BNB Smart Chain (BNB Chain) has successfully implemented the Maxwell hard fork on June 30, 2025, reducing block production times from 1.5 seconds to between 0.75 and 0.8 seconds. This upgrade aims to enhance scalability, network speed, validator synchronization, and overall user experience, particularly benefiting decentralized finance (DeFi) applications. The Maxwell upgrade has also contributed to a reduction in median transaction fees to approximately $0.0115, a 10% decrease within a day of the upgrade. Following the hard fork, BNB Chain has seen record decentralized exchange (DEX) trading volumes and improved network efficiency. The upgrade positions BNB Chain as a faster blockchain, potentially rivaling competitors such as Solana, whose block times have been outpaced by this development. Looking ahead, BNB Chain plans to further increase gas limits tenfold and target transaction speeds exceeding 20,000 transactions per second (TPS) with sub-150 millisecond finality by 2026, aiming to match the speed of major stock exchanges. Additionally, the chain intends to focus on speed, scalability, and native privacy enhancements in the coming years.