What Polygon’s Hard Fork Upgrade Means for the Blockchain

• Ethereum scaling project, Polygon has announced a proposed hard fork that will address gas spikes and chain reorganization.
• BaseFeeChangeDenominator on Polygon now has a value of 8, and the plan is to increase it to 16.

Polygon Labs announced on Friday that it will be moving forward with plans to hard fork the Polygon Proof-of-Stake (POS) network on January 17. The hard fork is part of a larger project to enhance the zkEVM capabilities of the Polygon side chain.

The hard fork is designed to control gas fees from spiking, address chain reorganizations (reorgs), and improve Polygon’s performance and security.

Gas Fees

Gas fees are the amount of money that users must pay to execute transactions on a blockchain network. They can spike during times of high network activity, which can make it difficult and expensive to use the network.

The Polygon hard fork will increase the BaseFeeChangeDenominator from 8 to 16. This will help to reduce the rate of change of the base gas fee, which should help to stabilize gas prices during times of high network activity.

Chain Reorganizations

A chain reorganization (reorg) is a situation where two different versions of the blockchain exist at the same time. This can happen when there is a disagreement between validators about the order of blocks.

The Polygon hard fork will reduce the sprint length from 64 to 16 blocks. This will make it more difficult for chain reorganizations to occur, as validators will have less time to produce blocks.

Performance and Security

The Polygon hard fork is also expected to improve the network’s performance and security. The increased BaseFeeChangeDenominator and reduced sprint length should help to make the network more efficient and resistant to attacks.

Conclusion

The Polygon hard fork is a significant upgrade that is expected to improve the network’s performance, security, and usability. The hard fork is scheduled to take place on January 17, and users will not need to do anything differently to prepare.