Polygon Activates Giugliano Hardfork on Mainnet

The Polygon Foundation activated the Giugliano hardfork on its mainnet on April 8, 2026, at block 85,268,500, around 2 p.m. UTC, introducing enhancements to transaction finality and fee transparency. The upgrade, which proceeded without reported disruptions, allows block producers to announce blocks earlier in the confirmation process, reducing finality times by approximately two seconds based on testing conducted on the Amoy testnet the previous month.

This change shortens the period users must wait for transactions to become irreversible, a critical improvement for applications handling payments and tokenized real-world assets. Finality, the point at which a transaction is considered permanent on the network, previously averaged around five seconds following earlier updates. The Giugliano hardfork builds on that baseline by streamlining the validation pipeline, where validators can now confirm blocks more quickly after initial announcements.

In addition to faster confirmations, the upgrade embeds fee parameters, modeled after Ethereum's EIP-1559 mechanism, directly into block headers. This provides clearer visibility into transaction costs without requiring separate...