Polygon Introduces New POL Token to Replace MATIC

Polygon Labs, a company which develops scaling solutions for Ethereum, has announced a revamp of its MATIC token – a digital asset with a market capitalization north of $7B.

The new POL token would accrue staking fees from securing Polygon’s proof-of-stake chain, but will additionally be able to reap rewards from other blockchains as well.

The Polygon team is positioning POL as a “hyperproductive” token. The team calls ETH a productive token because it enables holders to validate transactions and collect fees for that service.

POL will be more productive than ETH because holders will be able to validate multiple chains, according to Polygon Labs. Each chain will also be able to offer POL holders “multiple roles,” each of which would accrue fees.

MATIC is up around 5% in the last week. Like the entire crypto market, it was briefly buoyed by a ruling from a U.S. judge that the digital asset, XRP, is not a security.

MATIC is among a number of tokens labelled as securities by the SEC in a lawsuit against Coinbase.

Polygon 2.0

A whitepaper on POL cited providing guarantees that transaction data is published and publicly available or proving a zero-knowledge proof’s validity as examples of additional roles.

The introduction of POL is part of a broader overhaul of the Polygon ecosystem, called “Polygon 2.0,” which was unveiled last month. Polygon 2.0 involves the transition from isolated blockchains like Polygon’s proof-of-stake chain, which developers are transforming into a Layer 2 validium, and the newly launched zkEVM chain, to an interconnected ecosystem of blockchains.

POL would theoretically accrue fees from all those future chains.

Users will be able to exchange MATIC for POL on a one-to-one basis, according to a post from Polygon. The post also suggests a four-year window for holders to swap their tokens.