Key Takeaways:
- Polygon raised its block gas limit to 160M, enabling 5,000 transactions per second
- Network fees stay low and predictable even at higher throughput levels
- The upgrade positions Polygon's Open Money Stack as a Visa-scale settlement rail
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Polygon hits 5,000 TPS after gas limit upgrade to 160M
Polygon's blockchain now processes 5,000 payments per second after raising its block gas limit to 160 million, matching Visa's average daily throughput while keeping fees at a fraction of traditional card network costs.
"This upgrade gives institutions more headroom to grow," a Polygon spokesperson said, noting the network has been consistently upgraded over the past year to meet payment demand.
The 160M gas limit at 1.5-second block times follows a series of upgrades including the Rio rebuild in October 2025 that eliminated reorgs, and a February 2026 capacity raise to 110M gas that delivered 2,600-plus TPS at roughly $0.002 per transaction. Billions in stablecoins already settle on Polygon monthly, with Stripe enabling USDC payments on the chain in December 2025.
The upgrade advances Polygon's Gigagas roadmap toward higher throughput and comes as its Open Money Stack enters technical preview with select partners, offering a single API for end-to-end stablecoin payments. BlackRock's BUIDL, Franklin Templeton's BENJI, and Polymarket already operate on the chain.
How Polygon got to 5,000 TPS
The path to this milestone has been a series of incremental upgrades over the past year. The Bhilai upgrade in July 2025 raised the gas limit from 30M to 45M, enabling 1,000-plus TPS and introducing gasless transactions via EIP-7702. Heimdall v2, also in July 2025, cut finality from one to two minutes to about five seconds. The Rio upgrade in October 2025 rebuilt block production for payments, eliminating reorgs so every confirmed block is final.
A capacity raise to 110M gas in February 2026 added 83 percent more room, pushing throughput past 2,600 TPS. The Giugliano upgrade in April 2026 made confirmations about two seconds faster and published fee parameters onchain for greater transparency.
Why fees stay predictable
On most blockchains, fees climb when the network gets congested. Polygon addresses this on two fronts. The 160M gas limit adds enough room that it takes far more volume before blocks fill and fees move at all. The fee mechanism itself is now smoother and bounded, so when fees do change, they change gradually instead of in sudden spikes.
For teams building stablecoin payroll, remittances, or B2B settlement, this means unit economics can be modeled at scale with confidence. Throughput stops being a limiting variable, and so does cost volatility.
Who already moves money on Polygon
Stripe turned on global USDC payments on Polygon in December 2025, giving merchants in more than 150 countries a way to accept stablecoins and settle in USD. Polymarket settles billions in prediction-market volume on the chain. BlackRock's BUIDL, Franklin Templeton's BENJI, and Apollo's tokenized fund all live on Polygon.
The Open Money Stack, now in technical preview with select partners, uses Polygon as its settlement rail. It offers a single integrated API for end-to-end global payments, from issuance to settlement.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
