fork

The privacy public chain Zano activated its sixth hard fork (HF6) at block height 3,833,000. The upgrade has been launched on the mainnet, completing the largest upgrade in the network's seven-year history. HF6 introduces Gateway Addresses, providing a directly traceable single balance and instant synchronization for centralized exchanges, DEX, and cross-chain bridges, while retaining existing addresses and their privacy models.Native ZANO can now be cross-chain transferred to Ethereum, Solana, and TON without custody, publicly on external networks, and privacy protection is restored after crossing back to Zano. The upgrade also tightens consensus validation rules and strengthens wallet encryption, mining pool fault tolerance, payment IDs, anti-DoS restrictions, SOCKS5 proxies, and RPC interfaces. HF6 is a prerequisite for the development of the EVM-compatible chain Zano Execution Layer, which currently has no fixed launch date; the next-generation consensus protocol Zenith has been included in the 2027 roadmap.

Polygon Labs disclosed that it has fixed a batch of security vulnerabilities in its proof-of-stake network through two hard forks, with the related fixes privately deployed before public disclosure. According to a forum post released on Wednesday, the team packaged the fixes into the Austin hard fork of the Bor client and the Kyoto hard fork of the Heimdall client, both of which followed the standard process for fixing issues that affect consensus: first validated on the Amoy testnet, and then publicly disclosed once the mainnet was activated and the network was secure.The Austin fork fixed two denial-of-service paths in block processing, including a vulnerability where malicious block producers could crash peer nodes by filling them with oversized field data. The Kyoto fork addressed a broader range of consensus hardening issues, with the most severe vulnerability allowing an attacker to force the entire validator set to perform costly and coordinated work with just one crafted transaction—the cost of constructing the transaction is low, but the network processing cost is high. Polygon emphasized that none of the vulnerabilities were observed to be exploited on the mainnet and have been proactively addressed. The two upgrades are now mandatory for node operators and have taken effect without the need for state migration or resynchronization.This disclosure comes at a critical transformation period for Polygon, which has completed the migration of the traditional MATIC token to POL as part of a comprehensive overhaul of its network architecture. The news did not boost the price of POL; according to CoinGecko data, POL traded at approximately $0.09983 on Sunday, down 2.3% in 24 hours, down about 6.8% over the past week, and down about 60.8% over the past year, with a market capitalization of approximately $1.07 billion.

Polygon disclosed multiple previously undisclosed security vulnerabilities that were recently fixed through two hard forks, which could affect its proof-of-stake network. The vulnerabilities involve Polygon's Bor and Heimdall clients, including denial of service risks, validator resource exhaustion, and defects affecting checkpoint and milestone processing.Polygon stated that these vulnerabilities were fixed through the Austin and Kyoto hard forks, and the fixes were privately tested before being deployed to the mainnet and publicly disclosed. The most serious issue involved Heimdall, where a carefully crafted transaction could force validators to perform excessive processing work, thereby disrupting the network. The Austin hard fork also fixed two denial of service risks in Bor that could slow down block processing or cause node crashes.Polygon indicated that these vulnerabilities were not exploited on the mainnet, and the fixes were proactively deployed before the details were made public. Nodes running outdated client versions have fallen out of consensus after the hard fork activation height and must upgrade to rejoin the standard network. All Polygon PoS nodes are required to upgrade to Bor v2.1.0, and validators and full nodes must upgrade to Heimdall v0.11.0, both upgrades are now effective on the mainnet.

According to CryptoSlate, Polygon Labs issued an urgent notice that Polygon PoS nodes remaining on the old versions of Bor or Heimdall have lost consensus after the activation of the Austin and Kyoto hard forks and need to upgrade to catch up with the network progress. Austin was activated at mainnet block 91,949,700, requiring Bor v2.1.0 or above; Kyoto was activated at height 51,533,000, requiring Heimdall v0.11.0 or above.Austin fixed two types of Bor resource exhaustion risks: L1 to L2 bridging state synchronization events not counted towards the gas limit could slow down block processing; the TxDependency field having no size limit could lead to peer node crashes. Kyoto addressed vulnerabilities such as deep nested message attacks, fee coin scanning, and checkpoint signature recovery. Both hard forks are pure binary upgrades, requiring no state migration, and non-forked nodes do not need to resynchronize. Operators of old clients should upgrade and restore synchronization under Polygon's guidance if necessary.

