Polygon’s new evolution reached the point of deployment, which is a landmark in the blockchain’s progress. The long-awaited transition from MATIC to POL has been launched and comes with a lot of changes and enhancements for users across the network. After a year of intense community discussions and consensus-building, POL is now the native gas and staking token for all transactions on the Polygon PoS network.
Expanding POL’s Role in Polygon’s AggLayer Ecosystem
The Polygon team has just announced that starting today, every transaction on Polygon PoS will be done with POL, the newly upgraded token, instead of MATIC. Through this upgrade, Polygon demonstrates its increasing suitability for the role of an aggregator, or AggLayer, a type of blockchain network that aims to unify liquidity and state across multiple chains. This is not only a token switch; it shows a fundamental change in the way the network is built and scaled.
A MATIC user on Ethereum can easily handle this transition to POL through the Polygon Portal Interface, which executes a seamless 1:1 migration. However, MATIC holders on Polygon PoS will have an automatic upgrade, but it’s important that the users change the token symbol in their wallet’s network settings to reflect “POL” instead of “MATIC.” This small change is necessary to prevent any display malfunctions in wallet interfaces.
The POL token is a new name and comes with new utilities and hyperproductive features that help secure and run the whole network. During the first phase, POL takes the place of MATIC as the gas and staking tokens, providing the necessary support for the transactions and network operations. Future phases, subject to community approval, will expand POL’s role within the AggLayer ecosystem, enhancing its utility across a more extensive network of aggregated blockchains.
The upgrade also brings about considerable changes in tokenomics. POL’s emission model adds 2% inflation over a decade as part of the emission model aimed at safeguarding network security and developing the community. Out of this emission, 50% will be deposited into the network PoS staking contract to compensate the validators, while the remaining 50% shall be deposited in a community treasury to provide funds appropriately to the builders under the prevailing governance system.
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