Polygon announces hard fork 'Delhi'

Polygon is about to roll out its next upgrade.

Polygon is about to roll out its next upgrade. The "Delhi Fork" is designed to reduce costs on the network during heavy usage.

The Polygon development team gives the green light for the next network upgrade: Next Tuesday, January 17, the "Delhi Fork" will be deployed. In particular network fees should improve significantly. Additionally, block finality will be optimized with the hard fork.

Hard fork aims to cut costs

As a scaling project for Ethereum, one of Polygon's core features is reigning in fees. Gas fees can still run high when traffic is heavy and the network is busy. "While gas on the blockchain works most of the time, there are big spikes in the base gas fee when demand is high," says Polygon. This issue is addressed with the Delhi Fork.

The upgrade smooths out swings, also known as "gas spikes," when base costs rise. Swings are flattened, making transactions cheaper on average. An improvement that, according to Polygon, is "meaningful for users, validators, and developers." Ultimately, it leads to better "interaction with the blockchain".

Polygon tightens up block finality

Moreover, the hard fork shortens the so-called "sprint length" from 64 to 16 blocks. This means validators produce blocks in a shorter time than before.

"Sprint length" refers to the number of blocks a validator produces in succession. But the higher the number, the bigger the chance of "reorgs": the temporary split of the blockchain before consensus is reached. By finishing blocks faster, the hard fork reduces the frequency of similar "reorgs".

Polygon nodes should be updated to the latest software by January 17. Users don’t need to be aware of updates. Last month Polygon broke through the 200 million addresses barrier."