Polygon News: Major POL Token Swap to Replace Long-Standing MATIC Begins

• The transition is part of a larger strategy to enhance Polygon’s ecosystem and expand its capabilities.
• POL will support validators, fuel community growth, and further decentralize the network through a new community treasury.

According to a previous Polygon Labs update, the upcoming upgrade will replace the existing MATIC token with a new POL token on Wednesday, marking a significant shift for the layer-2 network built on Ethereum. This change is part of the broader “Polygon 2.0” roadmap aimed at enhancing the network’s capabilities and expanding its ecosystem.

As previously discussed in a recent CNF post, the MATIC to POL transition is coming on Sept. 4th. POL will initially serve as the native gas and staking token for the Polygon PoS chain, with future plans to play a vital role in the AggLayer—a system designed to aggregate blockchains using Polygon technology.

Marc Boiron, CEO of Polygon Labs, highlighted the necessity of the upgrade, stating,

The biggest reason why the upgrade was needed from a technical perspective is that the MATIC upgrade keys were burned very intentionally years ago, which basically means that we can’t make changes to that token.

He further explained that the new POL token would introduce emissions, supporting both validators and community growth through a newly established community treasury. This move aims to further decentralize the network and enable new chains to operate more autonomously while rewarding POL holders with fees generated by the network.

At the time of writing, Polygon (MATIC) is trading at $0.3698, with a decrease of 9.49% in the past day and 17.11% in the past week. Despite this, the beginning of the major POL token swap to replace the long-standing MATIC could boost Polygon’s growth and development.