BNB developers announced the Maxwell Hardfork, scheduled to go live later this week, which introduces a major performance upgrade to the BNB Smart Chain (BSC), reducing block times from 1.5 seconds to 0.75 seconds. 

This effectively doubles the network’s block production speed, aiming to enhance transaction throughput, network responsiveness, and validator synchronization, bringing BSC closer in speed to high-performance chains like Solana.

This story is an excerpt from the Unchained Daily newsletter.

Validators will soon be able to propose blocks for 16 consecutive turns. up from 8, and the epoch length will be extended from 500 to 1,000 blocks, stabilizing performance under the accelerated cadence.

Block propagation among validators will be targeted at 400 milliseconds, and the per-block gas limit will be halved from 70 million to 35 million to prevent network congestion and excessive state growth.

BNB developers said that transactions will now feel “near instant,” while noting that some maximal extractable value (MEV) strategies may no longer be viable under the tighter block window.