Ethereum layer-2 scaling answer Polygon will endure a tough fork on Jan. 17 with the intention to tackle fuel spikes and chain reorganizations points that has affected person expertise on the Polygon proof-of-stake (POS) chain.
Polygon formally confirmed the laborious fork occasion in Jan. 12 a weblog submit, which got here after weeks of preliminary discussion on Polygon Enchancment Proposal (PIP) discussion board web page in late December.
GET READY FOR THE HARDFORK
The proposed hardfork for the #Polygon PoS chain will make key upgrades to the community on Jan seventeenth.
That is excellent news for devs & customers — & will make for higher UX.
You’ll NOT have to do something in a different way. Particulars:https://t.co/RaBWDjEGrI pic.twitter.com/nipa15YQdZ
— Polygon (@0xPolygon) January 12, 2023
A Polygon spokesperson additionally supplied Cointelegraph with further particulars of the laborious fork on Jan. 14:
“The laborious fork is coded for the Block >= 38,189,056. No centralized, single actor goes to provoke it. Validators of the community need to replace their nodes previous to the indicated block, and they’re already doing so.”
87% of the 15 voters of the Polygon Governance Staff voted in favor of accelerating the BaseFeeChangeDenominator operate from 8 to 16 to reduce gas fee spikes and to lower the SprintLength operate from 64 blocks to 16 with the intention to repair the chain reorganization drawback.
In addressing the fuel spike subject, the Polygon Staff defined that as a result of the bottom charge worth typically “experiences exponential spikes” when on-chain exercise will increase quickly, by growing the denominator from 8 to 16, they consider “the expansion curve will be flattened” and thus “easy extreme fluctuations” in gas prices.

Associated: Polygon tests zero-knowledge rollups, mainnet integration inbound
As for the chain reorganization drawback, Polygon defined that by reducing dash size, transaction finality will enhance, permitting a single block producer so as to add blocks constantly at a frequency of 32 seconds versus the present time of 128 seconds.
“The change is not going to have an effect on the overall time or variety of blocks a validator produces, so there might be no change in rewards general,” they added.
Chain reorganization happens when a block is deleted from the blockchain to make room for the brand new, longer chain to make sure that all node operators have the identical copy of the ledger.
Nevertheless, the reorganization should proceed as effectively as doable because it increases the risk of a 51% attack.
The Polygon Staff additionally confirmed that MATIC token holders and delegators is not going to have to take motion and that purposes is not going to be affected throughout the laborious fork.
The value of Polygon’s token, MATIC is presently $0.977, up 13.6% since Polygon introduced the information on Jan. 12.