BNB Chain activates hard fork, reduces fees

BNB Chain activated its Haber hard fork which introduces BNB Evolution Proposal (BEP)-336 to optimize data storage and processing on the network.

On June 20, the blockchain network announced that it successfully activated the hard fork, claiming a 90% reduction in blockchain fees. BEP 336, which takes inspiration from the Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP)-4844, enables blob-carrying transactions, which is a concept that streamlines the verification process.

Reducing layer-2 costs by 90%

According to BNB Chain, with BEP-336 implemented, layer-2 costs on the BNB Smart Chain (BSC) will be slashed by 90%. The network claimed that its optimistic rollup layer-2 solution opBNB will see its network fees reduced to around $0.0001.

With the new update, transactions will not need to be individually verified within a block but would rather be verified within the attached blob — a temporary memory segment that captures large data chunks.

While the update seems similar to Ethereum’s EIP-4844, BNB Chain said the BEP-336 is tailored for BSC. Blobs on BSC are solely managed by the BSC client. Furthermore, the pricing mechanism is also crafted to fit BSC. Unlike Ethereum’s burning mechanism, BSC doesn’t burn the base fee within blobs.

The new update is also expected to affect BNB Greenfield, a decentralized storage solution. According to BNB Chain, Greenfield will have its decentralized storage and data management enhanced with “BlobHub,” a data archive layer. This optimizes data storage for decentralized applications (DApps) and layer-2 networks.

BNB price reaches new all-time high

The new hard fork comes amid a new price milestone for the network’s native cryptocurrency BNB. On June 6, BNB tokens breached an all-time high of $717.48. The price experienced a correction on June 18, dropping to $579. At the moment, BNB hovers at $605.

BNB’s price gain in the first week of June surpassed the crypto market’s performance in the same time frame. BNB accumulated a 19% gain, while the market only had a 4.2% increase. Despite this, traders questioned the rally’s sustainability while looking for indicators that would support the momentum.

Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/bnb-chain-haber-hard-fork-reduce-fees-90-percent