Polygon Rio Upgrade, Here’s What Changed and Impact on POL Price

The Polygon (POL) crypto blockchain has shown commitment towards scaling through the recent introduction of the Rio upgrade.

This upgrade increases the block gas limit, redesigns block architecture, and ensures stateless block verification cuts hardware requirements.

The Rio upgrade coincides with the launch of the POL token trading in Germany to all Openbank customers.

Promises of the Polygon Crypto Rio Upgrade

Polygon, a leading Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution, is pushing boundaries to make blockchain transactions as fast and reliable as traditional financial systems.

Aligning with this vision, the blockchain unveiled the Rio Upgrade as part of its GigaGas roadmap.

GigaGas refers to Polygon’s ambition to achieve gigagas throughput, starting with 1,000 transactions per second (TPS). In the long term, Polygon aims to scale up to 10,000 TPS or more.

With a high TPS, Polygon can handle real-world demands, such as instant cross-border payments and high-volume DeFi trading, without compromising security or decentralization.

On September 11, Polygon deployed the Rio Upgrade on the Amoy Testnet, with plans for mainnet release by October.

The upgrade will eventually prepare the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) network to handle up to 5,000 TPS.

Rio Upgrade lays the architectural foundation through three main changes. Firstly, it increases the Block gas limit from 45 million to 60 million, raising the ceiling on TPS by 33%.

Gas is the “fuel” for transactions on Polygon crypto. Therefore, by increasing the gas limit to 60 million, Polygon aims to grow the number of transactions it can handle in advance of an anticipated rise in demand.

The second key change is a redesigned block production architecture for efficiency.

The Rio Upgrade introduces Validator-Elected Block Producers (VEBloP) and updated economic models. This supports sustainable scaling without centralization risks.

Thirdly, stateless block verification cuts hardware requirements and kills reorgs.

POL Price and Outlook

The Rio Upgrade announcement is anticipated to fuel price surges for POL. However, POL is currently down 2.5% over the past 24 hours, setting the price at $0.2519.

Despite the decreasing price, market activity remained moderate, as seen by the daily trading volume. This metric increased by 10.6% to $192.5 million.

This could push POL toward $0.30 and $0.34 if it holds above $0.29 support. Analysts see this as a cautiously bullish setup, driven by testnet success and anticipation of mainnet deployment.

However, bearish indicators like a potential MACD crossover reversal and overbought RSI could lead to dips toward $0.24.

Importantly, Rio follows the Heimdall V2 upgrade. POL quickly recorded an impressive price uptick of over 15% following the announcement. Accordingly, POL ended a long bearish trend, with the potential of a 35% rally.

POL Now Trading in Germany Via Openbank

These technical upgrades come as the Polygon network expands its global presence. Polygon shared on its official X account that Openbank has enabled trading of POL for its German customers.

Openbank, a fully digital arm of Grupo Santander, directly integrated POL into its app. This allows seamless buying, selling, and holding without external transfers, under full MiCA regulatory protections.

The bank plans to expand this service to Spain in the coming weeks. Santander, one of Europe’s largest banks with over 175 million global customers, is responding to rising retail demand for digital assets.

This news further amplifies the bullish case for POL, signaling deeper institutional integration. It makes the $0.30 target possible in the near-term, with improved volume.

In recent weeks, Santander has also launched a broker platform equipped with artificial intelligence-based tools. The platform aims to deliver target prices for more than 1,000 European and US stocks.