POL (ex-MATIC)
POL#59POL is the native token of Polygon PoS, an Ethereum-connected blockchain, used to pay gas fees and stake as a validator.
- Market cap
- $1.25B
- Volume 24h
- $98.28M
- All-time high
- $1.29
- −90.90% from ATH
- Circulating supply
- 10.62B
Does not clear all 8 Shariah criteria. Needs caution: nature of the asset, gambling (maysir), business model, excessive uncertainty (gharar), and usage.
- 3 pass
- 5 caution
- 0 fail
Verdict history
- DoubtfulCurrent
First publication
Fundamentals, market picture and news will appear here.
Halal analysis
Can a Muslim hold POL (ex-MATIC)?8 Shariah criteria
3 pass · 5 caution · 0 failHolding POL pays nothing; staking rewards are paid for validating the network from new issuance and fees, not as interest on a loan.
Riba means interest or any guaranteed increase on a loan. Simply holding POL earns nothing. The native return is staking: holders delegate POL to validators through staking contracts on Ethereum, and rewards are paid at each checkpoint (about every 30 minutes) in proportion to stake. The rewards come from protocol emission (about 1% of supply a year goes to validator rewards) and from a share of priority fees paid to validators; since 2026 part of that fee share is also allocated to stakers. The reward rate is variable: Polygon's PIP-92 puts it at about 3.0% a year.
Delegated POL stays under the delegator's control and can be withdrawn after an unbonding period of 80 checkpoints (about 40 hours). The staker share of fees accrued undistributed for months and is due to be paid through higher checkpoint rewards, which makes timing irregular but does not turn it into a loan return. Some scholars see delegation as borderline because the delegator does no work himself.
Polygon PoS is a working network and POL has clear uses, but official religious bodies disagree on whether cryptocurrency is property (mal).
Mal is property that Islamic law recognises as having value and that can be owned and traded. Polygon PoS has produced blocks since 30 May 2020, carries about $3 billion of stablecoins and hosts payment apps. POL is needed to pay gas on the network and to stake for consensus, and it is held by more than 100,000 addresses on Ethereum alone. Malaysia's Securities Commission Shariah Advisory Council (2020), for assets under its supervision, treats digital currency without an underlying asset as goods ('urudh) that may be traded on registered exchanges.
Other tier-1 bodies disagree: Egypt's Dar al-Ifta (2017), the UAE General Authority of Islamic Affairs (2018), Turkey's Diyanet (2017) and Indonesia's MUI (2021) prohibit dealing in cryptocurrencies, and the OIC Fiqh Academy (2019) deferred a ruling. None of them names Polygon. Because authoritative bodies disagree, this criterion cannot be 'pass'.
POL is not a gambling token, but a large share of its trading is in futures and its price has been highly volatile.
Maysir is gambling: winning or losing by chance rather than through productive exchange. Ordinary price swings are not maysir, and POL has no chance-based payout of its own. The market around it is speculative, though. On 27 September 2026, perpetual futures made up about 69% of POLUSDT volume on Binance (a single-day snapshot of one exchange), and POL traded about 46% lower than a year earlier and more than 90% below its March 2024 high.
A real function exists alongside this: POL is required to pay gas and to stake on a network that carries about $3 billion of stablecoins, so the asset is not built for gambling. Betting apps on the network are assessed under usage, not here.
Protocol income is service fees (base fees are burned, priority fees go to validators and stakers), but the revenue mix of the community treasury and Polygon Labs is not published, so the 5% limit cannot be checked.
This criterion asks how the issuer or protocol earns, and whether any of that income is impermissible. At the protocol level, POL's income is transaction fees for processing transactions: the base fee is burned (since January 2022) and priority fees are pooled and paid to block producers and validators, with a share allocated to stakers since 2026. These are service fees. Half of the yearly emission (about 1% of supply) goes to a community treasury meant to fund ecosystem development; it is not revenue from impermissible activity.
Polygon Labs, the company that develops Polygon, earns separately, for example from its Open Money Stack payment services, but holders have no claim on its income. The sources do not show how the community treasury or Polygon Labs invest their funds or what else they earn, so the 5% limit for impermissible income cannot be checked. This is not evidence of impermissible income, but when data for the threshold are missing, the status can be no higher than caution. The score sits near the top of the caution band because the protocol's own income is plainly service fees and holders have no claim on either entity's income.
Supply and code are public, but the minting contract is upgradeable, fees pass through a company-controlled multisig, and supply figures differ between sources.
Gharar is excessive uncertainty or hidden information in a deal. Much of POL is transparent: the token contract is open source and immutable, the emission rates are published (effectively 2% a year), and changes go through public Polygon Improvement Proposals. Several points add uncertainty. The EmissionManager, the only contract that can mint POL, is upgradeable through governance, limited only by a per-second mint cap; the whitepaper said each emission rate could never exceed 1%, but the schedule under PIP-26 was higher for two years.
Fees are routed to a multisig controlled by Polygon Labs and Regen Financial and redistributed off-contract, and the stakers' share accrued undistributed for about six months in 2026. Block production is concentrated in a small pool of producers, and a proposal (PIP-91) would make validator entry permissioned. Etherscan and CoinGecko also differ by about 100 million POL on total supply. None of this shows arbitrary hidden minting, so the status is caution, not fail.
Polygon carries real payment and stablecoin use, but a prediction market for betting on events is one of its largest apps.
This criterion looks at what the network is actually used for. Much of it is permissible: about $3 billion of stablecoins circulate on Polygon, Revolut launched a euro stablecoin on it in August 2026, and Polygon Labs sells payment and settlement tools to businesses. A notable share is disputed. Polymarket, a prediction market where users take positions on elections, sports and other events, runs on Polygon; DefiLlama recorded about $82 million of Polymarket fees over 30 days, far more than the $2.2 million of fees paid to the network itself (part of Polymarket's activity is off-chain).
