BNB Chain will introduce millisecond-level block timestamps through BEP-706

BNB Chain announced that BEP-706 has been incorporated into the Jenner hard fork upgrade, which will provide millisecond-level block timestamps to smart contracts through the deployment of a new precompiled contract at address 0x70. Previously, contracts could only read time accurate to the second via block.timestamp, and even if multiple blocks were generated within the same second, their time differences could not be distinguished.

After the upgrade, developers can read timestamps in milliseconds through the new interface, while the return value of the existing block.timestamp and the second-level timing logic remain unchanged. This feature can be used in scenarios that require sub-second precision, such as quote settlements with a validity period of only a few hundred milliseconds, auction deadlines, and price oracle data update timeliness checks. The computation cost of the new precompiled contract is 20 Gas, and the call will also incur corresponding call and memory costs. BNB Chain reminds developers to pay attention to the consistency of units between seconds and milliseconds, and to check whether the call is successful and whether it returns the expected 32-byte data during integration.