POL (ex-MATIC)

POL is the native token of Polygon PoS, an Ethereum-connected blockchain, used to pay gas fees and stake as a validator.

Polygon PoS is a public blockchain that runs alongside Ethereum and aims to make transactions cheap. It started in 2017 as Matic Network in Mumbai, India, founded by Jaynti Kanani, Sandeep Nailwal and Anurag Arjun, and its first block was produced on 30 May 2020. It was renamed Polygon in 2021. Polygon Labs develops the technology.

POL is the network's native token. It replaced the older MATIC token on 4 September 2024 at a 1:1 ratio, and by September 2025 about 99% of MATIC had been migrated. POL pays transaction fees (gas) on Polygon PoS, and holders stake it with validators through contracts on Ethereum. Part of each fee is burned.

Unlike MATIC, whose supply was fixed at 10 billion, POL has no maximum supply. New POL is minted every year: under the current schedule about 1% goes to validator rewards and 1% to a community treasury, an effective 2% a year. Total supply was about 10.6 to 10.7 billion POL in September 2026. A 2025 community proposal to end this inflation was debated but not adopted.

Polygon is used for stablecoin payments, with about $3 billion of stablecoins on the chain, and hosts apps such as the Polymarket prediction market. Polygon Labs sells payment tools to businesses (the Open Money Stack) and builds Agglayer, a protocol that links chains. In 2023 the US SEC alleged in two lawsuits that MATIC was a security; both cases were dismissed in 2025.