Polygon’s POL Jumps 6% Ahead of Heimdall v2 Upgrade

- Polygon's POL token gains 6%, signaling anticipation for Heimdall v2. - Upgrade aims to cut block finality to five seconds. Polygon's POL token surged over 6% ahead of the much-heralded Heimdall v2 upgrade, scheduled for July 10, 2025. This upgrade marks a pivotal step for the network’s performance and scalability. Polygon Foundation CEO Sandeep Nailwal highlighted the upgrade's significance, describing it as the most technically complex hard-fork Polygon PoS has seen since its launch in 2020. Its primary goals are to reduce block finality to approximately five seconds and modernize outdated technical infrastructure from the 2018–2019 era. Technical details for the upgrade have been released across several platforms. According to a Polygon Community Forum post on June 6, 2025, the changes include improved transaction processing, state synchronization enhancements, and more efficient external data handling. In addition, U.Today reported on June 27 that the upgrade incorporates a switch from Hex to Base64 encoding for improved efficiency, a point also emphasized by Cryptonews.net and Blockmedia on June 29 and June 28, respectively. On July 9, The Block reported that the Heimdall v2 upgrade will transition the network from Tendermint consensus to Polygon’s own CometBFT fork and will also update the Polygon Cosmos SDK fork. These updates are designed to slash transaction confirmation times from 90 seconds to just five seconds while bolstering network security. The network will execute the transition from Heimdall v1 to v2 on the mainnet on July 10, 2025, between 2:00 PM and 5:00 PM UTC. The script execution is estimated to take 30 minutes, not including potential troubleshooting. In preparation for the hard fork, Binance announced on July 9 that it would suspend deposits and withdrawals of tokens on the Polygon network starting at 21:00 UTC on July 10. The market has responded positively to the news. As of 06:48 UTC on July 9, 2025, POL (formerly MATIC) traded at $0.20, a 7.29% increase over the previous 24 hours. According to the latest market data, this price movement was accompanied by a significant rise in its 24-hour trading volume, signaling strong investor interest.