GeckoPulse: Polygon's Madhugiri Hard Fork Live!

Madhugiri Goes Live

The Polygon Layer-1 has deployed its latest network upgrade, also known as the Madhugiri hard fork.

The update is targeted at improving network throughput by 33% and reducing block consensus periods to just 1 second.

As such, Polygon can now process ~1,400 transactions per second, with increased gas limits to 60M units.

According to core developer Krishang Shah, Madhugiri will include support for 3 Fusaka EIPs - EIP7823, EIP7825, EIP7883 - and a new transaction format for bridging transactions between Polygon and Ethereum.

Together, these EIPS help the network to run more smoothly and improve transaction efficiency.

Additionally, the update will allow blocktimes to be adjustable from within the chain itself, allowing for future throughput increases without the need for hard forks.

Since the upgrade was deployed, the price of POL has increased slightly by 1.1%.

Hush Money

Circle’s xReserve platform is partnering with the Aleo blockchain to develop a new privacy-focused and composable stablecoin.

Known as USDCx, the stablecoin is designed to protect sensitive transactions and user data while remaining compliant with regulatory standards. 

The utility of USDCx covers payrolls, donations and e-commerce, allowing users to pay without revealing exact amounts or spending habits.

USDCx is now live on the Aleo testnet, and is expected to make its mainnet debut in January 2026.

Since the start of 2025, the market cap of USDC has steadily increased, rising by 78.4% from $43.9B to $78.3B today.

Same Privacy, Different Fees

Zcash support organization Shielded Labs has published a new proposal that aims to breathe new life into the blockchain by implementing a dynamic fee market.

With the current fixed 1,000 ‘zatoshi’ transaction fee, spam transactions or ‘sandblasting’ has made the chain congested and at times, unusable.

Paired with the renewed interest in Zcash and more users being onboarded, private transactions can now cost over 10 ZEC to shield.

As such, Shielded Labs has introduced a fee market that derives a base fee based on the median fee of past transactions executed, combined with synthetic transactions.

During periods of congestion, a temporary express lane can be set up where users have to pay 10x the base fee to gain priority access.

Should the official proposal be drafted and approved, then the fee mechanism is expected to be rolled out across several phases, starting from off-chain deployment to a fully-fledged on-chain consensus change.

Since the proposal was published, the price of ZEC has risen by 12.7% from $364 to $415 today.

Tether Keeps Up the Pressure

Even though it’s only December, Tether is continuing to rack up new milestones and moves within the crypto space.

The stablecoin issuer’s USDT stablecoin has been recognised as an accepted reference token across various chains within the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM).

As a result of this regulatory recognition, ADGM-licensed institutions will also be able to offer USDT-based services across almost all of its supported networks, such as Celo, Cosmos and Tron.

Besides that, the firm has also participated in an $81M funding round for the Italian AI startup, Generative Robotics.

The investment will be utilized to develop AI-powered industrial humanoid robots, capable of withstanding extreme environments.

In Other News

Tempo Testnet Goes Live. Tempo, the upcoming stablecoin-focused L1 by Stripe and Paradigm has launched their testnet. Tempo was first announced in September with design input from major institutions such as OpenAI, Shopify and Anthropic.

Solana Hangs in the Balance. According to on-chain data, liquidity levels on Solana have plummeted to “bear market levels” with over $500M worth of long positions at risk if the price of SOL drops a further 5.5%.

Kalshi Secures Temporary Regulatory Relief. A federal judge ordered Monday that Connecticut authorities refrain from taking enforcement action against Kalshi, the prediction market. This comes after Connecticut’s Department of Consumer Protection submitted a cease and desist order to Kalshi last week.

KindlyMD Secures $210M USDT Loan from Kraken. KindlyMD, a healthcare firm, has secured a $210M USDT loan from Payward Interactive, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken. The loan from Kraken is reportedly secured by $323M worth of Bitcoin as collateral.

Strive Raises $500M to Buy Bitcoin. Strive, a Bitcoin treasury firm founded by Vivek Ramaswamy, has launched a $500M preferred stock offering to acquire more Bitcoin. Strive is currently the 14th largest corporate holder of Bitcoin.

CFTC Pilots Accepting Crypto as Collateral. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has introduced a pilot program that will accept Bitcoin, Ethereum, and USDC as margin assets for US derivatives. This move shows growing acceptance by US regulations of crypto as an asset class.

Binance Suspends Employee. A Binance employee has been suspended after allegations that he abused  his position and power over Binance’s “BinanceFutures” X account to inside trade memecoins.

Strategy Bought the Dip. Strategy revealed its largest Bitcoin purchase in over 100 days on Monday, purchasing ~$1B worth of BTC last week.

Polymarket Volume Double Counted? According to researchers at Paradigm, many popular crypto analytic tools such as Dune, have double counted the trading volume of Polymarket, citing the complex data structure of Polymarket as the reason for this. This means that the $25B in trading volume that has been attributed to Polymarket’s $9B valuation may be in question.

Prosecutors Seek 12 Years for Do Kwon.  Do Kwon, the founder of the collapsed Terraform Labs (LUNA), currently faces a 12 year jail sentence from US prosecutors. Prosecutors elaborated that the losses caused by the Terra crash outweighed that of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX.