Polygon, a layer-2 scaling solution for Ethereum, is set to undergo a hard fork on Jan. 17 to address issues such as gas spikes and chain reorganizations that have affected user experience on the platform. This hard fork was confirmed by Polygon in a blog post on Jan. 12, following discussions on the Polygon Improvement Proposal (PIP) forum page in late December.
The hard fork will make key upgrades to the network without requiring any action from users. Polygon’s spokesperson provided details of the hard fork, stating that it is coded for Block >= 38,189,056 and will not be initiated by a centralized, single actor. Validators of the network are required to update their nodes before the indicated block, which many have already started doing.
The Polygon Governance Team voted in favor of increasing the BaseFeeChangeDenominator function from 8 to 16 to reduce gas fee spikes, and decreasing the SprintLength function from 64 blocks to 16 to fix the chain reorganization problem. These changes aim to flatten the growth curve of gas prices and improve transaction finality on the chain.
Gas price spikes on the Polygon POS chain will be addressed by increasing the BaseFeeChangeDenominator function, while the chain reorganization issue will be fixed by decreasing the SprintLength function. These changes will not affect the total time or number of blocks produced by validators, ensuring that rewards remain unchanged.
Chain reorganization occurs when a block is deleted from the blockchain to accommodate a longer chain, which must be done efficiently to reduce the risk of a 51% attack. Polygon has assured that MATIC token holders and delegators will not be affected by the hard fork, and that applications will continue to function normally during the upgrade.
Since the announcement of the hard fork on Jan. 12, the price of Polygon’s token, MATIC, has seen a 13.6% increase, reaching $0.977. This upgrade is expected to improve the overall user experience on the Polygon network, making it more efficient and reliable for developers and users alike.
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