BNB Chain’s Jenner Hardfork Goes Live on BSC Testnet With Dedicated Payment Lane

BNB Chain has activated its Jenner hardfork on the BNB Smart Chain (BSC) Testnet today. The Jenner hard fork brings three key upgrades to the chain that together improves payments, RWA and DeFi on the network. 

The headline upgrade is Payment Lane, which reserves a slice of every block for payments, such as simple BNB transfers between wallets, so they don’t get squeezed out when activity on the network ramps up. Jenner also lets smart contracts read block times to the millisecond and lays the foundation for CAS20, which is a new token standard for stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets. 

BNB Chain stated that the timing of the upgrade reaching mainnet will be announced separately, while two of the three features require further governance activation. 

Payment Lane Holds Back 5% of Every Block 

Every single block on the Binance Smart Chain has a gas limit, which is a cap and determines  how much computing work it can process. Say a memecoin launches and there’s a burst of activity, the number of transactions begin to snowball and fight for that space. In this instance, a merchant collecting a stablecoin payment ends up in the same queue as a bot firing off swaps. 

Payment Lane, introduced under BEP-703, reserves 5% of each block’s gas for eligible payments by default. This means general transactions can’t use that space even when payment demand is low. Payments can still compete for the other 95% of block capacity. Governance can raise the reservation up to a protocol maximum of 10%. 

What counts as payments is where the catch lies for now and BNB Chain was very clear about which transactions qualify in their blog about Payment Lane. Sending BNB from one wallet to another qualifies as payments automatically. On the other hand, stablecoins like USDT and UDSC don’t qualify, at least not yet. They will only qualify once governance adds them to an approved list, which currently has no entries. 

Smart Contracts Can Now Read Time in Milliseconds 

Every block on the BSC network has a timestamp or a record on when it was made. Until the Jenner hard fork, smart contracts could only read that time in whole seconds. Now there is a built in tool, under BEP-706, that strips this down to the millisecond. 

This greatly helps apps where a fraction of a second can make all the difference. For instance a trading app might offer a price that’s valid only for a short window. With a seconds-only clock, the contract can’t enforce anything shorter than a full second, so a quote could stay usable after it should have expired. 

Developers have to opt in to the new tool and contracts that use the old seconds-based clock will keep working as they do now. This change does not make block times any faster but rather just gives contracts a more precise reading of the time. 

CAS20 is Built in but Still Switched Off

The third piece is CAS20, short for Compliant Asset Standard, under BEP-702. It is a token framework for issuers who need controls that a regular BEP-20 token doesn’t offer natively. Issuers get allowlists and blocklists, the ability to pause transfers, and separate roles for minting, burning and seizing tokens.

Jenner ships the underlying code, though nobody can create CAS20 tokens yet. That step needs separate activation by an administrator appointed through governance. BNB Chain also noted that the technical controls don’t on their own make a token legally compliant. CAS20 keeps compatibility with BEP-20 tooling, so existing wallets and apps should be able to read these tokens.

Block builders now have to respect the payment reservation when assembling blocks on testnet. The first governance votes on the payment list will show how quickly stablecoins actually get access to the lane.