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BNB Smart Chain (BSC) is set to undergo the Pascal hard fork. The fork is scheduled for February 25, 2025, on the testnet and mid-March 2025 for the mainnet. Let’s break down what the fork does and the key problems it aims to solve.
What is the Pascal Hard Fork?
The Pascal hard fork enhances BSC’s Ethereum compatibility by integrating key features from Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade. Specifically:
- Native smart contract wallets
- Improved security and cryptography
Native Smart Contract Wallets
As mentioned in BNB Chain’s 2025 tech roadmap, one of BNB Chain’s main goals is to implement the same smart contract wallet solution as EIP-7702 for enhanced account abstraction.
The Pascal fork will successfully introduce smart contract wallets, opening the doors to several new features such as:
- Simpler and more versatile account recovery options.
- Multi-sig support for enhanced security
- Spending limits and batch transactions for improved efficiency
This gives users more control and flexibility over how they manage their funds.
Improved Security and Cryptography
Pascal strengthens security by integrating BEP-439 (EIP-2537), which adds support for cryptographic operations with the BLS12-381 curve. The BLS12-381 curve is ideal for blockchain applications due to the following reasons:
- It allows multiple digital signatures to be combined into one, making it faster and more efficient to verify transactions.
- It has a special mathematical structure (called a twist) that reduces the amount of work needed to perform calculations. This makes it much faster and more memory-efficient compared to older cryptographic curves,
What Should Users and Developers Do?
For Users:
Regular BNB Chain users don’t need to take any action. The upgrade will happen automatically, and most Dapps will continue functioning as expected. However, users of Dapps that are highly sensitive to gas cost changes should stay updated with announcements from those platforms.
For Developers:
Developers will need to ensure that their applications are compatible with the new changes. Specifically:
- Explore and leverage smart contract wallets to build more user-friendly dapps with improved security and flexibility.
- Test your applications thoroughly on the updated BSC testnet before the mainnet upgrade.
In Closing
The Pascal hard fork is a big milestone in BNB Chain’s evolution setting the stage for the two upcoming BNB Chain forks:
- Lorentz (April 2025): Reduces block intervals to 1.5 seconds
- Maxwell (June 2025): Further reduces block intervals to 0.75 seconds.
As always, the BNB Chain team is focused on continuously improving overall performance, scalability, and user experience.
