BNB Chain Weekly Updates: ETF Filing, Network Upgrade & More

BNB Chain experienced several developments last week, including Grayscale's filing for a spot BNB exchange-traded fund, a network upgrade that reduced block time by 40%, and the launch of trading competitions offering $650,000 in combined rewards. The Fermi hard fork activated on January 14, Trenching Season began on January 19, and Grayscale submitted its ETF application on January 23.

What Is The Grayscale BNB ETF Filing?

Grayscale filed a Form S-1 registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission on January 23 to launch the Grayscale BNB Trust. The proposed fund would trade under the ticker GBNB and provide investors with BNB exposure without requiring direct token ownership.

The filing represents the initial step toward a spot ETF launch in the United States. The proposal cannot advance without Nasdaq submitting a corresponding 19b-4 form and receiving SEC approval. Grayscale's filing follows a similar application from VanEck in April 2025, which remains pending approval.

Both Grayscale and VanEck excluded staking from their BNB ETF proposals, likely reflecting regulatory uncertainty around staking services in the United States. VanEck removed staking from its BNB proposal in November despite offering staking in its recently launched Solana ETF.

How Did The Fermi Hard Fork Change Block Time?

The Fermi hard fork activated on January 14 at block height 75,140,593, reducing block time on BNB Smart Chain from 0.75 seconds to 0.45 seconds. This 40% reduction completes the network's Short Block Interval Roadmap and represents the latest in a series of performance upgrades following Lorentz, Pascal, and Maxwell.

BNB Smart Chain now produces blocks every 450 milliseconds, or roughly 2 to 3 blocks per second. The upgrade places the network close to the physical limits of global block propagation while maintaining validator coordination and finality guarantees.

The Fermi upgrade introduced several technical improvements to maintain stability under the faster block schedule, including shorter block intervals for quicker confirmations, improved validator coordination under high network load, more reliable fast finality, better block propagation across distributed nodes, and enhanced performance for real-time applications.

What Are The Trenching Season Trading Competitions?

BNB Chain launched Trenching Season on January 19, distributing a combined $650,000 reward pool across five independent trading competitions. The campaign runs through February 2 and spans Binance Wallet, Bitget, GMGN, Ave.ai, and Genius, each operating distinct contests with separate rules and timelines.

Binance Wallet's competition ranks the top 200 participants by realized profit and loss, offering a prize pool of 200 BNB. Registration opened January 18, with the competition running from January 19 to February 2. This format rewards risk management and timing rather than volume generation.

Bitget focuses on trading volume over a shorter timeframe, running from January 19 to January 23. The platform ranks the top 1,200 participants by total volume, distributing 150,000 USDT in prizes.

GMGN takes a different approach by ranking participants based on account balance. The contest runs from January 19 to February 2, rewarding the top 30 traders who grow and maintain account value with a prize pool of 100 BNB.

Ave.ai operates from January 19 to January 26 with a 100,000 USDT prize pool distributed across multiple tracks. The Sunshine Award goes to users completing at least one onchain transaction of 200 USDT or more, while a tiered competition sets volume thresholds and a leaderboard ranks the top 200 by volume.

Genius runs the longest competition, spanning January 21 to February 21. The contest focuses specifically on memecoin trading within the BNB Chain ecosystem, ranking the top 100 participants by realized profit and loss with a $100,000 prize pool paid in BNB.

What Happened In The 34th Quarterly Token Burn?

BNB Chain completed its first token burn of 2026 on January 15, removing 1,371,803.77 BNB from circulation. The burn consisted of 1,371,703.67 BNB in the actual burn and 100.1 BNB in the Pioneer burn, with a total value of approximately $1.277 billion.

Following the burn, the remaining total supply stands at 136,361,374.34 BNB. The Auto-Burn mechanism gradually reduces the total supply toward a target of 100,000,000 BNB, with burn amounts adjusted based on BNB's price and the number of blocks generated on BNB Smart Chain during each quarter.

BNB serves multiple functions within the ecosystem beyond transaction fees. The token powers transactions on BNB Smart Chain, opBNB layer-2 networks, and the BNB Greenfield blockchain. BNB holders can participate in decentralized onchain governance and receive trading fee discounts on Binance.

Conclusion

BNB Chain delivered multiple technical and institutional updates in January 2026. The Fermi hard fork reduced block time to 0.45 seconds, Grayscale filed for a spot BNB ETF, Trenching Season provides $650,000 in trading rewards across five platforms, and the network burned 1.37 million BNB tokens valued at approximately $1.277 billion. These developments demonstrate progress across network performance, traditional finance integration, and ecosystem incentives.

Resources 

1. BNB Chain on X: Posts (January, 2026)

2. Blog article by BNB Chain 1: Win a share of $650K with BNB Trenching Szn on Binance Wallet, Bitget, GMGN, Ave.ai, Genius

3. Blog article by BNB Chain 2: 34th BNB Burn

4. BNB Chain github: About v1.6.2