Polygon to activate Giugliano mainnet hard fork on April 8

Polygon plans to activate the Giugliano hard fork on mainnet on April 8 at block 85,268,500, which is expected around 2:00 p.m. UTC, to speed transaction finality. Node operators are required to upgrade Bor to v2.7.0 or Erigon to v3.5.0 before the activation block.

The Polygon Foundation confirmed the schedule in a post on X and indicated that operators should update clients in advance to remain in sync with the chain. The upgrade targets faster confirmation times on a network used by consumer and enterprise applications.

Giugliano adds earlier block announcements by producers, includes fee parameters directly in block headers, and introduces new RPC support for fee data. In the foundation’s words: “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 changes were tested on the Amoy testnet last month, with the team reporting about a two-second reduction in finality during trials. Finality refers to the point at which a transaction is irreversible on the network.

The hard fork is part of Polygon’s Gigagas roadmap, which focuses on scaling throughput and improving the user experience for payments and real-world asset applications. By exposing Polygon fee information in headers and through new RPC methods, the release is intended to give wallets and applications direct access to fee data and streamline transaction pricing.

In September, Polygon implemented a hard fork that addressed a finality bug that had caused delays. In July, a validator exit triggered a bug in Heimdall, resulting in about an hour of disruption before service resumed.

User behavior will not change with Giugliano. Infrastructure providers and validators need to complete the client upgrades ahead of the activation block to avoid service interruptions and maintain network participation.