Hassan Maishera
TL;DR
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Polygon developers have officially migrated the MATIC token to POL.
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POL is now the native token of the Polygon network.
Polygon Migrates MATIC to POL
Polygon developers announced on Wednesday, September 4th, that they had migrated the network’s MATIC token to POL. This latest development comes after a year of extensive community discussions.
With this migration, POL is now the new ticker symbol for the native gas and staking token on the Polygon PoS chain. The change will be reflected on cryptocurrency exchanges soon.
According to the developers, this transition is an important part of Polygon’s development into a ZK chain and its integration with AggLayer. The Polygon AggLayer seeks to consolidate liquidity and state across multiple chains.
The 2% annual emissions are split evenly between validator rewards on Polygo PoS and the Community Treasury.
— Polygon | Aggregated (@0xPolygon) September 3, 2024
Validators receive 1% as incentive to secure the network, while the other 1% goes to the Community Treasury to support Polygon for the long-term.https://t.co/FZt9JTQVVz
Despite the transition, POL will maintain MATIC’s existing tokenomics, with a supply of 10 billion tokens. This implies that the initial exchange ratio from MATIC to POL is set at 1:1. However, there would be a gradual increase of 2% in emissions over ten years to support growth. The Polygon team stated that,
“The 2% annual emissions are split evenly between validator rewards on Polygo PoS and the Community Treasury. Validators receive 1% as an incentive to secure the network, while the other 1% goes to the Community Treasury to support Polygon for the long-term.”
The developers explained that MATIC holders on the Polygon PoS don’t need to take any steps as the upgrade to the new POL will take place automatically. However, MATIC holders on other platforms, including Ethereum, Polygon zkEVM, and centralized exchanges, must migrate their tokens to POL via a migration contract.
The POL token is set to have extra utilities in the future, including block production, zero-knowledge proof generation, and participation in Data Availability Committees (DACs).
Polygon developers first proposed the switch to POL in July 2023. The team officially announced in July this year that the MATIC token would upgrade to POL on September 4.
