Polygon PoS Hard Fork Set for July 10: Heimdall v2 Slashes Finality to 5 Seconds

• The much-anticipated Heimdall v2 upgrade is expected to be launched by the Polygon PoS network on July 10, reducing finality from 90 seconds to approximately 5 seconds.
• This upgrade will result in a faster checkpoint, safer bridging, and an improved user experience. 

Polygon PoS network is set to embark on the official launch of the Heimdall v2 consensus layer upgrade on July 10, just a few weeks after CNF reported its first migration on the Amoy testnet.

According to Polygon Foundation CEO Sandeep Nailwal, this is the most technically complex hard fork since the launch of the mainnet in 2020.

More About the Upgrade

This upgrade is expected to see Heimdall shedding what Nailwal describes as “tech debt” from its previous build in the 2018/2019 period. From the information available, this will move from “Tendermint + Cosmos-SDK v0.37” to “CometBFT  + Cosmos-SDK v0.50”.

Technically, the finality would significantly reduce to about 5 seconds from 90 seconds, while the block time would reduce from 5 to 6 seconds to about 2 seconds.

On the day of the migration, the Polygon CEO warns that the Heimdall finality would likely lag by 3 hours. After the migration, there would be faster checkpoints, smoother user experience, and safer bridging. Above all, there would be “a headroom for future upgrades”, according to Nailwal.

Meanwhile, node operators have been asked to prepare as the process could take about 30 minutes on the mainnet. With this, they have been asked to have about “20 GB RAM and 2× Heimdall disk free” on the day.

According to a blog post, the Heimdall v2 would have a new Chain ID. Also, its initial block at genesis would reportedly be the last block that would be committed from the heimdall-v1 + 1.

Bor will continue operating throughout the migration process, so the Polygon PoS chain will not experience downtime. Only Heimdall will pause temporarily, which means cross-chain operations, such as checkpoint submissions, deposits, and withdrawals, will be suspended during the migration window.

It is important to note that Nailwal has always pushed for a “clearer direction and focused execution” since becoming the CEO, as noted in our earlier post.

Recent Polygon Milestones and POL Price Reactions

Following this update, the native token of Polygon, POL, recorded a 7% surge on its daily timeframe to trade at $0.2. This short-term pump has increased its seven-day gains to 11%, increasing its market cap to $2.09 billion at press time. Supporting this trend, traders’ interest seems to have increased considerably as the 24-hour trading volume rises by 39% with $144 million changing hands.

While this market move could be a result of the anticipation surrounding the upcoming upgrade, the contribution of its rising transaction volume cannot be ignored. As indicated in our recent publication, Polygon has crossed $100 billion in all-time volume on Uniswap.

The Heimdall v2 upgrade is expected to significantly boost the “already-rising” network activities. In May, transactions on the PoS chain increased to 81 million, representing a 20% surge from the previous month. As mentioned in our previous news brief, this number surpassed that of the Tron blockchain, which also had 67 million transactions within the same timeframe.

Things could even get better as Polygon partners with India-based Jio Platforms to expand its services to about 450 million users, as highlighted in our earlier discussion.