BNB has been doing a lot of hard work to ensure it beats both Ethereum and Solana in the layer-1 blockchain race. The latest Pascal (March 2025) and Lorentz (April 2025) series of upgrades aim at making it at par with Ethereum’s latest Pectra Upgrade while the next Maxwell upgrade would reduce BNB’s block time to less than 1 second (0.75 seconds target).
In this article, we will discuss the technical details of the two upgrades i.e., Pascal and Lorentz that have already been implemented in the blockchain. Later articles in this series will be focused on the Maxwell upgrade.
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Technical Details of the Pascal and Lorentz Hard Fork
BNB has undergone two key upgrades in March and April 2025 namely Pascal and Lorentz. Pascal introduced smart wallet features while Lorentz helped BNB Chain reduce transaction processing time. Further, both these upgrades added security features that make the chain more resistant to several kinds of attacks.
The upgrade has been developed in accordance with Ethereum’s ERC-7702 standard which is a part of the Pectra Upgrade. The Pectra Upgrade allows Ethereum wallets to act as smart wallets with the help of their very own smart contracts. It makes 11 new major code changes including Verkle Trees for better cryptographic security of the blockchain.
Both of these upgrades were critically important since the BNB Chain functions on Ethereum’s Virtual Machine.
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Pascal Upgrade
The Pascal Upgrade is a key hard fork in BNB which allows crypto wallets on the BNB chain to have their own smart contracts. As a result, users would be able to recover their wallets, schedule transactions based on certain conditions, gas sponsorship, and access other smart wallet features.
The Pascal Upgrade was tested in February 2025 and was implemented the next month.
Lorentz Upgrade
The Lorentz Upgrade allows a 1.5 second block time. Previous to this upgrade, the BNB Chain had a block time of 3 seconds.
Further, the Lorentz Upgrade also helps BNB Chain achieve validator synchronization. This means each validator in the network is better connected to others, helping avoid any forceful (such as the 51% Attack) or deceitful (such as Bybit hack) takeover of the chain.
Benefits of Implementing the Hard Forks
There are multiple benefits of implementing the three hard forks in 2025.
The Pascal hard fork helped implement account abstraction features like smart addresses and gas sponsorships.
The Lorentz hard fork reduced the block time from 3 seconds to 1.5 seconds. It also helped BNB align well with Ethereum which itself went under the Pectra Upgrade.
Finally, the Maxwell hard fork aims to achieve sub-second (0.75s) block time, increasing the network throughput by 100%.
Stay tuned with DroomDroom for a new article on Maxwell Upgrade very soon.
Risks Arising Out of The Hard Forks
No hard fork is completely without its due risks. For the above two discussed ones, there is a risk of users getting phished similar to what happened in the ByBit Hack.
In that hack, the smart contract wallet’s user interface was hacked and the users of the wallet were tricked into entering their private keys into a fake UI created by the hackers. As a result, $1.4 billion worth of Ethereum and ETH-equivalent tokens were lost.
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What are Hard Forks?
Hard Forks are permanent changes in a blockchain after which the prefork version of the chain is no longer compatible with the post-fork version of the chain. The need for a hard fork arises when minor changes in the blockchain are unable to keep up with the requirements of the future.
Ethereum too had to go through the Pectra hard fork in the recent past due to the same reasons. Since BNB is based on the EVM blockchain and its technology is Ethereum-compatible, similar changes become mandatory for BNB too.
Here, in the case of BNB, these changes are related to account abstraction, smart contract wallet addresses and validator synchronization.
Future Potential
The next major upgrade for BNB is the Maxwell Upgrade which seeks to reduce block time to 0.75 seconds from 1.5 seconds. Sub-second block times would mean a faster transaction processing time, which is then expected to enhance BNB chain’s adoption rate.
