Bye MATIC, Hi POL: What Does This Mean for Polygon and Crypto?

On Sept. 4, 2024, Polygon (MATIC), one of the largest EVM blockchains, will proceed toward a crucial phase of its token migration. The new cryptocurrency, POL, will be leveraged by Polygon as a gas and staking currency with more functions to come.

Polygon replaces MATIC with POL on Sept. 4, paves path for AggLayer

On Wednesday, Sept. 4, Polygon will replace MATIC as its gas currency and staking token. The new asset POL will act as the backbone for Polygon's tokenomics, staking design, and will fuel the next phases of its growth, an official team statement says.

In the coming stages of Polygon's evolution, the community will be able to decide to expand the utility of POL to serve a crucial role in AggLayer, an upcoming blockchain aggregation tool by Polygon.

POL is introduced by the Polygon team as a hyperproductive token that can be used to provide valuable services to any chain in the Polygon network, including AggLayer itself.

As covered by U.Today, the first announcement of the transition to POL made headlines in July 2023. The radical upgrade was approved by the MATIC audience.

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Testnet migration to POL was successfully organized last July. The upgrade is part of a multi-year technical road map dubbed Polygon 2.0.

Major exchanges support MATIC-to-POL migration

In order to have their MATIC holdings upgraded to POL, various groups of Polygon ecosystem members should take various steps.

Holders of MATIC on Polygon PoS will not have to take any action as the upgrade here is performed automatically. Neither will MATIC stakers and delegators on Ethereum (ETH).

By contrast, holders of MATIC on Ethereum, Polygon zkEVM and in CEXes may have to migrate either through migration instruments or by calling the smart contract themselves.

On CEXes, the migration procedures will be launched by their teams. Some of Tier 1 CEXes, including the likes of Binance and OKX, have already signaled their support for Polygon's token upgrade.