Polygon PoS chain faces delay in reaching consensus finality

Polygon’s core team shared that its proof-of-stake network is experiencing a temporary delay in finality, with transactions taking 10–15 minutes longer than usual to be considered irreversible, even as the chain continues producing blocks and checkpoints.

“While the chain continues to run and blocks and checkpoints are produced, there is currently a 10-15 minute delay in finality due to a milestone issue,” the Polygon Foundation wrote on X, adding that a fix has been identified and “is being rolled out to all validators and service providers.” The team said it would post an update when the issue is resolved and pointed users to its status page for live updates.

Finality is the point at which a transaction is considered irreversible because the L2’s state has been checkpointed and accepted by its consensus. Blocks can keep arriving every few seconds, but until finality is reached, there is a small risk of reorganization or rollback.

Delays can slow confirmations for transactions and operators that require higher assurance before crediting deposits or settling trades. For this reason, exchanges and DeFi apps often wait for finality, rather than just the next block, before crediting deposits, settling trades, or releasing funds.

Polygon is an Ethereum scaling network whose proof-of-stake chain processes transactions at lower fees and higher throughput, then posts periodic checkpoints to Ethereum for security. Exchanges, DeFi apps, games, and protocols like prediction venue Polymarket widely use it.

The incident on Sept. 10 follows a period of recent network housekeeping. Earlier this year, Polygon implemented a Heimdall upgrade aimed at improving stability and validator coordination. Dubbed Heimdall v2, it primarily aimed to reduce finality to five seconds and discard old technical debt from 2018-2019. Polygon’s network later endured a separate, hour-long disruption weeks after the complex hard fork, according to prior reporting by The Block.

POL, Polygon’s native token, fell 4% amid the finality delay and a broader crypto market lull on Wednesday, according to The Block's price page.