What is the Polygon hard fork and why was it needed?

The Polygon hard fork was an emergency upgrade on its PoS chain to fix a software bug that interrupted transaction finality. It restored milestones, checkpoints, and state sync, ensuring transactions could finalize normally again.

How did the Polygon bug affect users?

During the outage, validators and explorers froze, causing delayed confirmations. Many exchanges and wallets paused Polygon-based deposits and withdrawals until the hard fork fix was applied.

Did the Polygon hard fork impact the POL token price?

Yes. The native token POL dropped about 3–4%, reaching $0.27 during the downtime. Once the hard fork was confirmed and stability restored, the price recovered slightly.

What does this incident mean for Polygon’s reliability?

The outage raised concerns about Polygon’s stability, especially since it followed recent upgrades like Heimdall v2. With its Total Value Locked (TVL) down from $9.43B in 2021 to $1.99B, experts warn repeated issues may discourage adoption.

Polygon Hard Fork Restores Network Stability After Finality Bug

Bhumika Baghel

September 11, 2025

Polygon Hard Fork Restores Network Stability After Finality Bug

Reliability Concerns After Polygon Hard Fork, What the Bug Caused?

Polygon has confirmed that an emergency hard fork was successfully completed on Wednesday to fix a software bug that interrupted the transaction finality on its proof-of-stake (PoS) chain. After the upgrade, the team said milestones, checkpoints, and state sync are processing normally and network stability has been restored.

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Source: Polygon Foundation

Polygon hard fork updates, Bor v2.2.11-beta2 and Heimdall v0.3.1, were launched at 3 p.m. UTC. The faulty milestones that had caused validator issues were deleted from node databases, allowing transactions to finalize properly once again.

What was the issue?

The bug appeared in Bor (block producer) and Heimdall (consensus system) stopped the creation of milestones (local fast confirmations). Even though blocks were still being made, some validators and services froze, and explorers like Polygonscan showed no new blocks for over five hours. This caused delays for users, and some exchanges paused the network's transactions.

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Impact on Users and Market

During the downtime, several exchanges and services stopped Polygon-based transactions. TokenPocket, a multichain wallet, temporarily disabled Pol deposits and withdrawals. Traders on Polymarket also raised concerns about the risk of reversals during the outage.

The network’s native token POL fell about 3 to 4%, dropping to $0.27, before recovering slightly once the fix was confirmed.

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Source: CoinMarketCap

ReliabilityQuestions Remain

The incident has raised questions about Polygon’s stability, especially since it came just weeks after launch of Heimdall v2, which was meant to speed up confirmations in just five seconds. Despite upgrades, if we compare Polygon’s Total Value Locked (TVL) which was on peak in 2021 with $9.43 billion, has severely dropped to just $1.99 billion today (DeFiLlama).

Experts suggested that reliability issues may discourage adoption, particularly as users and developers look for stable scaling solutions.

Another L2 Faces Problems Too

Polygon wasn’t alone, Linea, another Ethereum Layer-2, also suffered an outage the same day. Its mainnet sequence stalled, pausing block production for approximately 1 hour (67 min) before a fix was deployed.

Both cases show Ethereum’s vulnerabilities in the growing networks, which are becoming increasingly important to improve in the crypto ecosystem but still face negligence.

About the Author Bhumika Baghel

English News Writer at coingabbar.com

Bhumika Baghel is a crypto journalist at Coin Gabbar with over 1.5 years of industry experience. She specializes in SEO-optimized content, market trend research, and fast-paced news reporting across cryptocurrency developments, along with regulatory updates, token presales, and emerging blockchain technologies. Maintaining an independent and unbiased editorial approach, Bhumi focuses on delivering clear, timely, and objective analysis.