Polygon Achieves 33% Throughput Boost with Madhugiri Hard Fork as POL Tests Critical Support at $0.12
Polygon successfully launched its Madhugiri hard fork on December 9, which is a big technological achievement that boosts network capacity
Quick overview
- Polygon launched its Madhugiri hard fork on December 9, enhancing network capacity by 33% and reducing consensus time to one second.
- The upgrade includes three Ethereum Improvement Proposals and allows for easier future adjustments to block times without hard forks.
- Despite the technical improvements, POL's price remains under pressure, trading around $0.12, down over 30% in the past month.
- The long-term outlook for POL could improve if transaction volumes increase and institutional partnerships grow, with a conservative price target of $0.25 to $0.35.
Polygon successfully launched its Madhugiri hard fork on December 9, which is a big technological achievement that boosts network capacity by 33% and cuts consensus time to only one second. As of this writing, Polygon’s native token POL is trading for more than $0.12, which is a little 3% gain over the past 24 hours as the market reacts to the upgrades to the infrastructure.
Polygon’s Technical Upgrade Delivers Substantial Performance Gains
The hard fork, which happened at block height 80,084,800, upped Polygon’s block gas limit from 30 million to 45 million. This meant that the network could process about one-third more transaction data each block. Polygon core engineer Krishang Shah said that the time it takes for consensus to happen has been cut in half, from two seconds to one second. This means that blocks can be announced right away when they are ready instead of waiting for the full interval.
The upgrade includes three Ethereum Improvement Proposals from the Fusaka hard fork: EIP-7823, EIP-7825, and EIP-7883. These proposals improve complicated arithmetic operations by using less gas and stopping individual transactions from taking up all the computational power. Also, Polygon Improvement Proposal 75 lets developers change block times by changing parameters instead of having to do hard forks in the future. This makes the upgrade process easier in the future.
Strategic Positioning for High-Value Use Cases
The Madhugiri update strengthens Polygon’s infrastructure in preparation for the expected rise in stablecoins and the tokenization of real-world assets. Aishwary Gupta, Polygon Labs’ worldwide head of payments and RWAs, had predicted a “stablecoin supercycle” in which at least 100,000 new stablecoins would be created in the next five years. Polygon is now better able to handle high-frequency payment apps and institutional-grade settlement needs because its performance metrics have increased, especially its speedier finality and higher throughput.
Recent partnerships show that this is the way the company is going. Last month’s launch of Mastercard Crypto Credential used Polygon for verified wallet aliases to make digital payments easier. At the same time, the network has become more popular with financial and institutional customers who need blockchain infrastructure that can handle payments.
POL/USD Technical Analysis: POL Struggles Near Multi-Year Lows
Despite the favorable technical improvements, POL’s pricing behavior reflects larger market anxiety about alternative layer-1 and layer-2 networks. According to CoinGecko data, the coin hit an all-time low of $0.117 on December 2. This was more than 90% lower than its March 2024 high of over $1.29.
Support at $0.12 has held up despite several challenges in the previous week. During this time, POL has gained roughly 2%, which is a little better than the rest of the crypto market, which lost about 1%. The token is still down over 30% over the past month, though, and it has done much worse than other smart contract platforms that gained more than 5% in the same time period.
Key technical levels are immediate support at $0.117 (the most recent low) and resistance at $0.15 (a psychological threshold). The relative strength indicator says that things are oversold, but bearish momentum is still strong on longer periods.
Polygon Price Prediction: Cautious Optimism Amid Infrastructure Improvements
The Madhugiri hard fork gives POL’s long-term value proposition a strong base, especially if Polygon is able to take market share in stablecoin payments and RWA tokenization. But for now, prices will probably stay between $0.11 and $0.15 until the mood in the market as a whole gets better.
If Polygon shows that transactions are growing after the upgrade and successfully brings on institutional payment providers, a conservative price objective of $0.25 to $0.35 for the next 12 months seems feasible. For the price to reach $0.50 in a more optimistic scenario, there would need to be a lot more acceptance in the stablecoin industry and a greater willingness to take risks in the crypto markets.
There are still big dangers on the downside. If the price goes below $0.11, it might lead to capitulation toward $0.08–$0.10. Investors should keep an eye on the growth of transaction volume and partnership announcements as signs of whether the technological advancements are leading to more people using the network.
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