Innovation is imperative in the blockchain landscape, where user experience, scalability, and speed separate successful from failing projects. It’s in this context that the BNB Smart Chain, BNB Chain’s smart contract platform, is appropriating features from Ethereum’s Pectra update that occurred in Q4 2024. The BNB Chain and its smart contract platform are transforming through the Pascal hard fork. It is a significant upgrade to the network that intends to make blockchain technology more available and appealing to regular users. It’s by introducing elements from Ethereum’s EIP-7702 proposal that BNB Chain’s hard fork presents better security and native smart contract wallets, streamlining user experience and improving digital assets’ protection.
The newest upgrades and the upcoming Lorentz and Maxwell upgrades scheduled for April and June are expected to positively impact the BNB price. To help you stay abreast of price and market trend changes, we’re offering a rundown on what’s transforming within the BNB Chain ecosystem.
Contents
An overview
Binance has made public the launch of a major upgrade for the BNB Chain, denominated as the Pascal Hardfork and set to deploy in March. This development intends to release new smart contract wallets and improve connectivity with Ethereum on the mainnet. This move is supposed to improve integration with Ethereum-fueled decentralized apps (dApps) and smart contracts. The hard fork enables Ethereum’s EIP-7702, supporting smart contract wallets featuring elements like batch approvals, gas-free transfers, and multi-signature support. Eventually, such achievements are bound to enhance user experience and make it easier to engage with Web3 apps by permitting dApps to pay for gas charges.
2024’s milestones
The Binance company scored some great milestones during 2024 that are considered triggers for the changes that are taking place this year. For instance, the company’s user base exceeded 250MN registered users, indicating a considerable growth in crypto adoption worldwide. At the same time, the VIP user base increased, suggesting a substantial spike in institutional engagement within the cryptocurrency area. The firm made huge investments in compliance, thus managing to gain authorizations in 21 jurisdictions.
Pascal hard fork
The Pascal hard fork is part of a more extensive roadmap for this year, which comprises two upgrades: the Maxwell Hardfork, set for June, and the Lorentz Hardfork, programmed for April. The company’s CEO, Changpeng Zhao, aka CZ, made public in an X post that the chain would undergo three big protocol updates in early 2025, kicking it off with Pascal.
The Pascal hard fork, planned for March 20 of this year on the mainnet, is an upgrade that incorporates features from Ethereum’s previous upgrade, such as:
Native smart contract wallets. Applying EIP-7702 enables externally kept accounts to work like smart contracts during transactions. This upgrade enables gas abstraction, meaning that users are no longer obliged to possess native tokens to pay for gas fees since they can do it through dApps. Moreover, this makes batch transactions possible, improving user experience and potentially bringing new supporters to the table.
Better cryptography and security. The development integrates an upgrade like EIP-2537 in the form of BEP-439, improving cryptographic operations with the BLS12-381 curve. As a result, more digital signatures can be mixed into a single signature, expediting and streamlining the transaction verification process.
Lorentz and Maxwell upgrades
The BNB Chain works on two extra post-Pascal upgrades, which are summarized below:
Lorentz (April 2025). This update strives to decrease block intervals to 1.5 seconds, improving network performance.
Maxwell (June 2025). Following Lorentz, Maxwell looks to cut block intervals to 0.75 seconds further, significantly improving transaction finality and scalability.
These upgrades represent the fundamental ideas of the BNB Chain’s continuous efforts to enhance scalability, performance, and user experience.
The expected features
If you’re seasoned in crypto, you may already have an idea about what to expect after the three upgrades. But let’s clear things up. The hard fork deployed by Bitcoin in 2017 paved the foundation for the development of Bitcoin Cash, but Pascal doesn’t follow the same trend. Instead, the Pascal upgrade brings about tech enhancements such as native smart contract wallets and cryptography transformations. Besides launching a solution similar to Ethereum’s EIP-7702 for better account abstraction, the team also looked to adjust spending limits to improve the usability and efficiency of the transactions.
The Chain team explained that the first upgrade improves security by introducing a fresh proposal—the BEP-439 proposal — that will expedite the transaction checking process. In plain English, this will slash the work necessary to conduct calculations.
Users don’t have to do anything
The developers have declared that regular utilizers have nothing to do post-update. Yet, they should keep in mind that gas fees might encounter some volatility, possibly oscillating before evening out after the upgrade’s deployment. Most dApps are expected to work according to the plan. Nevertheless, dApp users who are particularly sensitive to these transformations should keep up to date with messages from the platforms.
Regarding blockchain developers, the Chain staff stated that they’ll have to ensure the apps run easily in light of the forthcoming updates. The full impact of the upgrade deployed earlier this March is yet to be known, as are the full details of the upcoming updates. The Chain team encourages protocol devs to practice by familiarizing themselves with smart contract wallets to develop user-friendly dApps with improved flexibility and security.
Summing it up
In light of the recently launched Pascal hard fork and the publication of this year’s roadmap, we’re reviewing the main changes and possibilities impacting developers and users alike in the BNB Chain space.
Thanks to the combination of transactions, users should rejoice over considerably reduced transaction fees, making blockchain interaction easier and cheaper. At the same time, smart contract wallet funds should be easier to control and safer against unlawful access. Ethereum-associated interoperability is expected to create new investment opportunities and improve cross-chain connections.
Developers, on the other hand, can use the power of both ecosystems to create more versatile apps. They can unlock a dynamic and expanding community of seasoned developers and users, promoting partnerships and ground-breaking future projects. Creating innovative apps and services makes it easier and more profitable.
