BNB Smart Chain prepares for validator upgrades by September 15

BNB Smart Chain validators began rolling out a significant capacity upgrade on September 14, with most expected to complete the transition by September 15. The core change: raising the target block gas limit to 70 million, a move designed to keep pace with a network already running at more than 95% utilization. What’s actually changing The upgrade is a direct follow-on to the Pasteur hard fork, which activated on August 25, 2026. That fork introduced BEP-675, a new block-building architecture that lets builders submit pre-executed blocks through a system called BidBlock V2. Early mainnet data suggests the new approach is working. BidBlock V2 blocks have averaged a 28% increase in gas per block compared to the prior methodology, with peak (P99) blocks hitting 43.8 million gas. BidBlock V2 now manages roughly 98% of recent blocks on the network. The on-chain gas limit has already crossed 55 million. But with utilization consistently above 95%, there’s little room left before users start feeling congestion in the form of slower confirmations and rising fees. Hence the push to 70 million. One technical detail worth noting: validators aren’t simply plugging in a new hard-coded number. T...