Coin columns · Polygon PoS City
POL: The Coin of Polygon PoS, Renamed From MATIC
Replaced MATIC in 2024; strategy now centered on payments
POL is the own coin of Polygon PoS, a blockchain linked to Ethereum, and it replaced the older MATIC one-for-one in September 2024. Polygon is shifting from a scaling company to a focus on stablecoin payments.
1. From Matic to Polygon to POL
Polygon grew out of Matic Network, started in India in 2017. It opened its mainnet in 2020 and renamed itself Polygon in 2021, drawing NFT, game and DeFi apps as a cheap, fast alternative when Ethereum fees were high. Co-founder Sandeep Nailwal stepped forward in June 2025 as the first CEO of the Polygon Foundation.
POL began issuing on Ethereum on 4 September 2024, taking over from MATIC one-for-one, and serves as Polygon PoS’s gas and validator collateral. On the Crypto Nation map, POL is the city-hall tower of Polygon PoS City, because it is the chain’s own coin. Initial supply matched MATIC’s 10 billion, with about 2% new issuance planned each year.
2. Polygon PoS and the AggLayer
Polygon PoS is a proof-of-stake chain (a sidechain) run by its own validators, periodically recording its state on Ethereum. A major consensus overhaul, Heimdall v2, came in July 2025, and the Rio hard fork that October was a payments-focused rework aiming at roughly 5,000 transactions per second.
In Polygon’s design POL is a ‘hyperproductive token’: one stake can validate several chains and earn from each. It was conceived with the AggLayer, a layer that links separate chains into shared liquidity, as chains built with the Polygon CDK (a chain toolkit) exchange assets through it.
3. Uses and milestones
Polygon PoS aims to be a hub for stablecoin transfers and tokenized assets (real-world assets put on-chain as tokens). In January 2026 Polygon described itself as no longer a scaling company but a blockchain-based payments company. It announced deals to buy Coinme, a crypto exchange and payments firm, and Sequence, a wallet-infrastructure firm, and said its ‘Open Money Stack’ of stablecoin payment tools should launch by end-2026.
Milestones: founding in 2017, mainnet in 2020, the rename in 2021 and POL in September 2024. In 2025 Polygon said it would close Polygon zkEVM in 2026 to concentrate on the PoS chain and AggLayer.
4. Things to know
Polygon PoS leans on its own validator set rather than all of Ethereum’s security, and critics note upgrade power sits with a few parties. Since POL is newly issued, holders can be diluted, and how validator rewards support the coin’s value is debated.
Strategy has shifted often, including the decision to close zkEVM, and stablecoin payments compete with chains such as Base, Solana and Tron. The US SEC named MATIC a security in 2023 lawsuits but is reported to have closed its related investigation in 2025, and the Coinme purchase was reported to need regulatory approval.
Written from information public up to October 2026. It does not recommend or rate any coin and is not investment advice. If something is wrong, please tell us through the contact page.