Polygon will cut transaction finality by roughly two seconds with its Giugliano hardfork on April 8. The upgrade directly affects settlement speed, a key metric for payments and real-world asset (RWA) activity.
The Polygon Foundation announced the hardfork will activate at block 85,268,500, expected around 14:00 UTC on Wednesday. The upgrade enables earlier block announcements, embeds fee parameters in block headers, and introduces new remote procedure call (RPC) support for fee data. Node operators must upgrade Bor to v2.7.0 or Erigon to v3.5.0 before activation.
Giugliano Upgrade
— Polygon Foundation (@0xPolygonFdn) April 6, 2026
The Giugliano hardfork will be released on Polygon mainnet at block number 85,268,500, at approximately 2 PM UTC on April 8.
This upgrade: enables faster finality by letting producers announce blocks earlier, adds fee parameters directly in block headers,…
Can Faster Finality Stabilize Polygon’s Network Performance?
The Giugliano upgrade follows a period of reliability concerns across Polygon’s network infrastructure. In September, a separate hardfork addressed a finality bug that delayed transactions, while a July validator exit triggered a Heimdall issue that caused a one-hour outage. By comparison, the Amoy testnet recorded a two-second improvement in finality during March trials, according to the Polygon team.
“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,” the Polygon team said in its statement on X.
The changes also align with Polygon’s broader “Gigagas” roadmap, which targets higher throughput to support payments and tokenized assets at scale.
Still, faster finality alone does not guarantee network stability under stress conditions. Market participants will monitor whether these improvements reduce latency during peak demand and prevent recurrence of validator-related disruptions seen last year.
The next catalyst will be real-world performance data post-activation, particularly during periods of elevated transaction volume tied to DeFi and RWA activity.
