Polygon PoS is Cooking: The Napoli Upgrade Means Better UX; the Mumbai Testnet Takes a Bow

Polygon PoS underwent an upgrade for improved performance and expanded features. Also, a sweet goodbye to the Mumbai testnet, going offline in April, and a hello to Amoy, with expanded support.

Polygon Labs

March 27, 2024

tl;dr

Polygon PoS is where the people are—for cooks and devs, for onchain activity
Napoli upgrade introduces support for RIP-7212, improvements to parallelization, and new op-codes related to Etheruem’s Cancun upgrade
The Amoy testnet is already supported by Alchemy and Quicknode, with six more validators migrating
Mumbai to go offline mid-April

Try, if you can, to cast your mind back to the inscriptions mania of December 2023, before whatever wild crypto trend is currently eating up your timeline.

The inscriptions wave spilled across blockchains, and Polygon PoS was no exception. The network set an all-time high with 16M transactions on a single day that month—and the network didn’t even blink. There were twice as many inscriptions on Polygon PoS in December than any other major chain. Gas fees slightly ticked up but the chain never went down.

Though the inscriptions hype has passed, the point is that Polygon PoS is past, present, and future proof.

Not only is it consistently one of the most used blockchains in the world—check out this Messari report with the data to back the claim—but it’s also at the forefront of technical innovation.

Parallelized EVM? Done.

Multiple upgrades in the last year for better UX? Yup and yup.

And the innovation isn’t stopping. Future tense, think: ZK upgrade to a validium and AggLayer integration.

The Napoli upgrade reached community consensus earlier this month (March 2024) and rolled out live on mainnet, another feather in the network’s cap. All of this so developers can build even better on the network and tap into massive onchain activity, every day.

This post unpacks all the features bundled together in Napoli, including upgrades to parallelization, precompile support for better account abstraction, and Cancun-related opcodes. Then, a pivot to say a farewell to the beloved Mumbai testnet, which is going offline in tandem with Ethereum’s Goerli on April 13.

The Napoli upgrade—what it does, what it means

The Napoli upgrade is a series of Polygon Improvement Proposals (PIPs) that received community feedback, and earlier this month achieved network consensus, thereby going live. Note that these changes are not backwards compatible, so Napoli is considered a hard fork—but of the upgrade variety.

So what’s included in this upgrade?

Here’s a high-level overview of features for PIP-16, PIP-27, and PIP-31, with deep-dive links for you to read more at your leisure:

PIP-27: Adopting a new precompile for better account abstraction

This PIP activates Ethereum’s RIP-7212 for the Polygon PoS network by adding a precompile for the secp256r1 elliptic curve.

Continuing to lead as a technological powerhouse, Polygon PoS is the first scaling protocol to support RIP-7212, with other major L2 networks committing to supporting it in the future.

There’s a lot to untangle here. Activating RIP-7212 will mean a big boost to developers who want to build account abstraction features on Polygon PoS. Here’s why.

Many modern devices use secp256r1 in signing transaction data, such as Apple’s Secure Enclave, WebAuthn, Android Keystore, and passkeys.

But elliptic curve signatures are expensive to prove on rollups and L2s. There have been a number of different work arounds, but RIP-7212 addresses the expense head on.

This precompile provides a gas-friendly verification of ECDSA signatures, enabling a number of features to allow more efficient and flexible management of smart accounts.

Now, developers can efficiently integrate the widely used secp256r1 curve into smart accounts, opening up design space for initiating transactions from devices and key management.

In other words, better user experience and more design flexibility for devs.

PIP-16: Upgrading parallel execution

When Bor v0.4.0 was unveiled in June 2023, it introduced parallel execution to the network—one of the first EVM chains to do so.

In short, parallel execution means that instead of unnecessary compute and competition over precious blockspace, to a certain extent, the Polygon PoS network can identify and execute many transactions in parallel, so long as block producers and validators understand when dependencies exist in any given block.

But while the current parallel execution approach is effective, all nodes are still required to compute transaction dependencies. This way, independent transactions can be executed in parallel, and those that depend on the execution of other transactions can be executed in a particular order. We wrote a deep-dive about this back when parallelization on Polygon PoS was in R&D mode.

PIP-16 sets the stage to make parallelization even better.

Added features in the client will in the future allow validators to incorporate transaction dependencies directly into block headers. This means other nodes won’t have to recompute dependencies, leading to better efficiency in parallel execution.

PIP-16 will bring multiple benefits to nodes and improve the overall health of the network.

PIP-31: Introducing new EVM opcodes for Polygon PoS

Lastly, PIP-31 activated a number of EIPs related to Ethereum’s recent Cancun upgrade, including transient storage via two new opcodes, TLOAD and TSTORE; the introduction of MLOAD and MSTORE instructions, which provide an efficient EVM instruction for copying memory areas; and changes to the functionality of the SELFDESTRUCT opcode.

The short and long?

Ethereum alignment. Polygon PoS upgraded because Ethereum upgraded. Simple as that.

Amoy sees more support as Mumbai approaches deprecation

Last but not least: in the past, we’ve written about the deprecation of the beloved Mumbai network, to be replaced by Amoy. We said, “As Ethereum goes, so goes Polygon PoS.”

Well, we have some dates, and we have some updates.

Date: April 13. This is the moment the Ethereum Foundation deprecates support for the Goerli testnet.

When Goerli goes out, so will Mumbai.

Updates: Amoy is here, the new Sepolia-anchored testnet for Polygon PoS!

Amoy is already supported by QuickNode and Alchemy, with six validators migrating over. If you’re a developer, that means more support and more expansive testing for your dApp.

Give it a shot and connect to Amoy, with testnet funds claimed via the Polygon faucet.