The Fermi update of the BNB chain brings 0.45 second blocks and faster completion
BNB Chain's Fermi update went live Wednesday, reducing BNB Smart Chain (BSC) time from 0.75 seconds to 0.45 seconds and pushing transaction completion to “around one second,” making the network one of the fastest major Ethereum virtual machine chains.
The hard fork completes the final phase of the BNB Chain's “short block gap” roadmap and is designed as a performance and reliability improvement rather than a cosmetic fix.
At Fermi, BSC validators produce blocks every 0.45 seconds, cutting the time it takes to verify transactions on-chain in half.
Nina Rong, executive director of BNB Chain, told Cointelegraph that the goal is “fast without sacrificing reliability,” combining short blocks with robust fast-end rules to ensure that validation is predictable even in the face of congestion.
The update refines the network's consensus rules so validators remain the same despite a tighter schedule. According to the BNB Chain documentation, the Fermi network introduces strict propagation and noise parameters intended to reduce latency when the network is busy.
Related: BNB Chain Fermi Hard Fork Scheduled for January
Built for latency-sensitive use cases
BNB Chain is effectively deploying Fermin in latency-sensitive applications such as onchain trading, real-time decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, and interactive gaming decentralized applications (DApps).
According to Rong, the update is designed to target users and merchants who want network speeds and confirmation times to be stable, “not only to improve real-world performance, but not just high-volume results.”
Most DApps and smart contracts do not require code changes, and the transition is expected to be largely seamless for end users. But Rong says teams that rely on accurate block timing will have to reexamine their assumptions, as blocks will arrive faster than ever before.
Lessons from the past
Like other high-stakes chains, the BNB Chain has experienced congestion and degraded user experience during speculative increases and high volumes of transactions.
Rong says those components informed Fermi's design. The update strengthens fast-end polling rules and validator coordination to make the chain more responsive and have more predictable validation times under high load.
She emphasized that the changes are aimed at ensuring that approvers “stay in sync to keep the network stable,” even as production speeds up. The network has provided post-fork monitoring and ongoing release cleanup and stabilization tools to quickly resolve issues if they are found.
Related: Ondo Tokenizes Over 100 US Stocks and ETFs on BNB Chain
Performance of BNB Chain 2025
BNB Chain is one of the busiest blockchains in terms of transaction volume and user activity in 2025, ranking second in total onchain transactions after Solana, with an estimated 3.89 billion transactions recorded in 2025.
That growth has been fueled by low fees, strong performance improvements, and an active combination of DeFi and memecoin ecosystems.
By pushing block times to 0.45 seconds, with a target of “around one second”, Fermi puts BNB Chain in a different performance bracket than Ethereum's base layer, which offers strong decentralized guarantees but a much slower output and verification speed, creating a block around every 12 seconds.
At the same time, BNB Chain continues to offer an Ethereum virtual machine-compatible environment that differentiates it from non-EVM high-performance rivals like Solana, which appeals to developers who want speed without leaving the EVM ecosystem.
Fermi is part of the BNB Chain 2026 technology roadmap, which focuses on high-performance infrastructure, predictable latency, and optimizing the base layer for heavy and complex workloads.
