BNB Smart Chain Mainnet Gibbs Upgrade Announcement

BNB Smart Chain Mainnet is expected to have a scheduled hardfork upgrade named Gibbs at block height 23,846,001. The current block generation speed forecasts this to occur around 12th Dec. 2022 at 10:00 AM (UTC). The validators and full node operators on Mainnet should switch their software version to  v1.1.18 by 12th Dec.

1. Background Story

1.1 Who is Josiah Willard Gibbs?

This upgrade is named after Josiah Willard Gibbs in honor of his significant theoretical contributions to physics, chemistry, and mathematics. His work on the applications of thermodynamics was instrumental in transforming physical chemistry into a rigorous inductive science. Together with James Clerk Maxwell and Ludwig Boltzmann, he created statistical mechanics.

1.2 What is a hardfork upgrade?

A hardfork is an upgrade that is not compatible with the previous release because some breaking changes are introduced in the latest release. A hardfork in BNB Smart Chain requires more than half of all validators to successfully upgrade to keep making blocks. If the existing full nodes in the network do not upgrade, they will not be able to receive and execute further blocks normally after the hardfork block height.

1.3 What happens during a network upgrade?

Logic changes will occur at block height 23,846,001 for this upgrade. After the activation of the upgrade, the blockchain is able to handle a series of new features and bug fixes.

2. How does this upgrade affect me?

2.1 As a full node operator, what do I have to do?

This release is breaking and you need to switch to v1.1.18. Upgrade instructions are (all the below should be done before the hardfork block height):

1. If your node is already synced with the network, please download and compile the latest version
2. Stop the geth process and restart it with v1.1.18.

2.2 What will happen if I forget to upgrade my full node in time?

If you cannot upgrade your software, you cannot sync with the upgraded BNB Smart Chain peer/validator nodes. You will not be able to connect or send transactions.

How to recover?

1. Download and compile the latest version v1.1.18.
2. Stop the geth process and restart it with v1.1.18.

2.3 As a developer, what do I have to do?

There are no changes to the EVM module. You do not need to do anything.

3. Upcoming Changes

3.1 BEP-153: Native Staking module on BSC

Before this BEP, the BNB holders could only stake their assets on the BNB Beacon Chain. It means that if their assets are on the BNB Smart Chain, they have to transfer their assets across-chain to the BNB Beacon Chain first, which is not user-friendly enough.

This BEP introduces a new staking system contract on the BSC side, all staking-related operations on the BSC side should be initiated through this contract, and then applied across-chain to BNB Beacon Chain through the native cross-chain communication mechanism. With this BEP, the BNB holders can stake on the BSC directly, and dApps can launch their staking service based on the protocol introduced by this BEP, which can diversify the BSC ecosystem.

Check BEP-153 for more details.

3.2 Other Notable Changes

IMPROVEMENT

• #1209 metrics: add build info into metrics server
• #1204 worker: NewTxsEvent and triePrefetch reuse in mining task
• #1195 hardfork: update Gibbs fork height and system contract code
• #1192 all: sync with upstream v1.10.22
• #1186 worker: improvement of the current block generation logic to get more rewards
• #1184 worker: remove pre-seal empty block
• #1182 Parlia: Some updates of the miner worker
• #1181 all: sync with upstream v1.10.21
• #1177 core/forkid: refactor nextForkHash function
• #1174 worker: some code enhancement on work.go
• #1166 miner: disable enforceTip when get txs from txpool

BUGFIX

• #1201 worker: add double sign check for safety
• #1185 worker: fix a bug of the delay timer

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