Polygon Labs, the development team behind Ethereum scaling solution Polygon, has announced its new native token, POL. Through a Twitter announcement, Polygon Labs proposed an upgrade plan to replace the existing token, MATIC, with POL — thereby establishing POL as the exclusive token for all networks within the Polygon ecosystem.
These networks include the Polygon mainnet, Polygon zkEVM network, and various Supernet chains (dedicated application chains running on the Polygon mainnet). If the proposal is accepted, POL will serve as a multi-purpose token, enabling network validators to support the operation of multiple chains using a single token.
Upgrading from MATIC to POL would demand an upfront technical procedure: MATIC will have to be sent to an upgraded smart contract, automatically retrieving an equivalent amount in POL. If the community supports this initiative, token holders will have sufficient time to upgrade, such as four years or longer.
Each community of the Polygon chains will ultimately decide which token to use as gas fees. Some may opt for POL, and token holders can utilize POL to vote on governance proposals for DApps built on Polygon, with all rewards and incentives distributed in POL.
According to TradingView data, after the news was released, the price of the MATIC token rose from approximately $0.73 to $0.77 within an hour, representing a growth of over 5%.
