The opBNB network has completed its mainnet hard fork that began on its testnet early Tuesday morning. The Fourier Mainnet hardfork was then moved to the mainnet around 03:00 UTC on Wednesday, with ex-CEO Changpeng Zhao confirming it was completed an hour later.
According to the opBNB network upgrades notes on GitHub, the Fourier hard fork halved the block time from 500 milliseconds to 250 milliseconds and made several changes to improve stability, finality handling, and node performance.
opBNB is a Layer-2 Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible network built using the OP Stack that scales applications on the BNB Chain. The blockchain has a block size of 100 million gas and consistently low transaction fees aimed at high throughput.
Fourier upgrade reduces block interval and fixes p2p node diversion
As Zhao praised in an Reducing the block time to 250 milliseconds means that opBNB will increase transaction processing speed and responsiveness for applications deployed on the network.
opBNB just completed its mainnet hard fork about an hour ago. Blocking time reduced from 500 to 250 ms.
Keep building, #BNB https://t.co/4JdMgQcE4M
— CZ 🔶BNB (@cz_binance) January 7, 2026
The shorter block interval also reduces confirmation times, making interactions feel closer to real-time for users and developers. Still, node operators were instructed to upgrade op-geth to version 0.5.9 to maintain the blockchain’s compatibility with the new protocol rules.
Another change came through pull request #319which reworked how the network handles layer 1 references used by the sequencer and derivation logic. Instead of relying on the latest layer 1 header, opBNB now uses completed layer 1 blocks as a reference point.
This adjustment meets the expected changes on BNB Smart Chain, where block times will drop to 450 milliseconds. Validators can produce up to 16 consecutive blocks under the new conditions. However, larger reorganizations would require higher confirmation thresholds for both verifiers and sequencers, which could delay deposit transactions by several minutes.
According to BNB developer Joey Chang, the Fourier hard fork also bundled some fixes that affect node reliability by adding support for compiling opBNB with Golang version 1.24.x and compatibility for Windows operating systems.
Pull request #324 fixed an error in block number calculation that could occur during long shutdowns, with long stops now being correctly rounded on restarts. If a node was stopped for an extended period of time, restarting it could lead to incorrect block calculations.
The hard fork fixed an issue affecting nodes running on-geth in fastnode mode, which prevented full state data from being retained. When the op-node tried to derive new blocks using the engine API, it could encounter an empty block root due to missing state information.
The bug caused the op-node’s main loop to exit and stop block synchronization, but the fix would ensure that op-node in fastnode mode waits for unsafe blocks from the peer-to-peer network and does not request block derivation from op-geth.
Other fixes included fixing a concurrent map usage issue in reference metrics via pull request #326 and adding the Fourier hardfork timestamp to mainnet parameters via pull request #328.
BNB Chain Records 40% TVL Rise by 2025, Token Remains at $900 Level
The opBNB upgrade comes against the backdrop of a year of activity for the Binance chain ecosystem, which saw a 40.5% increase in TVL and a daily transaction volume of 10.78 million by the end of 2025. report.
The number of unique addresses on BNB Chain surpassed 700 million, and both BNB Smart Chain and opBNB averaged more than four million daily active users. The blockchain’s native token, BNB, recently broke above the $910 resistance zone, surging nearly 2% to trade above $920 as the rest of the crypto market continues to recover.
At the time of this reporting, BNB is up 5% over the past seven days, 33% away from the $1,370 price level reached last October. BNB reached an intraday high of $921.47, but a price correction dragged the price back to levels below the next technical resistance at $918.
The price move comes ahead of the planned Fermi hard fork scheduled for January 14, which is expected to increase BNB Chain’s capacity to 20,000 transactions per second.
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