On February 14, #BNBChain released its 2023 technical roadmap, outlining key initiatives to complete by year-end. The four main sections they will develop are:
Scalability
Decentralization
Security
Mass Adoption Infra
1. Scalability
The first step to improve BNB's scalability is to increase the Block Gas limit.
Gas is the measure of computing required to conduct a transaction. This means that the higher the gas limit per block, the more transactions can be carried out for each block.
In 2022, the gas limit was increased from 80M to 140M, which enabled up to 2,000 transactions per second (TPS).
For 2023, BNB plans to increase the gas limit to 300M, which will increase the TPS to 5,000.
#ParallelEVM is the next step to increase BNB's scalability.
Parallel EVM is an extension to the EVM that enables multiple instructions to be executed in parallel, increasing the network's performance.
BSC Client, Fast Node, Erigon Client, Fast Finality, #BNB sidechain, #zkBNB , and #opBNB are also solutions to Scalability.
We'll cover more on zkBNB & opBNB, as these should be more interesting for you guys at the moment.
BNB Chain is about to integrate both optimistic rollups and ZK-rollups. There's no BNB optimistic rollup development at the moment, but its launch can add more value to the network.
Nevertheless, zkBNB has been in testnet since September 11 and can be launched in H1 2023.
zkBNB aims to scale transactions for cases such as NFT transactions.
The similarities between BNB Chain's and Ethereum's EVM can help Ethereum zkEVM teams to port their scaling solution to BNB Chain.
2. Decentralization
In this section, we will be discussing BNB Greenfield, a decentralized data economy, and their efforts towards further decentralization.
Decentralized storage is one of the use cases for the blockchain industry, and BNB Greenfield is also known for being a decentralized storage network.
BNB Greenfield will be employing a separate Proof-of-Stake blockchain and will use $BNB for staking, transactions, and governance.
Validators on the network will have the ability to host transaction metadata and pull user data requests from storage providers via the BNB Chain and BNB Greenfield bridge.
Storage providers (SPs) are independent entities where raw data is hosted. They can also register with BNB Greenfield by staking BNB.
Currently, the number of SPs is unknown. However, top competitor @Filecoin has experienced a 300% increase in their number of SPs, reaching 3,030 in 2022.
BNB has its own advantages as it can integrate with BNB Chain & EVM-compatibility.
Interoperability is always important for dApps. If more storage-heavy products appear on BNB, BNB Greenfield could become increasingly important.
Furthermore, the BNB token will also have higher utility.
Other attempts to achieve further decentralization include:
Increasing the number of validator operators
Implementing more consensus mechanisms
Expanding on-chain governance
Currently, there are 29 active validators in 2022, and the plan is to expand the total to 150 with 100 active validators.
By introducing more consensus mechanisms, decentralization can be further expanded by not having to rely on a single algorithm.
This will distribute power and influence more evenly across the network, while decreasing the ability of one group of users to control it.
On-chain governance has been proven to be a way to empower decentralization.
This helps validators to have a stronger voice in the voting, decision-making, direction, and operation of the network.
3. Security
Avenger DAO was created to enhance the security of the BNB Chain and protect users from financial losses and malicious contracts. It was launched in September 2022 and offers three main features:
Meter: provides a passive API that reviews statistics to ensure the safety of unknown smart contracts that users want to interact with.
Watch: sends users alerts about the protocols they interact with.
Vault: offers an escrow fund feature that locks users' funds with safety conditions.
4. Mass Adoption Infrastructure
This is their final approach in the technical roadmap. BNB Chain aims to maintain its infrastructure to support users and has identified several features to achieve this, including account abstraction, on-chain attestation and messaging, gaming SDKs, and more.