Agenda and Meeting Overview

The 24th Polygon Protocol Governance Call covered two main areas. Firstly, status updates on the Ahmedabad Hard Fork including tentative timelines and testing status. Second, a walk through on the timelines and steps for the MATIC to POL transition slated for September 4th at around 12:00 PM UTC.

PIPs included in the Ahmedabad Hard Fork 
- PIP-30: Max code size increase
- PIP-36: Replay failed states in transactions
- PIP-45: MATIC to POL Ticker Change
- PIP-46: Specifications for the Polygon L1 contract upgrades

Ahmedabad Hard Fork Updates

During the call the following items were discussed pertaining to the Ahmedabad Hard Fork: PIPs that are to be included in the Ahmedabad Hard Fork, the testing status of the PIPs and a flagged request from Coinbase and Aave BGD (Bored Ghost Developing Community). PIP-30, PIP-36, and PIP-45 are the slated proposals to be implemented in the hard fork. PIP-30 involves increasing the max code size from 24 kb to the current 32 kb. This increases the maximum core size of smart contracts. The implementation is already done and has been tested on devnet. PIP-36 involves changing the state receiver contract as well as the MRC-20 contract in order to replay failed states in transactions. This has also been tested on devnet along with the updated byte codes for the corresponding addresses. PIP-45 is more of a cosmetic change of the ticker from MATIC to POL and is independent from all the L1 changes to Polygon mainnet.

According to the Polygon team, testing for the Ahmedabad hard fork is just about complete; with a tentative date for the start of the hard fork at the beginning of September with completion of the hard fork on mainnet being slated for end of September.

There were conversations with multiple stakeholders such as Coinbase and Aave BGD on the handling of the withdrawal manager contract to ensure withdrawals with POL instead of MATIC. The Polygon team responded by stating that the MATIC wrapper gives the root token upon a withdrawal event. Additionally, the MATIC address currently facilitates and also controls the exit queue to give the execute in order to bridge MATIC back to mainnet. It would be a potential risk factor to switch these queues around from the MATIC address to the POL address, so the team decided it’s best to use the same exit queue. However, to prevent adding a risk factor while still addressing Coinbase and Aave BGD, the Polygon team has decided to keep support for the MATIC address but also enable the ability to use the POL address. The team had specified that this update of supporting both the MATIC and POL address for this specific use case will be implemented after the Ahmedabad hard fork since this functionality is largely used by institutions or protocols and not average users.

MATIC to POL Transition 

The Polygon team discussed that the MATIC to POL transition is confirmed to start September 4th around 12:00 PM UTC. It was specified that the MATIC to POL transition is not a hard fork and will not require coordination amongst the validators. Unlike a hard fork which is timed at a certain block by validators, this change is being implemented through the governance multisig, the POS bridge multisig, and the Protocol Counsel Multisig. The POS multisig will be responsible for the largest upgrade which includes the MATIC to POL changes for the bridge and stake manager. The other multisigs will be responsible for a smaller upgrade of updating the emissions manager to be able to send POL to the stake manager. There is no update to Bor or Heimdall that will occur due to this transition. The consideration needed from validators is a slight change in operations if they want to stake POL instead of MATIC. All of the staking backend including the distribution of tokens will be denominated in POL, however validators will have the choice to redeem rewards in the form of MATIC or POL.

On the call the Polygon team discussed the necessary steps to execute the MATIC to POL transition. The first step would be to formally pass the proposal to transition MATIC to POL through Polygon Governance. The second step would be to execute the transaction on mainnet that would enable the transition. As soon as this transaction is completed, the native gas token for Polygon PoS will immediately switch to POL. Additionally, the entire backend of the staking operation will shift immediately from MATIC to POL. The third step would be after the transaction new functions such as withdrawing POL from the bridge will be enabled. The POL migration contract on Ethereum mainnet has been public since October 2023 and was stated as the place to go if any migrations need to be done on Ethereum. Bridging to Polygon PoS will automatically convert MATIC to POL.

The Polygon team shared a list of parties that would be impacted by the MATIC to POL transition and what to expect. Custodians and Institutional players are expected to have some temporary downtime for certain operations that they may typically engage in on Polygon PoS. For example, there will be a temporary pause on the deposits and withdrawals for MATIC and eventually POL for a few days before and after the change. There will also be the suspension of MATIC markets for certain exchanges. Kraken, ByBit and Coinbase have already been public about this to their customers but CEX users are advised to reach out to their exchange if they have not already been public about this to confirm if this will impact them.

 

Conclusion

The Ahmedabad Hard Fork is tentatively slated for the beginning of September with its implementation on mainnet being slated for the end of September. The hard fork is to include PIP 45 (a cosmetic ticker change from MATIC to POL), PIP 30 (increasing the max code size from 24 kb to 32 kb), and PIP 36 (changing the State Reciever and MRC-20 contracts). These PIP’s have been tested on devnet by the Polygon team prior to the hard fork.

The MATIC to POL transition is to happen on September 4th at approximately 12:00 PM UTC. Because it is not a hard fork it does not require coordination from validators and instead relies on the Polygon Governance, Protocol Counsel and Polygon Bridge Multisig wallets. The transition changes the Polygon PoS native gas token and staking backend to POL instead of MATIC. The change will have some short-term impacts on institutional participants, custodians and centralized exchange markets.

The next Polygon Protocol Governance Call is scheduled for September 19th and will likely be discussing a concrete date for the hard fork along with any final pertinent discussion items for it.