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Key Contents
- The POL token is now used as the native token for gas and staking on the Polygon network.
- Communities can earn fees from a variety of sources through POL.
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Polygon has implemented a core technology upgrade, converting the native MATIC cryptocurrency to the new POL token on a 1:1 basis. This upgrade, which will take effect on September 4, aims to improve the utility of the token and pave the way for Polygon 2.0.
The POL token is now used as the network’s native gas and staking token, marking an important step in Polygon’s evolution. Marc Boiron, CEO of Polygon Labs, emphasized that this upgrade will allow for greater community participation in the network’s growth.
“This upgrade will introduce a 2% emissions cap, which will give communities an opportunity to participate,” Boiron said in an interview, adding that even before the full migration, the community grant program had already created emissions caps that communities could use.
Polygon’s token is currently the 21st largest cryptocurrency by market cap at $3.7 billion, and this upgrade comes after extensive community discussion and consensus building over the past year. This change is a key part of Boiron’s broader vision for Polygon 2.0.
From MATIC to POL
The main goal of the upgrade is to transform POL into a “super-productive” token. Unlike the previous MATIC, which only earned fees from gas and staking, POL generates fees from additional operations. Crypto Briefing recently covered additional details of what to expect from the upgrade in a recent article. These include staking to ensure data availability, and sequencer distribution, with more fee-generating options planned for the future.
Efforts towards a ‘super-productive’ token system
Boiron describes this highly productive token as the next evolution beyond Ethereum’s ETH, which is limited to earning gas fees from transactions. “POL goes one step further and becomes highly productive in the sense that it can actually earn fees from a number of different sources as it is embedded into different things on the Polygon Network,” he explains.
For MATIC holders, there is no hard deadline for the token upgrade. All staked MATIC will be automatically converted to POL without any further action. The testnet upgrade was successfully executed on July 17, paving the way for the mainnet implementation.
The new POL token will also play a key role in Polygon’s AggLayer, an aggregation layer similar to the cross-chain interoperability protocol. This development is part of the broader Polygon 2.0 vision, which aims to provide “infinite scalability” by unifying all blockchains, including Layer-1 networks like Ethereum and Bitcoin.
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