Polygon’s Madhugiri Hard Fork Targets 33% Throughput Gain, 1-Second Blocks
Polygon has finally gone live with its latest major network upgrade - the Madhugiri hard fork, which is a big step forward towards faster...
Quick overview
- Polygon has launched the Madhugiri hard fork, enhancing block times and transaction capacity by reducing consensus time from 2 seconds to 1.
- The upgrade incorporates key Ethereum Improvement Proposals aimed at improving network stability and efficiency, making it suitable for institutional applications.
- Polygon is positioning itself for a 'stablecoin supercycle' and aims to enhance real-world asset tokenization with improved transparency and performance.
- Despite recent setbacks, the Madhugiri upgrade marks a significant step in Polygon's evolution towards becoming a leading settlement layer for global finance.
Polygon has finally gone live with its latest major network upgrade – the Madhugiri hard fork, which is a big step forward towards faster block times and higher transaction capacity. This update aims to increase network throughput by a third and reduce the block consensus time from 2 seconds to 1, positioning the chain to handle more demanding, institutional-grade applications.
Core developer Krishang Shah has been talking up the overhaul on X, noting that the fork brings together three key Fusaka Ethereum Improvement Proposals that really make a difference: EIP-7823, EIP-7825, and EIP-7883. These proposals handle the heavy computational load, prevent people from gobbling up too much gas, and limit the ability of any single transaction to slow the whole network down – improvements designed to make the system more predictable and stable.
Shah also noted that the fork introduces a new transaction category for Ethereum-to-Polygon bridge activity and includes some flexible upgrade tooling. Developers are saying future throughput boosts are just a matter of “flicking a few switches”, which really highlights how Polygon’s long-term design is all about being modular and flexible.
Building a Strong Foundation for Stablecoins and RWAs
The Madhugiri hard fork is also laying the groundwork for Polygon’s ambitions in real-world asset (RWA) tokenization and stablecoin infrastructure – two areas that are expected to drive the next significant phase of blockchain adoption.
Polygon Labs executive Aishwary Gupta, who leads payments and RWA strategy, has been talking about a potential “stablecoin supercycle“, where he thinks there could be at least 100,000 new stablecoins created within five years. But he stresses that size alone isn’t enough; you need a good reason to create those coins, and for users to really want to use them.
Tomorrow, Polygon is upgrading to make future speed boosts easier to ship, and increasing network throughput by 33%.
The Madhugiri Hardfork makes certain throughput increases as easy as flipping a few switches. It also continues to improve network stability and adds support for… https://t.co/SFu3AhtjVM pic.twitter.com/vNoT65BKGV
— Polygon | POL (@0xPolygon) December 8, 2025
Gupta has also been pushing for stronger transparency standards across RWA ecosystems, arguing that for adoption to really happen, you need to be able to audit, trade, and settle those tokens in a way that isn’t opaque.
Some of the key objectives highlighted by Polygon leaders are:
- getting high-frequency, high-trust financial transactions working smoothly
- making secure, scalable RWA tokenization a reality
- providing predictable performance for institutional settlement
- making cross-chain bridging really efficient
These goals align with the technical enhancements being made to Madhugiri, which aim to make Polygon a leading settlement layer for global finance.
Upgrade Comes After A Lot of Progress – and a Recent Setback
Madhugiri comes on the back of a year of really aggressive infrastructure improvements. Back in July, Polygon deployed Heimdall 2.0, which the Polygon Foundation CEO, Sandeep Nailwal, described as the network’s most complex hard fork to date. The upgrade was a game-changer, slashing transaction finality from up to 2 minutes to a snappy 5 seconds, making a huge difference to the user experience.
However, September wasn’t so great – a bug caused finality issues that lasted 10-15 minutes, disrupting validator sync, RPC services, and some third-party apps. But despite the chaos, block production kept going.
The network returned to normal on September 11 with another targeted hard fork, resolving consensus issues, clearing node backlogs, and resuming normal checkpoint finalisation.
Conclusion
With the Madhugiri hard fork now live, Polygon is reinforcing its technological backbone ahead of a new era of scalable stablecoin issuance and institutional-grade RWA deployment. Faster consensus, improved mathematical efficiency, and more flexible upgrade paths all point to Polygon becoming a high-performance settlement network that’s ready to compete.
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