Polygon hits 5,000 TPS after Heimdall v2 upgrade raises gas limit

Polygon's Zurich hardfork activated at block 47,880,000, lifting the gas limit to 160 million and cutting block times to 1.5 seconds.

Polygon Chain now processes up to 5,000 payments per second after raising its block gas limit to 160 million at 1.5-second block times, the company said July 13, positioning the network as a public blockchain rail at throughput comparable to legacy card networks.

"When fees spike at scale, you can't build a real product on top of it. Polygon Chain now processes up to 5,000 payments per second at stable fees," Marc Boiron, chief executive of Polygon Labs, said.

The upgrade, part of Polygon's Gigagas roadmap, was activated via the Zurich hardfork at block 47,880,000 around June 25 at 14:00 UTC, with node operators required to update to Heimdall v0.9.0. Infrastructure providers including QuickNode confirmed the network running Bor v2.8.3, Erigon v3.6.1 and Heimdall v0.9.0 after the fork window. Bybit paused POL deposits and withdrawals from June 25 at 13:45 UTC to cover the transition.

The throughput gain addresses a structural obstacle to moving production payment workloads onto public blockchains: fee predictability. Polygon reported $79 billion in total stablecoin volume in May, closing at a record $3.7 billion in stablecoin supply, with Stripe, Cash App and Revolut among the institutional users of its rail.

Stablecoin settlement and institutional traction

The upgrade sits within a broader push by Polygon to capture stablecoin payment flows. Stripe launched USDC payments on Polygon in December 2025 for merchants across more than 150 countries at a flat fee. Revolut crossed $1.2 billion in onchain transactions on the network in May. Polygon Labs also signed agreements to acquire Coinme and Sequence, bringing licensed fiat on- and off-ramps and enterprise wallet infrastructure into the stack.

The competitive landscape has intensified over the past 18 months. Solana, Base and several purpose-built payment chains are each pursuing similar positioning around throughput and flat-fee settlement. The differentiating factors are shifting from raw transaction speed to the surrounding institutional layer: fiat on- and off-ramp licenses, compliance tooling and the depth of enterprise relationships.

What the upgrade means for POL token economics

Higher throughput alone does not guarantee token demand. POL may capture value if staking requirements tighten float, if fee mechanics or burn mechanisms reduce supply, or if applications that depend on cheap, fast transfers build sustained user activity on-chain. The upgrade expands capacity but does not by itself create buy pressure — that depends on whether developers fill the additional block space with sticky transaction volume.

Polygon's Gigagas roadmap targets throughput measured in billions of gas per second across multiple phases, with each phase maintaining backward compatibility so existing contracts inherit capacity gains without migration.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.