Polygon primed for hard fork aimed at reducing gas fee spikes: New details revealed

Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution Polygon will undergo a hard fork on Jan. 17 in order to address gas spikes and chain reorganizations issues that has affected user experience on the Polygon proof-of-stake (POS) chain. 

Polygon officially

Related: Polygon tests zero-knowledge rollups, mainnet integration inbound

As for the chain reorganization problem, Polygon explained that by decreasing sprint length, transaction finality will improve, allowing a single block producer to add blocks continuously at a frequency of 32 seconds as opposed to the current time of 128 seconds.

“The change will not affect the total time or number of blocks a validator produces, so there will be no change in rewards overall,” they added.

Chain reorganization occurs when a block is deleted from the blockchain to make room for the new, longer chain to ensure that all node operators have the same copy of the ledger.

However, the reorganization must proceed as efficiently as possible as it increases the risk of a 51% attack.

The Polygon Team also confirmed that MATIC token holders and delegators will not need to take action and that applications will not be affected during the hard fork.

The price of Polygon’s token, MATIC is currently $0.977, up 13.6% since Polygon announced the news on Jan. 12.