Polygon has activated its Madhugiri hard fork, a network-wide upgrade designed to boost throughput by roughly 33% and cut block consensus time to one second. The update is part of the chain’s broader push to support high-volume stablecoin and real-world asset (RWA) applications.
Polygon core developer Krishang Shah said the hard fork introduces support for three Fusaka Ethereum Improvement Proposals — EIP-7823, EIP-7825 and EIP-7883 — each aimed at improving the efficiency of math-heavy operations by capping their gas usage. The changes prevent single transactions from consuming excessive computation, helping keep the network stable and predictable under load.
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The upgrade also adds a new transaction type for Ethereum-to-Polygon bridge traffic and includes a modular mechanism that allows future throughput improvements with minimal disruption. “We are decreasing the consensus time to 1 second, so blocks can now be announced in 1 second if ready,” Shah noted.
Polygon strengthens foundation for stablecoins and RWAs
With Madhugiri now live, Polygon is trying to fortify its technical base ahead of a projected surge in stablecoin activity and RWA tokenization. Aishwary Gupta, Polygon Labs’ global head of payments and RWAs, has previously predicted a “stablecoin supercycle,” suggesting more than 100,000 stablecoins could emerge over the next five years.
Gupta said this growth will only be meaningful if issuers ensure transparency, auditability and practical economic utility. He argued that RWAs will unlock trillions in institutional capital once verification and settlement standards become consistent across the sector.
Source: Krishang Shah
Hard fork follows rapid upgrades — and a recent outage
Madhugiri arrives shortly after Heimdall 2.0, a major July upgrade described by Polygon Foundation CEO Sandeep Nailwal as the project’s most complex hard fork to date. That update slashed finality times from one to two minutes down to about five seconds.
However, in September the network faced a significant disruption when a bug caused finality delays of up to 15 minutes, affecting validator synchronization and third-party tools. Polygon resolved the issue within a day through an emergency hard fork that restored expected checkpointing and finality behavior.
The Madhugiri deployment continues Polygon’s fast-paced development cycle as it positions itself for heavier institutional and payment-focused workloads.