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    Polygon Hard Fork

    Hard Fork analysis ETH-scaling project Polygon completed a hard fork last month in hopes of reducing gas fees, as well as disruptive chain reorganizations known as "reorgs,” according to Coindesk. Let’s dive into the network’s health and performance leading up to and since the hard fork. Has the software upgrade led to lower gas fees as hoped? Have these changes affected any meaningful user metrics, such as volume, activity, monthly active users, or others?

    Introduction

    Polygon, an Ethereum-scaling project, successfully completed a hard fork (Jan, 17) designed to reduce instances of spiking gas fees and disruptive chain reorganizations known as "reorgs."

    First of all let's give explanation what does it mean "hard fork" and "reorg" source.

    Hard forks are events where a supermajority of a blockchain’s validators (typically, and in Polygon's case, at least 67%) agree to upgrade to new software, essentially creating a new blockchain in the process. Hard forks are usually used to make major adjustments to one or multiple mechanisms undergirding a network.

    Reorg, or chain reorganizations, is a messy and occasionally risky events where multiple validators disagree about the network’s transaction history.

    The Polygon Hard Fork includes 2 proposals that were put forward in December:

    • • the first proposal concerns a mechanism for setting gas fees. This adjusted mechanism should help keep gas prices low while network activity is high.
    • • the second proposal is aimed at reducing the time required to complete the data block

    Thus, in the course of this work, I will analyze whether this update has affected:

    • • gas price
    • • block time and number of transactions per block
    • • meaningful user metrics, such as volume, activity, monthly active users, or others

    It is assumed that the reader has an understanding of Polygon and scaling. If not, I left links in the previous sentence.

    Methodology

    Database: polygon.core.fact_transaction where status = 'SUCCESS' and polygon.core.fact_blocks

    Date: Hard gork was on Jan, 17. I analyzed 30 days before the update (18.12.22-16.01.23) and 30 days after (17.01.23-15.02.23)

    Currency: Gas price - Gwei, Fee - MATIC, txs volume - MATIC