Polygon rolls out Rio upgrade to speed up network, boost network efficiency

Key Takeaways

What’s the latest update from Polygon?

Polygon rolled out its much-awaited Rio upgrade, dubbed a payments-focused network overhaul.

What’s next in line for the project?

Polygon plans to keep scaling through its GigaGas roadmap, while courting fintechs and payment platforms.

Polygon is in the news today after it rolled out its most significant network upgrade yet — the Rio hardfork — on 8 October. By doing so, it will now bring faster transaction speeds, better reliability, and cheaper participation to its Proof-of-Stake (PoS) sidechain.

Described as a “payments-focused rehaul,” the Rio upgrade revamps how the network creates and validates blocks. It also removes one of its biggest pain points – Transaction rollbacks (reorgs) that previously caused delays and uncertainty for users.

What does the Rio upgrade mean?

In simple terms, Rio makes Polygon faster, smoother, and easier to use.

Instead of having many validators create blocks at once, which sometimes led to overlaps or reorgs, Polygon will now use a streamlined system. This system will allow a smaller, elected group of validators to handle block creation more efficiently.

This change means transactions can settle almost instantly and stay confirmed once they’re processed.

Source: X

According to Polygon’s CEO Sandeep Nailwal,

“Rio redesigns core architecture to make life easier for payments solution providers. By overhauling how blocks are created and verified, the upgrade sets the stage for Polygon PoS to reach around 5,000 transactions per second.”

Rio also makes it cheaper and simpler to run a node, allowing smaller businesses and new participants to join the network without heavy hardware costs. Also, validators no longer need to store the entire blockchain history. This will help the network run faster, while reducing entry barriers for payment providers.

Finally, Polygon has also adjusted the way fees are shared, ensuring that all validators earn rewards fairly. All while promoting better participation and security across the network.

The Rio upgrade is a key step in Polygon’s plan to become a global payments platform – One that can handle high-speed transfers similar to credit card networks, but without intermediaries.

With the upgrade, Polygon aims to attract fintechs, merchants, and stablecoin issuers that want to process transactions on-chain. 

Where does Polygon stand among competitors?

Polygon’s payments-focused push comes at a time when Solana and Base are dominating blockchain activity in terms of scale.

According to DeFiLlama, Solana is currently leading with a TVL of over $12.53 billion and a stablecoin market cap of $15.31 billion. This has been driven by the surge in Solana-based DeFi and memecoin activity.

Base, Coinbase’s Layer-2 network, has also climbed rapidly to a TVL of $5.41 billion. It has a stablecoin market cap of $4.63 billion, powered by retail adoption and strong on-ramp integrations.

By comparison, Polygon PoS holds a TVL of just $1.17 billion and a stablecoin market cap of $2.41 billion – Placing it behind its newer rivals in capital flow. 

Still, the Rio upgrade could help Polygon regain traction by improving speed, stability, and cost efficiency.

Polygon’s broader 2.0 roadmap, which includes its zkEVM, positions it as part of a growing multi-chain ecosystem. It will combine Ethereum’s security with high-throughput applications, such as Polygon PoS.