Polygon’s Giugliano Hardfork Signals a Stability Push After a Rough 2025

The Polygon Foundation has announced the activation of the Giugliano hardfork on its mainnet, set to occur at block 85,268,500, approximately 2 p.m. UTC on April 8. This upgrade aims to enhance the network's stability and performance, addressing key areas such as faster finality and improved fee transparency. These changes are part of Polygon's broader strategy to increase throughput for payments and tokenized assets, a critical focus amid the challenges faced by the network in 2025.

The Giugliano hardfork introduces several significant modifications to the Polygon protocol. Firstly, it allows block producers to announce blocks earlier, thereby reducing the time users must wait for transaction confirmation to become irreversible. This improvement in finality time has been demonstrated in testing on the Amoy testnet, where a roughly two-second reduction in finality was observed.

In addition to faster finality, the Giugliano upgrade embeds EIP-1559-style fee parameters directly into block headers. This change provides developers and applications with more efficient access to gas pricing data at the protocol level. To support these fee-related changes, new Remote Procedure Call (RPC) endpoints have been introduced. These endpoints enable wallets and decentralized applications to query fee information without relying on external estimations, enhancing the overall user experience and transaction efficiency.

Polygon shared that "This upgrade enables faster finality by letting producers announce blocks earlier, adds fee parameters directly in block headers, and introduces new RPC support for fee data." For node operators, it is essential to update their Bor software to version 2.7.0 or Erigon to version 3.5.0 before the activation block to ensure compatibility with the new protocol changes. Regular users and developers do not need to take any action, as the hardfork will be applied automatically once the specified block is reached.

The Giugliano hardfork comes as Polygon seeks to stabilize its network after a challenging year in 2025. In September, a consensus bug caused finality delays of up to 15 minutes, leading to an emergency hard fork to restore normal operations. The network had faced further disruptions just two months earlier when a validator error led to temporary delays in finality. These incidents underscored the need for continuous improvement and robustness in Polygon's protocol.

The Giugliano upgrade represents Polygon's commitment to addressing these challenges and ensuring a more stable and efficient network for its users. By enhancing finality times and providing better fee transparency, the hardfork is expected to improve the overall performance of the network, particularly for transactions involving payments and tokenized assets. As the Polygon community looks to the future, the Giugliano hardfork serves as a crucial step toward achieving greater stability and throughput, positioning the network for sustained growth and adoption.