Polygon Blockchain Set to Undergo Hard Fork

Ethereum scaling solution, Polygon, will undergo a hard fork to its proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain to address gas spikes and chain reorganization. The proposed hard fork is set to take place on January 17.

Fork Will Address Gas Fees and Reorgs

Polygon, an Ethereum scaling project announced in a blog that it will undergo a software upgrade to address gas spikes and chain reorganizations (reorgs).

📢 GET READY FOR THE HARDFORK 🔥The proposed hardfork for the #Polygon PoS chain will make key upgrades to the network on Jan 17th. This is good news for devs & users — & will make for better UX.You will NOT need to do anything differently. Details:https://t.co/RaBWDjEGrI pic.twitter.com/nipa15YQdZ

— Polygon (@0xPolygon) January 12, 2023

The first part of the hard fork will involve an adjustment of the blockchain sets gas fees. Gas fees are a sort of tax paid out to a blockchain so that one can transact on it. Polygon’s goal with the fork is to reduce the spikes in gas prices that sometimes occur when there is a major activity on the chain. In a statement to CoinDesk, Polygon said addressed gas fees and said:

Although gas will still increase during peak demand, it will be more in line with the way Ethereum gas dynamics work now. The goal is to smooth out spikes and ensure a more seamless experience when interacting with the chain.

Polygon said that a reduction in gas fee spikes will be achieved by doubling the value of the “BaseFeeChangeDenominator,” which the company says will “help smooth out the increase/decrease rate is baseFee for when the gas exceeds or falls below the target gas limits in a block.” The project believes the modification will be successful as it backtested such changes “against historical Polygon PoS mainnet data.”

The second proposed part of the hard fork will address reorgs, which can occur when a validator node – a computer operating the blockchain – receives information that can temporarily create a new version of the blockchain. Reorgs can occur due to network errors or malicious attacks. For as long as a reorg lasts, it can lead to lost or duplicate transactions.

Reorgs occur relatively frequently and to address this problem, Polygon wants to reduce the time it takes to finalize a block to verify a successful transaction, and to achieve this, the hard fork will reduce Polygon’s “sprint length” from 64 to 16 blocks, meaning that a block producer can produce blocks for a much shorter time.

MATIC Holders Will Not be Affected

Hard forks differ from soft forks in that they are not backward-compatible and will require all node operators on the network to update the latest software at a specified time. Before the hard fork takes place, all Polygon node operators will have to upgrade their nodes before the set date to prepare for the update. Holders of the MATIC token, Polygon’s native token, will not be affected and do not need to take any action. Decentralised applications such as Web3 games will also remain unaffected and need not take action.

Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.