Polygon Labs has proposed a hard fork update on the Polygon network scheduled to take place on January 17. According to a blog post, the update is intended to improve the protocol’s Proof-of-Stake (PoS) performance and predictability.
After a recent community discussion, Polygon has decided to go ahead with its plans to hard-fork the network. Amongst its hard fork projects is the decision to reduce the spike in gas fees in transactions within the network. The protocol also plans to address chain reorganization (reorgs) to reduce the time of transaction finalization.
Polygon PoS is an Ethereum sidechain. It was launched to provide the scalability that Ethereum mainnet could not offer and also present a much lower gas transaction fee. The network has, however, experienced recent gas fee hikes and reduced transaction speed. This has prompted the need for longer-term technical updates to the network.
Polygon has recently seen more adoption, with the famous crypto wallet Phantom expanding to the network. Brazil’s largest digital bank launched its token on the protocol, with Supra Oracle also going live on the Polygon Testnet.
Polygon to Change the BaseFeeDenominator
Part of its upgrade plan is to replace its BaseFeeChangeDenominator. Polygon Labs intends to change the value from 8 to 16, providing a cushion for base fee rates when there is an excess or deficit in the target gas limit within a block.
The project is optimistic this result will work out as it has backtested the results against its historical PoS mainnet data. The change is expected to drop the base fee to 6.25% against its current 12.5% and combat the spike in fees.
Polygon to Reduce Sprint Time
The second proposed alteration in the Polygon chain addresses the chain reorganization. Reorgs happen because of network errors or malicious attacks. This causes the blockchain to split into two chains, leading to duplicated or lost transactions.
The alteration would involve changing the sprint length from 64 to 16 blocks. Polygon intends to reduce the time a single block continues to produce blocks from 128 seconds to 32 seconds. Doing so will reduce the depth of reorgs without a change in rewards.
Polygon Labs, however, stated that these proposals require network agreements to be implemented and beckoned on full compliance from network users. It also hinted at another hard fork that will be initiated in the coming months to further improve the network’s scalability and performance.
