POL

Polygon (Polygon PoS + Agglayer) · Ethereum-anchored PoS chain (payments, prediction markets, Agglayer)

34 /100

T5Impaired · #58 of 77

Cash flow routeTwo-way ↗medium likelihoodReviewed Oct 23, 2026

DemandSoundnessDurability

21 of 456 of 407 of 15

Key facts

SupplyFloat 100% of issued supply

Circulating 10.64B, 100%
No cap: supply can keep growing, see Supply discipline

FDV / market cap

1.0x

$962.6M / $962.6M

Market cap

$962.6M

Price $0.091, 7d −3.6%

Market data: CoinGecko, Oct 24, 2026. Scores reviewed Oct 23, 2026.

Assessment

Polygon PoS has real, recurring fee demand ($30.1M over the trailing year, led by Polymarket and payments) and, since Sep 2026, a burn anyone can trigger once base fees reach the collector. The weak points are structural: base fees still pass through a 3-of-5 Safe, no burn left the collector between at least Apr 2025 and Sep 2026, and at current fees the burn offsets roughly 70% of the 2% annual mint. Token rules rest on a 7-of-13 council that can raise the mint cap after a 10-day timelock, chain contracts on a 5-of-9 multisig with no delay, and about 69% of the genesis went to insiders. Two Heimdall incidents in 2025 and a permissioned 104-validator set keep security low.

How value reaches holders

Polygon PoS base fees go, via the Bor burntContract, to a 3-of-5 Safe (0x3ef5...104f) since the Mar 2026 Lisovo hard fork (PIP-82), which forwards POL to the PIP-24 burn collector (0x7a8e...1854) after a $1M x402 rebate program (~0.25M POL paid). The first permissionless burn sent 100M POL to 0x...dEaD on Sep 23, 2026 (~$10.2M); 21.6M POL remain in the collector and 65.9M in the Safe (Oct 23, 2026). Trailing-year base-fee accrual was ~173M POL (~$16.9M) of $30.1M total fees. Priority fees go to a Polygon Labs and Regen Financial multisig that pays block producers 26% and validators 74% monthly (PIP-65); delegators get nothing unless PIP-85 (50% to stakers) is adopted, and PIP-87 (payments-revenue buybacks for burn and stakers, posted Apr 30, 2026) has no start date. Against this, 2%/yr is minted (~215M POL over the next 12 months), half to validators via StakeManager and half to the Community Treasury

Score anatomy

Demand

21 / 45: the stronger of two routes, plus adoption

Why would anyone hold it: does value reach the token, and is the network or product used today?

Holder routing engine input

100M POL (~$10.2M) of base fees burned Sep 23, 2026, ~34% of $30.1M trailing-year fees; base fees pass through a 3-of-5 Safe and priority fees go to validators via a Labs multisig

Policy-set material share (25%+), or plumbing at 25-50%medium confidenceHow this is scored

Revenue reality engine input

Polygon PoS fees were $30.1M over the trailing year (DefiLlama, Oct 22, 2026), lifted by Polymarket demand from Jan 2026; the last 90 days run at ~$26M/yr

$25-100M/yrhigh confidenceHow this is scored

Monetary usage engine input

Gas on Polygon PoS, a chain holding $3.3B of stablecoins; POL posted at third-party lenders is under $10M, so there is no measured monetary use beyond gas

Pays its own network's fees (gas never counts higher, whatever the size of the economy)medium confidenceHow this is scored

Adoption ×3

Polygon PoS fees rose to $30.1M TTM (+352%) on Polymarket, stablecoins $3.3B (+29% YoY); an established payments chain

Established: a meaningful, steady share of its categorymedium confidenceHow this is scored

Two routes, the stronger counts

Revenue 3, minus 1 for routing 3 = cash flow 2. Money use 1. The engine is the stronger route: 2.

Soundness

6 / 40

Can a long-term holder trust the rules: supply, float, distribution and control?

Supply discipline ×3

2%/yr is minted (1% validators, 1% treasury), and the 7-of-13 Protocol Council can lift the mint cap or add minters after a 10-day timelock with no holder vote: an uncapped path

Over 15%/yr, or a key, company, committee or multisig can mint without limit or redirect issuancehigh confidenceHow this is scored

Float and unlocks ×1

Fully issued and ~99% circulating (10.64B of 10.74B, the rest at a dead address); MATIC vesting ended in 2022, but Polygon Foundation and ecosystem reserves are undisclosed

Small tails only, or 85%+ of supply liquidmedium confidenceHow this is scored

Distribution ×2

About 69% of the 10B MATIC genesis went to team 16%, advisors 4%, foundation 21.9%, ecosystem 23.3% and private rounds 3.8% (seed at $0.00079 vs $0.00263 in the 19% IEO)

Insiders received over 50%, or one organization directs over 30% todaymedium confidenceHow this is scored

Decentralization and security ×2

A 5-of-9 multisig can upgrade StakeManager and the bridge with no delay (L2BEAT), validator entry is permissioned (PIP-91), and Heimdall halted for ~1 hour on Jul 30, 2025

A halt, rollback or exploited consensus bug in the last 24 months, attack cost under $10M, or a foundation-selected validator set or small multisig can halt or upgrade with no meaningful exit windowhigh confidenceHow this is scored

Durability

7 / 15

Is it big, proven and reachable by institutions?

