Polygon Labs proposes replacing ‘MATIC’ token with upgraded ‘POL’ in ecosystem expansion plan Polygon Labs proposes replacing ‘MATIC’ token with upgraded ‘POL’ in ecosystem expansion plan
Polygon Labs predicts that POL's price during 10-year growth scenario will average $5.
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Updated: Jul. 13, 2023 at 2:34 pm UTC
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Polygon Labs has revealed a technical proposal to upgrade its MATIC token to POL, a hyperproductive third-generation native asset, according to a July 13 blog post.
What is POL?
According to its whitepaper, POL will be the native token of the Polygon and will be a significant tool for coordinating and incentivizing the whole ecosystem.
“POL is the next generation native token, designed to secure, align and grow the Polygon ecosystem.”
The POL token will have an initial supply of 10 billion tokens that is entirely dedicated to the migration of MATIC for POL. The digital asset has a yearly emission rate of 2% which would be used for validator incentives and community treasury.
The layer2 network projected POL’s price during a 10-year growth scenario to an average of $5, adding that the ecosystem could see up to 25 public chains and more than 3000 supernets if it is heavily adopted during this period.
Additionally, Polygon stated that POL holders will act as validators for multiple chains, and each chain can offer validators various roles and corresponding rewards.
Meanwhile, MATIC holders would be allowed to upgrade their holdings to POL at a 1:1 ratio for a prolonged period. The protocol stated that MATIC and POL would not and can not coexist, adding that “POL can only replace MATIC.”
What the upgrade means for Polygon
The proposed token upgrade would also benefit the Polygon ecosystem, improving its security, scalability, and support.
The upgrade would also eliminate friction within the Polygon ecosystem instead of the regular blockchain protocols that “require both users and developers to hold, stake or consume their native tokens in order to use the network.”
Polygon also poured cold water on the notion that the recent regulatory troubles influenced the upgrade. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had classified MATIC, alongside several other digital assets, as securities in its lawsuit against Binance and Coinbase.
While Polygon Labs has disputed this classification, several U.S.-based firms have delisted the crypto asset.
Following the news, MATIC’s price increased by 5% to $0.76790 at the time of writing, according to CryptoSlate’s data.
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