bnb-chain/bsc - v1.8.1 New

Published: Oct 16, 2026

TESTNET Deadline: Oct 29, 2026

Release Summary

A mandatory update v1.8.1 has been released for the BSC Chapel testnet. This update prepares for the Jenner hard fork, scheduled for October 29, 2026, at 02:30:00 AM UTC. All Chapel testnet node operators, MEV builders, and sentry operators must upgrade their nodes before the fork.

This release introduces several new BEPs and significant enhancements to the MEV infrastructure.

Key Features (New BEPs)

BEP-702: Compliant Asset Standard (CAS20): A new native token standard for assets like stablecoins. Implemented as highly efficient stateful precompiles, CAS20 offers built-in compliance features such as shared allow/blocklists, transfer policies, pausing, and distinct roles for minting, burning, and seizing assets. This provides a standardized, gas-efficient, and secure alternative to traditional BEP-20 contracts.

BEP-703: Payment Lane: To ensure payment transactions remain fluid during periods of high network congestion, this feature reserves a portion of block gas (default 5%) for eligible BNB transfers and transactions to specific payment contracts. The reserved ratio and the list of eligible contracts are adjustable through on-chain governance.

BEP-706: Millisecond Timestamp: A new precompile at address 0x70 is introduced, allowing smart contracts to access the block's millisecond-precision timestamp. This supports applications requiring sub-second timing, while the standard block.timestamp opcode continues to return time in seconds.

MEV (BEP-675) Enhancements

This release brings major improvements for MEV builders and validators:

High-Performance gRPC Endpoint: A new gRPC service for SendBidBlock is now available and enabled by default. It uses RLP-encoded binary payloads instead of JSON, significantly reducing serialization overhead and payload size for faster and more efficient block submissions.

Smarter Builder Revocation: The revocation system is now more robust and intelligent.
- Persistent Revocations: Builder revocations are now persisted in the database, ensuring a lockout period remains in effect even if the node restarts.
- Cross-Validator Evidence: A validator can now proactively revoke a misbehaving builder based on bad blocks sealed by other validators. This prevents a faulty builder from wasting block slots across the entire network.
- Improved Validation: BidBlocks with a zero state root are now rejected early, preventing wasted work on blocks that are guaranteed to fail.

Important Actions for Operators

MEV gRPC Configuration: The new MEV gRPC service is enabled by default when MEV is active and uses port 8552. Please ensure this port is open and available. You can change the port using [Eth.Miner.Mev] GRPCPort or disable the service with the --mev.grpc.disable flag.

RPC Timestamp Override Change: Effective immediately after upgrading, RPC methods like eth_call and eth_estimateGas have a new validation rule. If you use block overrides, the prevRandao field must encode a millisecond value between 0 and 999. Passing other values will result in an error.

The release also includes numerous bug fixes and improvements, enhancing network stability, peer management, and RPC performance. Key fixes address potential deadlocks, improve peer-to-peer message handling, and add rate-limiting to prevent resource exhaustion.

Release Notes

## MetaInfo


Mandatory Update Required: Yes

Target Audience: all BSC Chapel testnet node operators, MEV builders and sentry operators

Key Changes:

- [BEP-702: Compliant Asset Standard](https://github.com/bnb-chain/BEPs/blob/master/BEPs/BEP-702.md): introduces CAS20, a native token standard for stablecoins and tokenized assets, implemented as stateful precompiles. Compliance controls include shared allow/blocklists, transfer policies, pausing, and separate mint, burn and seizure roles. Token creation requires separate activation by a governance-appointed administrator.
- [BEP-703: Payment Lane](https://github.com/bnb-chain/BEPs/blob/master/BEPs/BEP-703.md): reserves 5% of block gas by default for eligible BNB transfers and transactions to listed payment contracts, keeping capacity available for payments during congestion. The ratio and contract list can be changed through governance.
- [BEP-706: Millisecond Timestamp](https://github.com/bnb-chain/BEPs/blob/master/BEPs/BEP-706.md): exposes millisecond block time to smart contracts through precompile `0x70`, supporting applications that need sub-second timing. `block.timestamp` remains in seconds.
- [BEP-675 Enhancements](https://github.com/bnb-chain/BEPs/blob/master/BEPs/BEP-675.md) (no hard fork required): **faster BidBlock encoding/decoding over gRPC**. RLP-encoded binary payloads avoid JSON parsing and hex conversion, reducing serialization overhead and payload size for large blocks and blob sidecars. **Validation and builder revocation improvements** include rejecting BidBlocks with a zero state root, revoking local `SendBidBlock` access on cross-validator bad-block evidence, persisting revocations across restarts, and adding bad BidBlock and revocation metrics.

Procedure: when upgrading from v1.8.0, check the gRPC and RPC changes below, then replace the binary and restart before the hard fork.

- **MEV gRPC:** enabled by default when MEV and BidBlock submission are enabled. It uses the HTTP bind address and defaults to port `8552`. Ensure the port is available; if using gRPC, confirm sentry connectivity. Set `[Eth.Miner.Mev] GRPCPort` to change the port, or `--mev.grpc.disable` to disable the service. JSON-RPC remains supported. See the [gRPC integration guide](core/types/builder/bep-675-builder-grpc-integration.md).
- **BEP-706 RPC change:** in `eth_call`, `eth_estimateGas`, `debug_traceCall` and `eth_simulateV1`, `blockOverrides.prevRandao`, when supplied, must encode a millisecond remainder (`0–999`) as a 32-byte hex value. This check applies immediately after upgrading, even before Jenner activates. `time` remains in seconds; overriding only `time` resets the millisecond remainder to zero.

