A faulty validator proposal caused some RPC nodes to fall out of sync, but Polygon’s block production continued uninterrupted.
Polygon network stability restored
The Polygon Foundation announced that consensus and finality functions have returned to normal after a bug temporarily disrupted parts of the network. The issue, which surfaced on Wednesday, caused several remote procedure call (RPC) nodes to fall out of sync, though onchain block production was never affected.
Polygon developers deployed a hard fork to address the disruption. According to co-founder Sandeep Nailwal, the incident stemmed from a faulty validator proposal that pushed certain Bor nodes — responsible for transaction ordering and block production — onto divergent forks.
Technical fixes deployed
Polygon rolled out updates to both Heimdall v0.3.1, which introduced a hard fork to remove the problematic milestone, and Bor 2.2.11 beta2, which purged it from the database.
“With these fixes now live, nodes are no longer stuck. Checkpoints and milestones are finalizing normally, and the network is stable again,” Nailwal explained.
Despite the disruption, transactions remained visible on Polyscan, the network’s block explorer, ensuring users retained access to accurate transaction data.
Growing complexity raises risks
While Polygon avoided a full outage, the bug underscores how increasingly complex blockchain infrastructure can create new risks. As protocols expand to support smart contracts, file storage, and cross-chain interoperability, the chances of software glitches disrupting node communication also rise.
“This was not a failure of block production but of synchronization,” a blockchain analyst noted. “It highlights the importance of rapid response mechanisms in large-scale decentralized networks.”
Not the first disruption
The latest incident follows a similar issue in July, when Polygon’s Heimdall client briefly halted for about an hour. In both cases, block production never stopped, but some nodes failed to properly relay data to applications.
By swiftly patching the bug and executing a hard fork, Polygon once again demonstrated resilience — but the episode also serves as a reminder that even leading Ethereum layer-2 networks are not immune to technical hiccups.
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