9-7-2025 – Polygon executed its most technically complex hard fork since launching in 2020, upgrading its proof-of-stake blockchain with the new Heimdall 2.0 consensus layer as the native POL token surged nearly 10% to month-highs around $0.20.

The upgrade replaces legacy Tendermint infrastructure from 2018-2019 with modern CometBFT architecture, dramatically improving network performance metrics. Polygon Foundation CEO Sandeep Nailwal said the update reduces blockchain finality from 90 seconds to just 4-6 seconds while cutting block times from 5-6 seconds to approximately 2 seconds.

The 30-minute mainnet upgrade temporarily disrupted checkpoint finality for up to three hours as the network transitioned its core consensus engine. Nailwal warned decentralized applications to increase confirmation thresholds to 256 blocks during the migration, though most validators had already upgraded before the deadline.

The hard fork follows Polygon’s recent Bhilai upgrade that enabled 1,000 transactions per second and builds toward supporting faster checkpoints, improved bridging security, and future account abstraction enhancements. The upgrade launches with a new chain ID and genesis block while preserving application data and balances.

Market participants will be monitoring network performance metrics and validator participation rates as Polygon’s upgraded infrastructure competes in the increasingly crowded layer-2 ecosystem.