Schedule(Timeline): BSC Chapel testnet — 2026-10-29 02:30:00 AM UTC (`1793241000`). Mainnet activation is not scheduled in this release.



## Changelog


v1.8.1 is for BSC Chapel testnet [Jenner hardfork](https://github.com/bnb-chain/BEPs/blob/master/BEPs/BEP-718.md), scheduled for 2026-10-29 02:30:00 AM UTC.

### FEATURE

- [core/vm, params: implement CAS20 Compliant Asset Standard (BEP-702)](https://github.com/bnb-chain/bsc/pull/3813)
- [core/paymentlane: implement BEP-703 payment lane](https://github.com/bnb-chain/bsc/pull/3793)
- [core, params: implement BEP-706 millisecond timestamp precompile](https://github.com/bnb-chain/bsc/pull/3792)

### BEP-675 Enhancements

- [internal/ethapi: support gRPC SendBidBlock API (BEP-675)](https://github.com/bnb-chain/bsc/pull/3774)
- [miner: persist BidBlock revocations across restarts](https://github.com/bnb-chain/bsc/pull/3796)
- [miner: reject BidBlock with zero state root](https://github.com/bnb-chain/bsc/pull/3798)
- [core: report and count bad BidBlocks](https://github.com/bnb-chain/bsc/pull/3804)
- [miner: revoke builders on cross-validator bad-block evidence](https://github.com/bnb-chain/bsc/pull/3806)
- [miner: record revocation counts and add gRPC disable flag](https://github.com/bnb-chain/bsc/pull/3810)

### BUGFIX

- [core/vm: charge the double-sign-evidence precompile (`0x68`) per input byte at Jenner](https://github.com/bnb-chain/bsc/pull/3772)
- [eth: fix peerSet lock deadlock in waitSnapExtension](https://github.com/bnb-chain/bsc/pull/3776)
- [eth: cap NewBlockHashesPacket length](https://github.com/bnb-chain/bsc/pull/3777)
- [internal/ethapi: fix getDiffAccounts missing state changes](https://github.com/bnb-chain/bsc/pull/3802)
- [consensus/parlia: reject BlockAccessListHash and SlotNumber before Amsterdam](https://github.com/bnb-chain/bsc/pull/3808)
- [core, internal, miner: fix RPC timestamp overrides, gas estimation and mining edge cases](https://github.com/bnb-chain/bsc/pull/3821)
- [miner/minerconfig: fix the default MEV gRPC port](https://github.com/bnb-chain/bsc/pull/3824)
- [eth/protocols/eth, eth/downloader: fix partial receipt delivery deadlock](https://github.com/bnb-chain/bsc/pull/3825)
- [core/vm: fix CAS20 creation log order and bootstrap caller context](https://github.com/bnb-chain/bsc/pull/3826)
- [params: fix eth_config blob schedule inheritance](https://github.com/bnb-chain/bsc/pull/3833)
- [eth: avoid blocking BSC extension delivery during shutdown](https://github.com/bnb-chain/bsc/pull/3834)
- [eth/protocols/eth: fix an eth/68 receipt response edge case](https://github.com/bnb-chain/bsc/pull/3835)
- [core, core/state: fix storage and block import metrics](https://github.com/bnb-chain/bsc/pull/3838)
- [eth: fix per-IP peer accounting](https://github.com/bnb-chain/bsc/pull/3839)

### IMPROVEMENT

- [consensus/parlia: add metrics for vote attestation assembly outcomes](https://github.com/bnb-chain/bsc/pull/3782)
- [eth/protocols/bsc: rate-limit GetBlocksByRange serving per peer](https://github.com/bnb-chain/bsc/pull/3794)
- [miner, core/types: expose DelayLeftOver in MevParams](https://github.com/bnb-chain/bsc/pull/3807)
- [core/types/builder: document gRPC BidBlock integration](https://github.com/bnb-chain/bsc/pull/3820)
- [core/vm: rename CAS20 seizure exemption policy](https://github.com/bnb-chain/bsc/pull/3829)
- [eth/fetcher: relax transaction-fetch stall threshold for BSC](https://github.com/bnb-chain/bsc/pull/3837)
- [core/vote: lower dropped-vote logging to debug](https://github.com/bnb-chain/bsc/pull/3844)



## Assets

|    Assets    | Sha256 Checksum  |
| :-----------: |------------|
| mainnet.zip | 0019dfc4b32d63c1392aa264aed2253c1e0c2fb09216f8e2cc269bbfb8bb49b5 |
| testnet.zip | 0019dfc4b32d63c1392aa264aed2253c1e0c2fb09216f8e2cc269bbfb8bb49b5 |
| geth_linux | 4c23239315e480240ecf2da77185729f925a5f02269696bcec056b97e1b4faed |
| geth_mac  | 3839561489b2ec8a4fbf0a8e63f4b7e5806a856ba782e9de38fe14bfc75b2989 |
| geth_windows  | c55ae26f9b81924e4f94c232d27cea91ce295f3ea1ad548580a2cc32d59c986f |
| geth_linux_arm64  | 3b371aec4842279c1d090497609c57dd0fd3335697a082f4fe81d2884fc3798a |

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