Polygon Labs is set to hard fork the network on January 17 to help prevent network gas fee spikes and address chain reorganizations. Hard forks require all node operators on the network to update to the latest software at a specific time. Some hard forks are contentious and some are major upgrades to the network.
Polygon functions on the proof-of-stake (PoS) mechanism like Ethereum. But it wants to drastically lower the gas fees than Ethereum mainnet. However, Polygon is not free of traffic spikes that can slow the network. It can achieve lower gas fees by doubling the value of the “BaseFeeChangeDenominator”. Polygon believes this will help smooth out the increase and decrease rate in base fee for when the gas exceeds or falls below the target gas limits in a block.
Moreover, the modification will work because it backtested changes against historical Polygon PoS mainnet data. Polygon sees chain reorgs as a problem as it wants to minimize it through the hard fork update. Reorgs mainly occur due to network errors or malicious attacks. It causes blockchain networks to temporarily split in two. But this can lead to lost or duplicate transactions.
Mateusz Rzeszowski, Polygon governance facilitator, says it is still prevalent and a cause for concern among dapp developers. It can be tackled by reducing the sprint length from the current 64 blocks to 16 blocks. If implemented, this can reduce the amount of time it takes for a transaction to be confirmed. As such, it could reduce the likelihood of reorgs occurring on the network.