The blockchain network BNB Chain has enabled the Pasteur hard fork on the BNB Smart Chain (BSC) mainnet. The upgrade involves cross-chain bridge validation, validator authorization, staking, and governance security, while enhancing block capacity without changing the 450 milliseconds block time.This upgrade includes BEP-682, BEP-695, and BEP-675, which respectively involve duplicate validator entries, validator key rotation and penalty governance, and block submission processes. In the internal testing environment QANet, the new process increased throughput from 1,237 transactions per second to 2,324 transactions per second, but the related data comes from controlled tests and not mainnet measurement results.

The ECX plan will be launched in three phases. The Alpha phase is expected to go live near Bitcoin block height 963648, the Beta phase is scheduled for September 20 at block height 967680, and the permanent mainnet is planned to launch on October 31 at block height 973728. The project is driven by Paul Sztorc, founder and head of Layertwo Labs, and developer of Drivechains and BIP-300/301.ECX will replicate the transaction ledger of Bitcoin's designated snapshot and allocate ECX to the majority of Bitcoin holders on a 1:1 basis on the new network. Users who control their private keys through self-custody wallets at the time of the snapshot will directly receive the corresponding assets, while users of exchanges and other custodial institutions will need to wait for the relevant platforms to decide whether to support the fork and distribute ECX. The original BTC will not be exchanged, locked, or transferred. ECX plans to initially launch seven dedicated sidechains: Thunder, Zside, Bitnames, Bitassets, Photon, Truthcoin, and Coinshift. Of the approximately 1.1 million early Bitcoins associated with Satoshi Nakamoto, about 600,000 ECX will continue to be allocated to these addresses, and approximately 500,000 ECX will be converted through special transactions for early investors and development funds, but this will not affect the BTC on the Bitcoin network.

Ethereum developer Toni Wahrstätter posted on the X platform that Ethereum core developers are planning the next annual upgrade "Hegotá," with 66 Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) currently on the candidate list. Future core developer meetings will screen these proposals to finalize the upgrade content that can be implemented, tested on the development network, deployed on the test network, and has the potential to go live in 2027. Proposals that do not make it into Hegotá will be postponed until the next hard fork, making the current screening process significantly impactful for Ethereum's future development direction.Currently, FOCIL (Fork-Choice Enforced Inclusion Lists) has been identified as one of the important upgrade contents for Hegotá. Developers believe that combining framework transactions (EIP-8141), keying Nonce (EIP-8250), and root references (EIP-8272) will help build native privacy capabilities, allowing privacy applications to operate without relying on third-party intermediaries. Additionally, enhancing scalability is also a crucial direction for Hegotá. Developers propose that it is necessary to prepare for a future increase in the Gas limit to 600 million by repricing data resources (EIP-8131, EIP-8279) and state growth costs (EIP-8368). Although these improvements are not as intuitive as privacy features, they are considered key work to promote Ethereum's scalability in the short term.Other candidate upgrades include shorter block times (EIP-8198), adjustments to the issuance mechanism (EIP-8363), anti-correlation penalty mechanisms (EIP-7716), EVM optimization and simplification, as well as discussions on the first EIPs related to zkEVM and quantum-resistant cryptography. It is reported that Hegotá cannot incorporate all the features the community expects, and the core team needs to make trade-offs between "future vision" and "near-term deliverable upgrades," with most candidate EIPs likely not making it into this upgrade. Currently, it has been 256 days since the launch of the current Glamsterdam upgrade, with the goal of completing deployment by the end of this year. Hegotá is planned to go live in 2027, and in the coming months, core developers and the community will discuss the priorities of various EIPs. Community opinions will still play a role in the screening process, and participants who support or oppose a certain EIP entering Hegotá can present their views to the core development team through public discussions.

Stacks co-founder Muneeb Ali stated that the Satoshi Upgrade I hard fork has been successfully completed, and the network's level of decentralization has further improved with the launch of the new signer.Regarding Binance's "Observation Label," there are currently no concerns about delisting risks or liquidity, but we still need to wait for the next round of formal assessment.

