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BNB Smart Chain activated its Pasteur hard fork at 02:30 UTC on August 25, tightening bridge verification and validator controls while introducing a new block-building route designed to fit more transactions into each block.
The upgrade ships with three BNB Evolution Proposals covering bridge security, staking and governance controls, and block construction. Mainnet node operators were required to upgrade to BSC client version 1.7.7 before activation.
BEP-682 Blocks Duplicate Validators From Bridge Approvals
BEP-682 changes how BSC validates CometBFT light blocks used in cross-chain verification. Before Pasteur, the relevant precompile did not ensure that every entry in a submitted validator set was unique.
A crafted set could therefore repeat the same validator and count its voting power multiple times toward the required threshold. Pasteur rejects duplicate entries, requiring the approval calculation to rely on distinct validators.
Validator Key Rotation Now Removes Old Permissions
BEP-695 tightens staking and governance controls when validators rotate consensus keys. A replaced key now loses its validator-administration authority, while pending slash evictions follow the validator to the new key instead of being avoided through rotation.
The upgrade also rejects blacklisted addresses when they attempt to use signature-based governance voting functions, closing a route around restrictions that already applied to direct voting.
QANet Test Lifts Throughput From 1,237 to 2,324 TPS
BEP-675 introduces an optional route that lets specialist builders submit fully executed blocks. Validators can perform consensus checks, sign and broadcast the block before completing full transaction verification, reducing duplicate execution from the critical block-building path.
BNB Chain said QANet testing increased throughput from 1,237 to 2,324 transactions per second while keeping the 450-millisecond block interval and 100 million gas limit unchanged. Average block gas usage increased from 46.35 million to 84.15 million.
Those figures are controlled testnet results rather than measured mainnet performance.
BEP-675 does not automatically replace the existing builder route. Its SendBidBlock path becomes available after Pasteur and can be enabled through RPC, while builders adopting it must run a full node and legacy bids remain supported.
With Pasteur now active, the bridge and validator security changes apply at the protocol level. The next test is whether BEP-675 can reproduce its higher block utilization under live mainnet traffic.
