Polygon 

No, Polygon HardFork was not ONLY approved by 13 People!

Matthieu Saubin 2 min read
polygon hardfork delhi pip7 coinpri

Polygon, The leading blockchain of 2022 starts the new year with a new PIP (Polygon Improvement Proposal)! Coinpri looked into the purple chain recent upgrade to make it easy for you to coinpri-hend.

Table of Contents
  1. Why does Polygon update its infrastructure? 
  2. How did the hard fork vote take place?
  3. So, the Hardfork was not validated by only 13 people?

Why does Polygon update its infrastructure? 

As one of the 2 biggest Blockchain in terms of number of transactions, Polygon is a victim of its success. While the network continues to grow, from time to time, gas costs spike to validate a transaction at rush hours.

Consequently, a proposal was made for optimisation: you may have a look at the Polygon public forum where everyone is welcomed to contribute.

  • Technically, the “BaseFeeChangeDenominator” is doubled from 8 to 16 in order to mitigate the variations in BaseFee when the gas goes beyond the target gas limits in a block. 
  • In parallel, the sprint length is reduced from 64 blocks to 16 blocks to avoid potential reorg (a temporary split of the chain) thanks to faster validation of transactions.

You didn’t get everything? No problem, we are here to explain! In short :

  • The change of the “BaseFeeChangeDenominator” is simply a way to avoid you to pay expensive transactions.
  • A reorg occurs when a validator node receives new information that shows a longer version of the chain, called the “canonical” chain. Thus it becomes the new reference and the old one is discarded. 

How did the hard fork vote take place?

As decentralization is one of the core component of Blockchain, it is important to explain how a hard fork is possible:

  • A Polygon Improvement Proposal (or PIP) was discussed in the Forum along with a sentiment poll to gather feedback on the contents of the Hardfork. 15 Validators took the time to officially express their opinion through the forum survey. 
  • A builder call with a significant number of validators and some core developers talked about the changes ahead of time. 
  • On 17th, January, validators that have upgraded meant they approved positively the Hard Fork. 2/3 minimum of total MATIC tokens stake on validators is required to form the canonical chain. There was already a majority of validators that updated 2 days prior so the changes were approved without surprise. 

So, the Hardfork was not validated by only 13 people?

No, as explained above, this is just a misunderstanding of how the Polygon’s protocol works.

99 out of the 100 validators upgraded their nodes prior to the hardfork coded for the block 38,189,056 in other words 17th, January. As of January 18th, all active validators have executed the Delhi hardfork 4, with 3.5 billion staked $MATIC (including delegations) now validating the chain’s upgraded version. 

And obviously:

  • Users, holders and stakers are not impacted!  
  • Polygon PoS nodes (sentry, full node, validator, or archive node) upgrade to stay in sync. Indeed, the PIP-7 can take place if at least 67% of the total MATIC is staked on upgraded validators.

Finally everything went smooth and another network upgrade may happen in the coming months! Nonetheless, we still would like to know when zkEVM reaches mainnet, as well as the other Polygon products in preparation. 2023 promises to be full of surprises for Ethereum side chains and Zero-Knowledge Proof innovations, we’ll be there to keep you up-to-date!