026, tripling block production speed with 250ms block times.
BNB Chain is preparing for its most aggressive performance upgrade yet, with the Fermi hard fork scheduled to cut block times by two-thirds.
What Happened
BNB Smart Chain has confirmed the Fermi hard fork will activate on mainnet on January 14, 2026, at 02:30 AM UTC. The upgrade will slash block times from the current 750 milliseconds down to 250 milliseconds, effectively tripling the network's block production speed.
The announcement follows a successful testnet trial that began in November 2025. Validators are required to upgrade to version 1.6.4 or 1.6.5, with the latter recommended for optimal performance. The upgrade builds on momentum from 2025, which saw the Pascal, Lorentz, and Maxwell hard forks progressively enhance network capabilities.
Why It Matters
The 250ms block time positions BNB Chain among the fastest major Layer 1 blockchains, enabling sub-second transaction confirmations. This speed improvement targets high-frequency DeFi applications, on-chain trading systems, and liquidation mechanisms that require rapid execution.
BNB Chain currently processes 12 to 17 million daily transactions with 58 million monthly active users and over $7 billion in total value locked. The Fermi upgrade also introduces a new indexing method to reduce node resource requirements, allowing participants to sync only necessary data rather than the full historical ledger.
What to Watch
The upgrade applies across the BSC mainnet and involves validators, builders, and node operators. Extended voting parameters will compensate for communication lag at higher block frequencies. The network's roadmap targets 20,000 transactions per second by late 2026 through additional gas limit increases from 100 million to 1 billion.
Key Takeaways
The Fermi hard fork represents a significant step in BNB Chain's scalability roadmap, potentially strengthening its competitive position against Solana and other high-performance Layer 1 networks.
