Polygon cuts block time to 1.75s for stablecoin payments

Polygon reduced its average block production time by 250 milliseconds to 1.75 seconds, its first such cut since genesis. Polygonscan data shows the latest Polygon blocks are being created in 1.75 seconds. The upgrade is designed for high-frequency stablecoin payments and faster settlement, allowing the network to process about 14% more payments per second and reach a theoretical peak of ~3,260 TPS (per Polygon engineer Lucca Martins). Shorter block times should help clear transaction backlogs sooner, reducing congestion duration and potential fee spikes—key risks for stablecoins, payments, and DeFi trading. Polygon is also advancing privacy-focused stablecoin routing. It introduced a wallet feature (part of Polygon Improvement Proposal PIP-86) that privately routes stablecoin transfers through a shielded pool verified with zero-knowledge proofs. Senders, receivers, and amounts are hidden on-chain, while compliance is maintained via Know Your Transaction (KYT) screening and auditable files. Polygon community lead Smokey said the goal is to onboard more institutional users. A two-step plan targets 1.5-second blocks and scales down checkpoint rewards to keep POL token emissions at a 1% target after the block-time change. In the broader payments push, Visa expanded a stablecoin pilot on Apr 29 to support Polygon Base and multiple Polygon networks. Despite the upgrade, POL was flat over 24 hours near $0.09 and is down 54% over the past year (CoinMarketCap). Key figures named: Lucca Martins, Smokey. Response from Polygon was not received by publication.