Many scholars treat staking money on uncertain events as maysir. Interest-based lending protocols also operate on the network, but their share was not measured. None of these is shown to be the main purpose of the network, so the status is caution rather than fail.
Fully paid spot POL is widely available, and it can be held in one's own wallet on Ethereum or Polygon.
This criterion asks whether the asset can be owned in a permissible way. POL trades spot, with full payment and delivery, on major exchanges such as Binance, and it can be withdrawn to a self-custody wallet. It exists natively on Polygon PoS and as a standard ERC-20 token on Ethereum, where about 104,000 addresses held it on 27 September 2026. Ownership therefore does not depend on derivatives or leveraged wrappers.
Polygon provides a cheap payment and settlement rail used by regulated firms; its harms are counted under other criteria.
Maslahah weighs public benefit against harm. The benefit is real: Polygon is a low-cost settlement rail for stablecoins, used for a euro stablecoin by Revolut and for business payment tools, and tested in phase 2 of the Bank of England's Digital Pound Lab (a controlled experiment without real money). The main harms are betting activity on the network and speculative trading of the token; these are counted under usage and maysir and are not counted again here. The sources reviewed did not show fraud, sanctions evasion or exploitation as a dominant use.
How you can use it
Tap a card for the ruling and sourcesBuying POL with full payment and immediate delivery is widely available on major exchanges, and tokens can be moved to a self-custody wallet. Spot is acceptable for a DOUBTFUL asset for those who follow the permissive view.
No US spot fund holding POL was verified in the sources reviewed. Any fund or exchange-traded product holding POL must be checked separately for interest income and lending of the underlying.
Tier-1 bodies such as Indonesia's MUI rule that using cryptocurrency as currency is not permissible. Most payments on Polygon are made in stablecoins rather than in POL itself.
Native delegation of POL to a Polygon PoS validator through the staking contracts on Ethereum pays rewards for validation work from emission and fees, and the delegator keeps ownership, so it is rated pass. Exchange staking and liquid staking tokens pool stake through an intermediary and should be checked product by product.
Margin trading in POL is offered by exchanges but is never acceptable: it is a deferred exchange with borrowed money and leverage (AAOIFI SS 20).
POL perpetual futures were about 69% of POLUSDT volume on Binance in a snapshot on 27 September 2026, but futures, perpetuals and options always fail under AAOIFI SS 20: deferred exchange without delivery, usually with leverage.
Lending POL on DeFi money markets or through exchange lending programmes pays depositors interest from borrowers. This is riba.
POL yield products built on lending, leveraged looping or basis trading pay interest or interest-like returns and fail. Native staking is assessed separately above; products that only pass on staking rewards must be checked source by source.
Scholars quotes
Penggunaan cryptocurrency sebagai mata uang hukumnya haram, karena mengandung gharar (ketidakjelasan), dharar (bahaya) dan bertentangan dengan Undang-Undang nomor 7 tahun 2011 tentang Mata Uang dan Peraturan Bank Indonesia nomor 17 tahun 2015 tentang Kewajiban Penggunaan Rupiah di Wilayah Negara Kesatuan Republik Indonesia.Sebagaimana mata wang yang lain, mata wang digital hendaklah tidak digunakan sebagai bayaran kepada barangan, perkhidmatan dan aktiviti tidak patuh Syariah seperti pembelian dadah, pelacuran, perjudian dan pendanaan aktiviti keganasan serta penggubahan wang haram.The SAC has also resolved that investment and trading of Digital Assets that fulfil the above requirements and which are traded on Digital Asset Exchange (DAX) registered with SC are permissible.Third: In light of the above and given the significant risks associated with this type of currencies and the instability of their transactions, the Council of the Academy recommends pursuing research and studies on issues affecting its ruling.Bitcoin is a digital currency that does not meet the legal and Sharia criteria that make it a currency subject to the rulings of dealing with official legal currencies recognized internationally.بناءً على ذلك: فلا يجوز شرعًا تداول عملة "البتكوين" والتعامل من خلالها بالبيعِ والشراءِ والإجارةِ وغيرها، بل يُمنع من الاشتراكِ فيها؛ لعدمِ اعتبارِها كوسيطٍ مقبولٍ للتبادلِ من الجهاتِ المخُتصَّةِ، ولِمَا تشتمل عليه من الضررِ الناشئ عن الغررِ والجهالةِ والغشِّ في مَصْرِفها ومِعْيارها وقِيمتها، فضلًا عما تؤدي إليه ممارستُها من مخاطرَ عاليةٍ على الأفراد والدول.Based on this, simply buying and holding the POL token is Halal.According to research and opinion of experts so far, cryptocurrency is not considered ‘ maal ’ (wealth) in Sharia.Muhammadiyah memandang transaksi dan investasi kripto pada dasarnya mubah (boleh) tetapi dengan syarat tertentu.The opinion on this is the same as doing the same with any halal assets such as shares – 1) is permissible, 2) is more debatable and there are differing opinions on short-term trading.Polygon is similar to Ethereum and therefore by extension, we would deem it to be halal due to a similar analysis to ETH.Our current position is 'tawaquf'; we can't say it is halal or haram, but we say it is better not to engage in itAs I mentioned at the beginning of this article it is not necessary to substantiate the permissibility of something as long as there are no prohibited factors involved in it or surrounding it.AI-assisted analysis checked against sources. Not a fatwa or investment advice.
Where it trades
No exchanges from our coverage trade POL (ex-MATIC) yet
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