The developers at Polygon ( MATIC-USD ), a scaling solution that seeks to make transactions based on ethereum ( ETH-USD ) more efficient, have proposed launching a hard fork to its Proof-of-Stake blockchain, according to a note viewed by The Block on Thursday. The software upgrade, which has been a topic of discussion across the Polygon ( MATIC-USD ) community since December 2022, seeks to address spikes in gas fees as well as chain reorganizations, abbreviated as reorgs. If approved by the community, the upgrade will take hold on Jan. 17. A so-called gas fee is a tax that all users must pay in order to transact on the blockchain. Gas prices typically increase when there is outsized activity on the chain, thus the proposed hard fork aims to reduce the intensity of gas fee spikes. For reorgs the developers want to reduce the amount of time it takes to finalize a block to verify transactions successfully, as reorgs make it tough to properly verify successful transactions as a longer blockchain gets created due to the deletion of a previous block from the blockchain. In essence, that change would result in fewer reorgs, The Block noted. Specifically, the goal is to reduce Polygon's sprint length to 16 blocks from 64 blocks, allowing validator nodes to better reconcile what the correct chain is, as more blocks would be produced in a shorter period of time. MATIC tokens took part in the risk-on day, rising 4.5% to $0.90 at the time of writing, as the broader crypto market extended its rally after softer CPI data.
