• Polygon (MATIC) network, an Ethereum scaling solution, has announced a hard fork scheduled for January 17 to improve performance.
• The proposed changes are to reduce the severity of gas spikes and address chain reorganizations (reorgs) in order to reduce time to finality.
• The proposed changes include decreasing SprintLength to 16 blocks from 64, and increasing BaseFeeChangeDenominator from 8 to 16.
The Polygon network has been steadily growing, with over 207 million unique addresses and more than 2.3 billion processed transactions since its launch. Recently, the Polygon community proposed a hard fork, scheduled for January 17, to improve the performance of the network. The proposed changes are aimed at reducing the severity of gas spikes, and addressing chain reorganizations (reorgs) in order to reduce time to finality.
The proposed changes include decreasing the SprintLength, which is the number of blocks between a transaction being mined and finalized, from 64 blocks to 16 blocks. This is intended to reduce the time required for finality, and thus reduce the chance of a transaction being reorganized later. In addition, the BaseFeeChangeDenominator, which determines the rate at which the baseFee, the fee required for a transaction, changes, is proposed to be increased from 8 to 16. This is intended to reduce the severity of gas spikes, as the rate of increase and decrease in the fee will be smoother.
The Polygon community voted on the proposed changes, with 87% agreeing to the changes. The hard fork is scheduled for January 17, and is expected to improve the performance of the network, making it more efficient and secure. This is expected to have a positive impact on the MATIC price, as investors are likely to be attracted to the improved performance of the network.