TL;DR:
- Polygon reached 5,000 transactions per second after raising the block gas limit to 160M, matching Visa’s average daily load.
- Network fees remain low and predictable even at higher volume, at a fraction of the cost of traditional payment systems.
- Polygon’s Open Money Stack entered technical preview with early access limited to selected partners, using the network as a settlement layer.
Polygon reached 5,000 transactions per second following an upgrade that raised the block gas limit to 160 million with block times of 1.5 seconds. The result places it in the same range as Visa‘s average daily load, but at a fraction of its operational cost.
This improvement arrived alongside the Open Money Stack (OMS) entering its technical preview phase, with early access limited to selected partners. The OMS integrates end-to-end global payments through a single API, with Polygon acting as the underlying settlement layer.
MILESTONE: 5,000 payments per second on Polygon.
→ Support for 5,000 payments per second
→ Block times down to 1.5 seconds
→ Same low feesBillions in stablecoins already move on rails that just got faster.
More: https://t.co/kWaonRM0gJ pic.twitter.com/IgdU9tAtXN
— Polygon | POL (@0xPolygon) June 17, 2026
A Roadmap Built One Upgrade at a Time
The current result is the product of a series of consistent improvements over the past year. In July 2025, the Bhilai upgrade raised the gas limit to 45M and enabled fee-free transactions via EIP-7702. That same month, Heimdall v2 reduced finality time from one to two minutes down to approximately five seconds.
In October 2025, the Rio upgrade rebuilt block production for payments and eliminated reorganizations, making every confirmed block final. In February 2026, a capacity expansion to 110M gas allowed the network to surpass 2,600 TPS at an approximate cost of $0.002 per transaction. The Giugliano upgrade, in April 2026, shortened confirmation times by roughly two seconds and published fee parameters directly on-chain. The limit has now been raised to 160M gas.
Money Is Already Moving Through Polygon
Beyond the technical metrics, the network already processes real volume. Stripe has offered global USDC payments on Polygon since December 2025, allowing merchants in more than 150 countries to accept stablecoins and settle in dollars. Polymarket settles billions in prediction market volume. Tokenized funds from BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, and Apollo also operate on the network.
For teams building stablecoin payroll solutions, remittances, or B2B settlement, the new gas limit means throughput is no longer a restrictive variable. The fee mechanism was designed to respond gradually to demand, without sudden spikes, allowing unit economics to be projected at scale with greater certainty.
