BNB Chain has activated its Jenner hard fork on the BNB Smart Chain (BSC) testnet on October 29, rolling out three upgrades designed to strengthen payments, tokenized real-world assets (RWA), and decentralized finance (DeFi) on the network.

The headline feature is Payment Lane, which reserves a slice of every block for payment transactions—such as simple BNB transfers between wallets—so they are not crowded out when network activity surges. Jenner also enables smart contracts to read block timestamps down to the millisecond and lays the technical groundwork for CAS20, a new token standard for stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets.

According to BNB Chain, the timing of the upgrade's arrival on mainnet will be announced separately, and two of the three features require further governance activation before they can be used. The testnet rollout gives developers a live environment to exercise the changes before they reach the main network.

Payment Lane Reserves 5% of Every Block

Every block on Binance Smart Chain carries a gas limit, a cap that determines how much computational work it can process. When activity spikes—say, during a memecoin launch—transactions snowball and compete for that limited space, leaving a merchant collecting a stablecoin payment stuck 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. General transactions cannot use that space even when payment demand is low, while payments remain free to compete for the remaining 95% of block capacity. Governance can raise the reservation up to a protocol maximum of 10%, a ceiling that bounds how much everyday capacity the network gives up to guarantee payment space.

What qualifies as a payment is the catch, for now. BNB Chain was explicit about which transactions are eligible in its blog post on Payment Lane. Sending BNB from one wallet to another qualifies automatically. Stablecoins such as USDT and UDSC do not qualify yet; they will only gain access once governance adds them to an approved list, which currently has no entries. Until that happens, the merchant collecting a stablecoin payment would still be stuck in the general queue—the very congestion Payment Lane is designed to relieve.

Smart Contracts Can Now Read Time in Milliseconds

Every block on BSC carries a timestamp recording when it was produced. Until the Jenner hard fork, smart contracts could only read that time in whole seconds. A new built-in tool introduced under BEP-706 extends that precision to the millisecond.

The change matters for applications where a fraction of a second makes all the difference. A trading app, for instance, might offer a price quote valid only for a short window. With a seconds-only clock, a contract cannot enforce anything shorter than a full second, so a quote could remain usable after it should have expired.

Developers must opt in to the new tool, and contracts using the old seconds-based clock will keep working as they do now. The upgrade does not make block times any faster; it simply gives contracts a more precise reading of the time.

CAS20 Is Built In but Still Switched Off

The third component is CAS20, short for Compliant Asset Standard, introduced under BEP-702. It is a token framework for issuers who need controls that a standard BEP-20 token does not offer natively, including allowlists and blocklists, the ability to pause transfers, and separate roles for minting, burning, and seizing tokens.

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

With the hard fork live on testnet, block builders must now respect the payment reservation when assembling blocks. The first governance votes on the payment list will show how quickly stablecoins actually gain access to the lane, and the appointment of the CAS20 administrator will determine when the first tokens under that standard can be created.