BNB Chain is building a new layer-1 for high-frequency trading and AI agents

$BNB Chain is developing a new layer-1 blockchain built for high-frequency trading and autonomous AI agents, with a public testnet targeted for the end of 2026 and mainnet planned for early 2027.

The chain will run alongside the existing $BNB Chain ecosystem rather than replace it. $BNB Smart Chain holds roughly $5 billion in total value locked. The goal is to give self-custodied traders execution speeds closer to those of centralized exchanges.

The roadmap targets transaction preconfirmations under 50 milliseconds, throughput above 100,000 transactions per second and sub-second block finality.

It removes the public mempool, streaming transactions directly to the block leader. $BNB Chain says the design lowers latency and prevents front-running by eliminating the public queue where pending trades are visible.

The plans come as the crypto industry builds infrastructure for autonomous AI agents that can trade, make payments and execute transactions without constant human oversight.

Coinbase last month introduced accounts designed for AI agents, while stablecoins are gaining traction as a payment rail for autonomous software.

$BNB Chain has already lifted performance on $BNB Smart Chain. During the first half of 2026, block times fell to 450 milliseconds from 750, while benchmark throughput rose to about 5,200 transactions per second from roughly 2,800.

David Z, $BNB Chain's chief technical officer, told CoinDesk the next phase focuses on execution rather than consensus.

“All smart contracts today need optimization directly at the execution layer,” he said. “The chains got fast at consensus and storage, but the execution engine itself still works like it's translating sentence by sentence.”

The new network will use execution-layer techniques such as just-in-time compilation, which compiles code as it runs, and strength reduction, which swaps expensive calculations for simpler ones.

The roadmap also reserves blockspace for services such as oracles, liquidations and cross-chain bridges, alongside native privacy, account abstraction, gas sponsorship, transaction batching, scheduled execution and passkey signing.

$BNB Chain is separately researching quantum-resistant security. The team said it aims to let users adopt quantum-safe protection without changing wallet addresses or disrupting existing applications, work that remains at the research stage.