BNB Chain Activated the Jenner Hardfork on the BNB Smart Chain Testnet

BNB Chain activated the Jenner hard fork on the BNB Smart Chain testnet. The upgrade introduces the Payment Lane mechanism, millisecond block timestamps for smart contracts, and CAS20 asset standard functionality. The mainnet is expected to receive the update by the end of November.

Payment Lane is introduced through BEP-703 with separate gas accounting rules for payments and general transactions. By default, 5 percent of the block's gas limit is reserved, with a maximum of 10 percent as decided by governance. Payments are not limited by the reserve: with a 100 million gas limit, they can consume 8 million, leaving 92 million for others. However, unused reserve cannot be reallocated to general traffic. The restriction prevents collectors from filling the block with general transactions, leaving payments out.

The rules apply to native BNB transfers to accounts without deployed code and transactions directly to payment contracts from a list managed by voting. A destination address and one of the types 0x00, 0x01, or 0x02 are required. Contract creation, blob transactions, and type 0x04 remain general traffic. For stablecoins, it depends on whether the receiving contract is on the list: transfer through an intermediary contract outside the list does not qualify. The list is initially empty; governance can add stablecoins and CAS20 tokens. The token's name or its purpose for payments alone does not make transactions compliant.

Configuration is determined by the parent block's state. Collectors must adhere to the rules, and validators reject violations through the collector recall mechanism under BEP-675. The reserve takes effect from the next block after activation. Payment Lane does not guarantee inclusion in a specific block and does not waive fees: payments compete with each other when demand exceeds the reserve.

The hard fork followed Pasteur in August, which changed bridge verification, validator authorization, and block assembly. In the third quarter, BNB Chain processed 1.51 billion transactions, a 7.5 percent increase from the previous quarter. Revenue grew by 54 percent to $54.2 million, active addresses decreased by 14 percent to 2.10 million, and the number of contracts reached 12.3 million compared to 4.5 million.

BNB Chain directed node operators to the Jenner documentation and the reth-bsc v0.1.3 release.