BNB Smart Chain (BSC) announced that the Pasteur hard fork will officially launch on the mainnet at 10:30 AM Beijing time on August 25 (02:30 UTC on August 25). Node operators need to upgrade to client version v1.7.7 in advance. This upgrade includes three improvements: BEP-682, BEP-695, and BEP-675, focusing on enhancing cross-chain security, validator governance mechanisms, and network throughput capacity.Among them, BEP-682 will strengthen the cross-chain bridge validation mechanism of the BNB Chain, preventing the risk of permission bypass caused by duplicate calculations of validator signatures, thus improving the security of cross-chain asset transfers. BEP-695 optimizes the validator key rotation mechanism, ensuring that old keys no longer retain management permissions after exiting, while also fixing potential vulnerabilities related to penalties and governance voting. In terms of performance, BEP-675 reduces the time consumption caused by validators repeatedly executing transactions by optimizing the block construction process.In the internal QANet testing environment of the BNB Chain, this solution increased throughput from 1237 TPS to 2324 TPS, while maintaining a block time of 450 milliseconds and a block limit of 100 million Gas, with the average Gas usage per block rising from 46.35 million to 84.15 million.BNB Chain stated that this upgrade is primarily aimed at validators and block builders, intending to provide greater capacity during network peak periods and to promote the throughput expansion goals outlined in the BNB Chain roadmap for the second half of 2026.

Conflux Network announced that the v3.1.0 network hard fork upgrade will introduce multiple network improvements, including EVM compatibility updates, bug fixes, RPC changes, and security enhancements. CIP-173 is expected to be activated on August 26.

BIP-110 received only about 2.5% miner hash power support when the activation deadline was reached and failed to activate. The nodes executing the proposal forked from the mainnet at block height 961632, and a minority chain subsequently stopped producing blocks.Bitcoin Mechanic, a supporter of BIP-110, stated that this outcome proves Bitcoin has encountered "protocol capture," where large mining pool operators coordinate to influence consensus rules and undermine node sovereignty. Since the minority chain received less than 3% of the total network hash power, its inherited mining difficulty led to a halt in block production. Some supporters are considering changing the PoW algorithm through a hard fork, and Bitcoin Mechanic indicated that they would wait to resume node operations after the Bitcoin Knots update.Cysic founder and CEO Leo Fan stated that the difficulty adjustment mechanism protects the main chain, and the mandatory activation design of BIP-110 is the main issue. The anonymous owner of 1win pointed out that the proposal only received 2.53% support, below the 55% activation threshold, and the main chain is still continuously operating.

The proposed soft fork BIP-54 (Consensus Cleanup) specification for Bitcoin was completed in May 2026, aimed at fixing four consensus rule boundary issues without adding new Bitcoin features. Wang Chun, co-founder of the digital asset mining pool F2pool, stated that they do not support BIP-54 and mentioned that if the proposal obtains the required majority through the standard BIP-9 process, F2pool will upgrade its mining nodes but will not issue a support signal in advance.BIP-54 has been tested in the Signet-based testing environment Bitcoin Inquisition, and the mining pools MARA and ViaBTC have voluntarily produced compatible coinbase transactions; the formal activation parameters have not yet been determined, and the mainnet voting is still incomplete. Previously, BIP-110, which attempted to restrict certain non-financial data in Bitcoin transactions, did not receive enough support from miners and stalled around block height 961635; BIP-54 does not involve restricting general script functionality.

Luke Dashjr has randomly determined that BLAKE2b will be the new POW algorithm for the BIP-110 chain, expected to replace the currently used SHA-256d algorithm in Bitcoin. Compared to SHA-256d, BLAKE2b is more suitable for mining with general-purpose CPUs/GPUs, being more CPU-friendly, which can reduce the advantages of existing Bitcoin ASIC miners.Previously, it was reported that Luke Dashjr plans to officially implement the BIP-110 hard fork on September 1, making it an independent blockchain and generating a new token distinct from Bitcoin. Luke Dashjr has had his Bitcoin BIP editing permissions revoked by the Bitcoin BIP editing team.

