Polygon's London Hard Fork Arrives as Network Declares Date for Mainnet Launch

According to Polygonscan, London hard fork is set to arrive on the Polygon mainnet in 5 days and 15 hours, or 222,454 blocks away. The London hard fork, or EIP-1559, is set to be activated when block 23,850,000 is validated. This gives an estimated date of Tuesday, Jan. 18, 2022, at 8:00 a.m. (UTC)/3:00 a.m. (ET).

Disclosing this in a recent Twitter feed, the Polygon network writes, ''After the successful EIP-1559 upgrade on Mumbai testnet last year, the much-awaited London hard fork on Mainnet is here!''

After the successful EIP-1559 upgrade on Mumbai Testnet last year, the much-awaited London Hardfork on Mainnet is here!#EIP1559 and related EIPs will be activated on the Mainnet on 18th Jan around 3 AM ET / 8 AM UTC.

Find out more: https://t.co/TgZQtbCO98 https://t.co/dZ97nTUNTO

— Polygon | $MATIC ? (@0xPolygon) January 11, 2022

In December 2021, Polygon rolled out a testnet implementation of Ethereum Improvement Proposal 1559 on the Mumbai testnet to introduce the burning of its native MATIC token and better fee visibility, taking its cues from Ethereum.

The second-largest cryptocurrency, Ethereum, saw a major upgrade dubbed "London Hard Fork" on Aug. 5, 2021. The London upgrade introduced EIP-1559, which seeks to reform the transaction fee market, along with changes to how gas refunds are handled.

Polygon MATIC has a fixed supply of 10 billion, so any reduction in the number of available tokens might have a deflationary effect as an annualized burn would represent 0.27% of the total MATIC supply.

150 million BEP2 tokens to be burned

According to the Polygon network, all BEP2 MATIC will be burned when all users are done swapping their tokens to ERC-20 following the discontinuation of the BEP2 tokens.

As a user, If you hold MATIC on Ethereum, Polygon PoS chain or BSC or on Binance, no action is required.

If you hold BEP2 MATIC please move them to Binance and withdraw MATIC on Ethereum, Polygon or BSC.

All BEP2 MATIC will be burned when all users are done swapping.

2/2

— Polygon | $MATIC ? (@0xPolygon) January 11, 2022

The network states that the move comes in consultation with Binance Exchange and due to low usage. The 150 million BEP2 that MATIC provided for liquidity on Binance Chain in 2019 will be swapped for ERC20 MATIC from the Foundation Wallet at 11:00 GST on Jan. 12 and be burned afterward, it says.

MATIC, the native asset of Polygon blockchain, trades at $2.33 as of press time.