BNB Chain’s OpBNB Developers Look to More Than Double Speed in New Roadmap

• The roadmap for opBNB paves the way for heightened performance for the layer-2 blockchain developed by BNB Chain.
• OpBNB's transaction count crossed the 20 million mark last week.

BNB Chain developers are looking to more than double the transaction speed and slash network fees by 90% as part of a new technical roadmap for layer-2 network opBNB, a representative shared with CoinDesk over email.

The increase will take processing to 10,000 transactions per second (TPS) from around 4,000 and cut the cost to $0.0005 within six months, according to the plan. The first fee cut, to $0.001 from $0.005, is scheduled for Dec. 4.

The network is based on Optimism’s OP Stack. The targeted speed would place opBNB among the fastest layer-2 networks, with popular offshoot Arbitrum capable of a claimed 40,000 TPS.

A layer 2 network is an off-chain system built on top of a base, or layer-1, blockchain. The OP Stack is the set of software that powers Optimism, an Ethereum layer-2 blockchain, that developers can use to create their own networks.

The number of users on opBNB has climbed steadily since its September release. Transactions reached a record 5.4 million last week, taking lifetime transactions to over 20 million. It has recorded a peak of 645 minting transactions per second.

The developers say they expect opBNB’s gas limit per block to double to 200 million per second. The gas limit is the maximum price a user is willing to pay when sending a transaction. Higher limits can help speed up transactional processing during times of high demand.

The upgrades are scheduled over the next year and are expected to help opBNB support on-chain games and high-frequency decentralized finance (DeFi) applications.