Polygon Proposes to Upgrade Native Token From MATIC to POL

Popular Ethereum scaling solution Polygon has proposed to revise its native token from MATIC to POL as a part of Polygon’s roadmap 2.0.

The details of the switch have been published in a white paper compiled by the platform’s founders and researchers.

According to an announcement on July 13, Polygon has dubbed the new token POL as a “3^rd generation token,” after Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH). The team behind the proposal noted that POL is designed to further interoperability and multichain validation for users across the protocol’s layer 2 ecosystem.

Per the proposal, POL is a hyperproductive token – which allows holders to become validators and earn rewards, with greater utilities such as enabling validators to validate as many chains as they want.

Another “game-changing improvement” is that every chain can offer validators multiple roles (and corresponding rewards). 

Furthermore, Polygon has proposed a seamless upgrade from MATIC to POL for holders, which requires a simple technical action. “Sending MATIC to the upgrade smart contract, which will automatically return the equivalent amount of POL,” it added.

“Token holders would be given ample time to upgrade, e.g. 4 years or more. If the community consensus is gathered in support of this proposal, the migration could start within months.”

If the proposal is accepted, POL would function as a single token for all Polygon-based networks including Polygon blockchain, the Polygon zkEVM network, and various supernets.

The proposal comes a month after the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) claimed that MATIC is unregistered security. However, Polygon said that the latest development is not in response to recent regulatory events globally.

MATIC Price Surges Minutes After the Proposal

The price of the MATIC token surged as much as 2.6% to $0.747 in just few minutes after the announcement. The token’s value reached its highest level since the beginning of June.

Per data from CoinGecko, the trading volume of Polygon’s native token has risen by 5% in the last 24 hours. During the same period, the daily trading volume of altcoins increased by 21.9%, with over $306 million traded.