Buy Polygon (POL): value and price trends

What is Polygon (POL)

Polygon is a network built around Ethereum to run the same operations at a fraction of the cost. Its main chain, called Polygon PoS, has been live since 2020 and runs with its own set of validators who stake the network’s token; at regular intervals it records a summary of its state on Ethereum, so it can lean on the security of the parent network without paying its fees. For the user, the result is transactions that cost less than a cent and confirm in a few seconds.

POL is the native crypto-asset: it pays fees, is staked by validators and is used to vote on proposals to improve the network. It replaced the old MATIC token through a migration that started in September 2024 and is now complete. Over the past two years the project has focused all its work on stablecoin payments, that is, on moving digital dollars and euros between businesses, platforms and people.

On Young Platform you can buy and sell the crypto-asset POL on a spot basis.

Who develops Polygon and who governs it

The project was born in 2017 in Mumbai as Matic Network, founded by Jaynti Kanani, Sandeep Nailwal and Anurag Arjun, three developers who wanted to make Ethereum usable for everyday applications. The mainnet launched in 2020 and in February 2021 the project was renamed Polygon, to signal that the ambition was no longer a single chain but a set of connected networks.

Today development is carried out by Polygon Labs, while the Polygon Foundation, led by Nailwal since 2025, manages the ecosystem treasury and developer funding. Protocol changes go through public proposals, the PIPs, discussed by the community and activated by validators with network upgrades. The move from MATIC to POL was decided this way: announced in 2023, started on 4 September 2024 and at 99% of supply migrated a year later.

How the network works

Polygon PoS is made of two layers working together. The first produces blocks and executes transactions, using the same smart contract language as Ethereum: an application written for Ethereum runs on Polygon without changes. The second coordinates validators and periodically sends checkpoints to Ethereum, that is, proofs of what happened on the network. If something goes wrong on the chain, the last checkpoint on Ethereum remains the fixed point.

Anyone wishing to take part in validation locks POL in staking and receives a share of the network’s rewards; those who do not run a validator can delegate their tokens to one. Rewards come from an annual emission of 2% of the POL supply, split equally between those who secure the network and a community treasury that funds developers. This is a rule written into the token’s design: POL, unlike MATIC, has no maximum cap on units.

2025: the network rebuilds its engine

In 2025 Polygon PoS replaced three fundamental pieces in four months, all documented on the official blog. On 1 July 2025 the Bhilai upgrade raised the gas limit per block from 30 to 45 million, taking the network beyond 1,000 transactions per second and adding support for Ethereum’s smart accounts, the ones that allow fee-free transactions for the end user. On 10 July 2025 came Heimdall v2, the rewrite of the validator coordination layer: transaction finality fell from one or two minutes to around five seconds, and code inherited from 2018 was removed.

On 8 October 2025 the cycle closed with Rio, the redesign of block production. A single producer per turn, elected by validators, and stateless verification, that is, the ability to check blocks without holding the network’s entire state in memory. The stated result is a network designed for around 5,000 transactions per second and free of chain reorganisations, the phenomenon whereby a block already seen could be replaced. All of this is part of a programme called Gigagas, with a stated target of 100,000 transactions per second: an announced goal, not a measured value.

From zkEVM to payments: where Polygon is heading

For years Polygon had bet on a second network, Polygon zkEVM, based on zero-knowledge proofs. On 3 July 2026 that network was switched off: the sequencer no longer produces blocks and anyone holding funds in a personal wallet can recover them on Ethereum until 31 December 2027. It is a choice of focus: resources go to the PoS chain and to AggLayer, the layer that connects different chains so they can share liquidity, of which Katana, launched in 2025, is the first application.

The direction is stated openly: Polygon wants to be the infrastructure for stablecoin payments. In 2025 Revolut moved 810 million dollars on the network, Stripe settled over 75 million in payments and peer-to-peer stablecoin transfers reached 7.1 billion in the month of November alone. On 13 January 2026 Polygon Labs announced the acquisition of Coinme, which brings money-transmitter licences in 48 US states, and of Sequence, to build what it calls the Open Money Stack. On 29 April 2026 Meta chose Polygon to pay creators on its platforms in USDC, and on 26 August 2026 Revolut launched EURR on Polygon and Ethereum, a MiCAR-compliant euro stablecoin.

What the POL token is for

POL has three uses within the network. It pays the fees on every transaction, although they are so low that they matter little to the user. It is put into staking by validators and by those who delegate their tokens to them, and this is the mechanism that keeps the chain secure. And it grants the right to take part in decisions about the network. In the original design POL was also meant to secure the other chains connected through AggLayer, a role that depends on how much that layer grows.

What to consider before buying POL

Beyond the volatility common to all crypto-assets, there are three specific elements. The first is competition: Polygon competes with Ethereum’s other layer-2 networks, such as Arbitrum, Base and Optimism, and its bet on payments should be judged on the volumes that actually pass through the network. The second is discontinuity: the shutdown of zkEVM shows that a product in the group can be closed, and those who had built on it had to move. The third is emission: the 2% of new POL each year dilutes over time those who do not take part in staking. On the price side, MATIC reached its all-time high in December 2021 and the token, now POL, has not returned to those levels.

If you want to transfer POL to an external wallet, always check the supported destination network in the app: POL exists on both Ethereum and Polygon PoS, and sending on the wrong blockchain can result in the permanent loss of funds.

In summary

Polygon is the Ethereum layer-2 network that chose a precise trade, stablecoin payments, and in 2025 rebuilt its engine to do it: three upgrades in four months, five-second finality and a designed capacity of 5,000 transactions per second. The POL token pays for, secures and governs the network. Understanding how a layer-2 network works, and what its value depends on, is the best way to decide whether and how to add POL to your crypto-asset portfolio. To compare it with the parent network, see the Ethereum page; for the other layer-2 networks, the pages for Arbitrum and Optimism.