The Polygon blockchain network is scheduled to undergo a significant protocol upgrade, the Giuliano (also referred to as Giugliano) hard fork, on its mainnet at 2:00 p.m. UTC on April 8, 2025. The activation is set for block number 85,268,500, as officially confirmed by the Polygon Foundation.
The upgrade introduces two primary technical modifications aimed at improving network performance and developer experience. Firstly, it integrates new fee-related parameters directly into the block header structure, providing a more efficient and native method for nodes and participants to access critical transaction cost data. Secondly, it deploys new Remote Procedure Call (RPC) endpoints specifically designed for processing this enhanced fee information, empowering developers and decentralized applications (dApps) to better estimate and manage gas costs programmatically.
A core strategic goal of this hard fork is to achieve faster transaction finality. By enabling validators to announce blocks earlier in the production cycle, the network aims to reduce the time it takes for transactions to become irreversible. This improvement follows successful testing on the Amoy testnet, where finality time was reduced by two seconds.
The upgrade is part of Polygon's broader Gigagas roadmap, which targets higher throughput to support payments and real-world asset use cases. It also comes after a period where the network addressed a finality bug and a validator exit issue that caused disruptions, highlighting the focus on improving both speed and stability.
All node operators, including validators and RPC service providers, must upgrade their client software to compatible versions (Bor v2.7.0 or Erigon v3.5.0) before the activation block to remain synchronized with the upgraded mainnet. For everyday users and MATIC token holders, no action is required, and funds remain safe.