BIP-110 soft fork has stalled due to support rates far below standard, with thousands of nodes isolated. Just two days after the incident, the Bitcoin BIP editing team removed the editing privileges of the proposal leader Luke Dashjr on Monday. Editor Mark Erhardt proposed a motion for dismissal, citing reasons including conflicts of interest, minimal contributions, leading a controversial fork, and coordination breakdown.Supporters pointed out that Dashjr used his editing privileges to favor the BIP-110 proposal, assigning numbers and quickly merging PRs before discussions on the mailing list, and has contributed less than 1% since April 2024. The peak signal support for BIP-110 was only 2.53%, far from the 55% threshold, and the forced chain has stalled at a height of 961,633. Ocean was the only mining pool signaling before the fork, and has now resumed non-BIP-110 work. Dashjr announced the suspension of his roles as Chairman and CTO of Ocean four minutes before the dismissal confirmation, shifting to Bitcoin open-source projects, but still serves as the chief maintainer of Bitcoin Knots. The price of Bitcoin was unaffected by the incident.

Bitcoin News posted on the X platform that Luke Dashjr stated that the developer meeting is "progressing smoothly," and related plans are being advanced, aiming to change Bitcoin's proof-of-work algorithm through a hard fork.The developers are expected to announce the selected hash algorithm tomorrow and enable RTDS starting from the first block. Discussions are also underway regarding block size reduction and replay protection. At the time of this announcement, reports indicated that Dashjr is no longer a licensed user of the BIP content repository. If this proposal is implemented, the change in the proof-of-work algorithm will create an independent blockchain and essentially form a new altcoin, with existing BTC holders receiving tokens on the forked chain.

The Bitcoin minority fork supporting BIP-110 split at block height 961,632, and after mining only 2 blocks in about 8 hours, it has stagnated, now lagging behind the Bitcoin mainnet by over 80 blocks.This fork inherits the current difficulty of Bitcoin, but only about 2.53% of recent block signals support BIP-110, far below the 55% activation threshold required without a fork. Bitcoin adjusts its difficulty only after mining 2016 blocks, and based on the current hash rate, this chain is expected to take about 350 days to complete its next adjustment.BIP-110 aims to temporarily prohibit writing non-financial data such as images and text in Bitcoin transactions. Michael Saylor stated that about 99.85% of Bitcoin hash power remains on the mainnet; due to both chains being affected by the same transactions, transactions on the minority chain may be replayed to the Bitcoin mainnet.

Strategy founder Michael Saylor posted that Bitcoin's operation fully aligns with its design. BIP-110 can fork freely, and the Bitcoin network can also choose not to follow. As a result, about 99.85% of Bitcoin's hash power remains on the original network, while the BIP-110 branch has only mined 2 blocks and is currently over 80 blocks behind.He pointed out that BIP-110 has only gained about 0.15% of Bitcoin's hash power and needs to mine 2015 blocks before the first difficulty adjustment. Based on the current block generation speed, this process will take about 25 years.Saylor stated: "Anyone can fork Bitcoin, but if there is a lack of security, practicality, capital, and users, the fork is meaningless. Consensus needs to be earned, not declared."

ECX developer Paul Sztorc announced that the ECX hard fork will be launched in three phases, rather than the originally scheduled single release on August 23. ECX is a new blockchain that replicates the complete transaction history of Bitcoin at a specified block height. Almost all Bitcoin holders, except for Satoshi Nakamoto's portion of Bitcoin, will receive an equivalent amount of ECX, and the Bitcoin network itself will not change.The first Alpha version will be activated on August 23 at block height 963648, the Beta version will go live on September 20 at block height 967680, and the permanent complete version is scheduled for release on October 31 at block height 973728. Tokens collected during the Alpha and Beta phases can be destroyed and exchanged for official ECX once the permanent chain is launched. The replay protection for ECX remains an optional mechanism; the official wallet will enable this protection and remind users before executing transactions. Paul Sztorc stated that if users ignore the reminder, ECX will replay their Bitcoin transactions, causing the related Bitcoins to follow the user out and transfer to new holders; October 31 also marks the 18th anniversary of Satoshi Nakamoto's publication of the Bitcoin white paper.