Polygon, a leading ETH scaling solution, has announced plans to integrate a hard fork on its Proof-of-Stake chain on 17 January 2023. A 12 January tweet had Polygon stating that the expected hardfork will ensure improved user experience, helping users and developers alike.
Polygon’s blog on its official website confirmed more details about the up-and-coming hardfork, saying it targets upgrading the blockchain’s performance by eliminating reorgs and reducing gas spikes occurrences.
Hardfork Targeting Reduced Gas Spikes
Polygon’s proof-of-stake chain is the leading ETH layer2 scaling solution, enabling users and developers to enjoy low gas charges and quicker transactions while ensuring the safety of the ETH ecosystem.
Nonetheless, Polygon encounters increased network demand occasionally, leading to an exponential uptick in gas fees (gas spikes). While heightened gas fees could happen amidst amplified network activity, gas spikes are glitches in the ecosystem’s operations.
To address that, Polygon says the expected hardfork will increase BaseFreeChangeDenominator to 16 from 8, thus reducing the base gas fee change rate to 6.25% from 12.5%. Nonetheless, users should expect heightened gas fees amidst a soared on-chain activity even with the proposed upgrade. However, massive gas fee fluctuations would be long gone.
Hardfork to Resolve Chain Reorgs
A chain reorganization or reorg caused a network to form two temporary versions of itself. However, reorgs remain highly risky as they may lead to lost or duplicate transactions. Furthermore, their existence increases the blockchain’s vulnerability to attacks.
Polygon developers plan to decrease its duration to form blocks and authorize transactions to alleviate reorgs within the Polygon proof-of-stake chain. Meanwhile, the blog post indicated that the upcoming hardfork would lessen the platform’s sprint length to 16 blocks from 64. That would allow new block formation with 32 seconds, much lower than the present 128 seconds block production duration.
Now, it’s worth stating that the proposed hardfork is awaiting implementation approval from the network’s community. Nonetheless, Polygon alerted its users that prevailing infrastructure providers will have to update their nodes in preparation for the 17 January event.
Also, the team assured enthusiasts that the upcoming network moderations would not influence dApps operations. Lastly, Polygon revealed that network delegators and MATIC holders don’t have to do anything regarding the proposed hardfork.
MATIC is Polygon’s native token and the tenth-largest digital coin, with $8,693,212,414 (CoinGecko data). While publishing this post, MATIC traded near $0.9694, following a 0.5% drop over the past day. The cryptocurrency industry recorded slight declines over the past day, following a stellar rise that saw Bitcoin exploding past $21K. During this writing, BTC lost 0.71% within the last 24 hours to change hands near $20,732.
