BNB Chain’s New L1 Trade-Off: 200ms Speed for No Gas Refunds and Bridge Risks

BNB Chain is developing a parallel EVM-compatible Layer 1 that retains BNB as its native asset, with a public testnet targeted for late 2026. Transactions will be charged on their declared gas limits rather than actual consumption, changing how developers and users manage execution costs. A new state-storage model removes standard Ethereum state-proof support, while the planned bridge introduces a separate security dependency. BNB Chain is preparing a second Layer 1 blockchain that prioritizes transaction speed over several conventions of Ethereum-compatible networks, including gas refunds, conventional state proofs and synchronous execution. The network, currently identified as New L1, will operate alongside BNB Smart Chain and use BNB for transaction fees, validator staking and governance. Its development targets include 200-millisecond blocks, approximately 20-millisecond pre-confirmations and throughput exceeding 100,000 transactions per second. The architecture is more consequential than the headline performance figures suggest. Developers are replacing parts of the execution and storage pipeline that normally constrain EVM throughput, introducing different assumptions for transaction pricing, settlement and infrastructure compatibility. An internal multi-validator devnet is running, according to BNB Chain’s technical documentation. The public testnet is targeted for late 2026, with mainnet planned for early 2027. No publicly accessible network is available for independent production-scale benchmarking. BNB Chain Is Replacing Execution Bottlenecks, Not Just Shortening Blocks BNB Smart Chain has already reduced its block interval through successive upgrades. Its July 2026 roadmap reported a reduction to 450 milliseconds and benchmark throughput of approximately 5,200 transactions per second. New L1 adopts a different architecture. Under conventional synchronous execution, validators process transactions and establish their resulting state before completing block validation. New L1 separates transaction ordering from execution, allowing consensus to progress while the execution engine processes previously ordered transactions. Validators use an enhanced version of Parlia’s Proof-of-Staked-Authority consensus, with cross-block BLS votes designed to establish fast finality for transaction ordering. A block’s ordering can become final before the execution commitment associated with its transactions has been verified and finalized. Applications cannot safely treat an early ordering confirmation as proof that a trade succeeded or a transfer settled. The network also introduces validator-signed pre-confirmations that can be withdrawn or superseded before finality. For exchanges and payment processors, a pre-confirmation can inform user interfaces or transaction monitoring, but irreversible delivery of funds or assets requires execution finality. BNB Chain documents this distinction in its transaction lifecycle specification. The Gas Model Creates a New Cost for Overestimating Transactions One of New L1’s most consequential changes concerns transaction fees. On Ethereum and BSC, users generally pay for gas actually consumed, subject to the network’s refund rules. New L1 instead charges the full gas limit declared when the transaction is submitted. The reason lies in asynchronous execution.