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Improved Security Measures Await BNB Chain Users in July Hard Fork

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Sujha Sundararajan

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Sujha Sundararajan

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Last updated:

July 14, 2023

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The BNB Beacon Chain, the Binance blockchain ecosystem, is expected to undergo a scheduled hard fork upgrade on 19th July at 6:00 UTC, with enhanced security features for users.

The hard fork dubbed “ZhangHeng,” named after a Chinese scientist, will occur at block height 328,088,888, the official announcement on July 12, noted. A hard fork is a change to the software protocol that makes previously invalid blocks/transactions valid, or vice-versa.

While the upgrade primarily focuses on improving overall security, it will have no direct impact on most users, it noted.

“If you are using any exchanges which support BNB, there’s no action required on your side unless your exchange or wallet service notifies you.”

However, the full node operators on the mainnet must upgrade their software version to v0.10.16 before reaching the hard fork block height. “If you fail to upgrade your software on time, your node will not sync with the upgraded BNB Beacon Chain peer/validator nodes. You will not be able to connect or send transactions,” it added.

Additionally, there will be no issuance of new BNB tokens, and two-thirds of all BNB Chain validators are required to upgrade their nodes for a smooth transition during the hard fork.

Enhanced Security and Functionality

The project announced two major security changes in the upgrade. Developers noted that the upgrade will introduce BEP-255, which proposes on-chain asset reconciliation on BNB Beacon Chain to improve security.

BEP-255 will track user balance changes in each block and reconcile to identify issues. “When there are reconciliation errors, the blockchain will ‘panic’ and stop producing new blocks,” the update said.

Another security enhancement will include a bug fix that would address the vulnerability called ‘Rogue Key Attack,’ which could jeopardize the correctness of the Fast Finality mechanism of the network.

In order to fix the bug, all existing vote addresses will be removed when the height of the hard fork is reached, leaving validators to add vote addresses again.

“Although some enhancements have been made to improve cross-chain security, such as BEP171, the security of assets on the BNB Beacon Chain itself should also be guaranteed, especially after the bridge exploitation,” developers wrote in a GitHub post.