BNB Chain schedules Fermi fork to reduce BSC confirmation delays

The upgrade bundles three accepted proposals – BEP-619, BEP-590 and BEP-337 – focused on shorter block intervals, faster finality, and validator performance. According to the project’s announcement, Fermi is expected to make transactions confirm more quickly and improve the user experience on BSC once validators adopt the new rules at the stated activation time.

Fermi’s headline change comes from BEP-619, which defines “Phase Three” of BSC’s short-interval roadmap and sets the target block time at 0.45 seconds. The proposal, merged to the BEPs repository in September 2025, lays out the parameters necessary to sustain the more rapid cadence while controlling resource usage and avoiding instability from overly aggressive scheduling.

To complement the faster cadence, BEP-590 refines extended voting rules designed to stabilize fast finality – tuning the consensus layer so that blocks reach finality reliably even as the network produces them more frequently. In parallel, BEP-337 introduces runtime and node-level optimizations intended to keep validator processes responsive under the tighter timing budget, which is critical for maintaining liveness when the chain’s heartbeat accelerates.

BNB Chain says node operators must upgrade ahead of the fork to avoid divergence once the new rules take effect. The team’s public guidance points to the specific block-time and finality changes and provides links to the merged BEPs, signaling that the code paths supporting Fermi have cleared review and are ready for mainnet activation on the published schedule.

In its January 7 post previewing the release, BNB Chain framed the fork as part of a multi-stage effort to reduce end-user wait times and improve “network performance” broadly, with the lower block interval positioned as the immediate, measurable benefit for applications and traders who rely on quick inclusion. The announcement also highlights the intended downstream effect: shorter confirmation windows for common actions on BSC once the validator set transitions at 02:30 UTC on January 14.

The Fermi upgrade follows a year of incremental performance work on BSC and arrives amid continued competition among high-throughput chains where block time, finality guarantees, and node reliability directly influence user experience. By combining a shorter interval (BEP-619) with finality rules (BEP-590) and validator optimizations (BEP-337), BNB Chain is attempting to strike a balance between speed and stability as it accelerates its base layer.