What is Polygon's POL Token and How Does It Work?

$POL (Polygon Ecosystem Token) is the native gas and staking token of the Polygon network (@0xPolygon), one of the best-known Ethereum Layer 2 scaling networks, running on proof of stake. It pays for transactions, secures the chain through staking, and gives holders a say in how the ecosystem spends its treasury. $POL replaced MATIC in 2024, and it was built to do something MATIC could not: secure many chains at once. If you held MATIC, you most likely hold $POL now, whether you lifted a finger or not. Here is what the token is, how the switch happened, and how it actually works today.

From MATIC to $POL: What Changed? Polygon's first token was MATIC. In July 2023 the team proposed replacing it with $POL as part of the Polygon 2.0 roadmap. The migration went live on September 4, 2024 at a 1:1 ratio, so no new tokens were created and the starting supply mirrored MATIC's roughly 10 billion. On the Polygon PoS chain the swap was automatic: MATIC balances became $POL, and most users only saw the ticker change in their wallet. Holders with MATIC on Ethereum or on exchanges had to migrate manually through the official Polygon Portal. According to Polygon, about 99% of MATIC had migrated to $POL roughly a year after launch, and every transaction on Polygon PoS has used $POL as the native gas token since September 2024. The upgrade also expanded what staking $POL can entitle validators to do, including block production and zero-knowledge proof generation. This was an upgrade, not a fresh token sale. The goal was to turn a single-chain token into one that can power a whole network of chains.

What Does $POL Actually Do? $POL has three jobs today. Gas: It pays transaction fees on the Polygon PoS network. Fees usually run a fraction of a cent, which is why the network leans hard into payments and high-volume apps. Staking: Validators and delegators lock $POL to secure the chain and earn rewards. Those rewards come from new token emissions plus a share of network fees. As of early 2026, around 3.6 billion $POL was locked in staking contracts, close to a third of the supply. In April 2026 Polygon gave that locked capital somewhere to go. It launched sPOL, its first native liquid staking token. Stake $POL through it and you get sPOL back, a receipt token you can use across DeFi as collateral or liquidity while the underlying $POL keeps earning rewards. The point is to put idle stake to work. Before sPOL, only about 4 to 5% of staked $POL was liquid, well behind Ethereum, where most staked ETH sits in liquid staking. Governance: $POL holders help decide how the Community Treasury is spent, including on grants and development funding. $POL also sits at the center of Polygon's longer-term plan. The AggLayer, Polygon's system for linking separate chains into one network with shared liquidity, has been live on mainnet since early 2025 and is connecting a growing set of chains. The piece still being finalized is $POL's role inside it: the "one stake, many chains" idea, where a validator secures several chains with the same staked $POL. The infrastructure is in production, but the staking and fee mechanics that tie $POL to it are still maturing.

How Does $POL's Tokenomics Work? $POL started at 10 billion tokens. By mid 2026 the circulating supply sat near 10.65 billion, with no maximum supply set. The token has a built-in 2% annual emission. According to Polygon's documentation, that splits into 1% for validator and staking rewards and 1% for the Community Treasury, which funds grants and ecosystem growth. The schedule kicked in after the original MATIC reward plan wound down in 2025, and the rate was later adjusted through a community vote known as PIP-26. Governance can change emissions in the future, but the smart contract caps how fast new $POL can be minted. There is no hard supply cap. Polygon chose an inflationary model on purpose, so emissions fund security and development on a predictable schedule rather than depending on fee revenue.