Scale ×1

$975.6M market cap (band 3), $83.4M/day median volume (band 4), no flags.

Mid-cap: $250M-1B market cap and $10M/day+How this is scored

Track record ×1

MATIC lineage since Apr 2019 and a ~98% fall from the Dec 2021 high, but a Heimdall halt (Jul 2025) and an emergency finality hard fork (Sep 2025) sit inside 5 years

3-5 years, or a rollback, coordinated chain-wide halt or restart, or a $50M+ exploit in the last 5 yearsmedium confidenceHow this is scored

Institutional access ×1

Spot on Binance, OKX, Upbit and Bybit; 0.13% weight in the pending KraneShares Coinbase 50 Index ETF (S-1/A May 6, 2026); no single-asset US POL filing on EDGAR

OTC trust, non-US product, or a pending US filingmedium confidenceHow this is scored

What would move it up

To reach T4 Speculative, one gate is still open:

Supply 0needs 1(open)

Tier outlook · next trigger Dec 31, 2026

Two-way ↗medium likelihood

The second quarterly permissionless burn, and whether the 3-of-5 Safe keeps forwarding base fees (65.9M POL held on Oct 23, 2026)
PIP-85 (50% of validator priority fees to stakers) and PIP-87 (payments-revenue buybacks) moving from forum posts to activation
Any Protocol Council change to the 2% emission rate or the 13.37 POL/s mint cap
PoS fees holding above ~$25M/yr as Polymarket demand normalizes
Heimdall or Bor incidents, and validator-set concentration under VEBloP and PIP-91 passes

Research report

Oct 23, 2026 · source confidence 75%

Polygon PoS earns real fees: about $30 million over the past year, driven largely by Polymarket and payments activity since January 2026. Base fees are meant to be burned, and in September 2026 the first permissionless burn removed 100 million POL, about 0.9% of supply. The route to that burn is still managed: base fees first land in a 3-of-5 multisig, no burn was executed for well over a year before September, and priority fees are distributed to validators each month by a multisig run by Polygon Labs and Regen Financial, with nothing reaching delegators yet. At current fee levels the burn offsets roughly 70% of the 2% of new POL minted each year for validators and the community treasury. The token contract cannot be upgraded, but its mint cap and minter role are controlled by a 13-member Protocol Council behind a 10-day timelock, and the chain's staking and bridge contracts can be upgraded by a 5-of-9 multisig without delay. About 69% of the original MATIC supply went to the team, advisors, foundation, ecosystem fund and private investors. The network had a one-hour consensus halt in July 2025 and an emergency hard fork for finality in September 2025, and validator entry is permissioned. Proposals to share priority fees with stakers and to fund buybacks from payments revenue are posted but not active.

Structure (14 facts)

Chain: Ethereum ERC-20 PolygonEcosystemToken v1.1.0 (solc 0.8.21, not upgradeable, AccessControlEnumerable); native gas token of Polygon PoS, where 3.05B POL sit in the PoS bridge (Oct 23, 2026)
Migration: MATIC to POL 1:1 from Sep 4, 2024; 9.626B of 10B MATIC migrated, 373.6M POL held in the migration contract 0x29e7...2c4e for the rest
Supply on chain: totalSupply 10,736,797,916 POL (Oct 23, 2026); 100,000,118 POL at 0x...dEaD (the Sep 23, 2026 burn was a transfer, so totalSupply did not fall); CoinGecko circulating 10.637B
Emission: DefaultEmissionManager (proxy 0xbc9f...6c53) mints daily (lastMint 2026-10-23 00:00 UTC), split 50/50 to the Community Treasury (Aragon DAO 0x8638...a5b9) and StakeManager (0x5e3e...d908). Rate history read from each implementation: v1.1.0 3%/yr from 2023-10-25, v1.2.0 and v1.3.0 2.5%/yr from 2024-07-06, v1.4.0 2%/yr from 2025-07-09 (reinitialized on 10.466B). ~214.7M POL (2.0%) over the next 12 months
Mint authority: token mint() requires EMISSION_ROLE (held only by the emission manager) and is capped at mintPerSecondCap 13.37 POL/s (~421.6M/yr, ~3.9%). CAP_MANAGER_ROLE and DEFAULT_ADMIN_ROLE sit with a TimelockController (0x29a6...5b18, 10-day minDelay) whose proposer is a 7-of-13 Safe (0x9a53...0899): it can set any cap and grant EMISSION_ROLE to any address. The emission manager's ProxyAdmin (0xebea...39c3) is owned by a 10-of-13 Safe with the same 13 signers (0x37d0...9516, emergency path, no timelock), which can swap the emission logic within the 13.37 POL/s cap. No token-holder vote anywhere in the path
Fee routing: Base fees: Bor burntContract to a 3-of-5 Safe 0x3ef5...104f since the Mar 2026 Lisovo hard fork (PIP-82; $1M x402 rebate program to Dec 31, 2026, ~0.25M POL paid), forwarded in batches (8.94M, 3.20M, 31.35M POL) to the PIP-24 collector 0x7a8e...1854, which grew from 13.1M POL (Apr 2025) to 121.6M before the first permissionless BurnTunnel burn of 100M POL on Sep 23, 2026 (Ethereum tx 0x67ff...c7b7). Pending on Oct 23, 2026: 21.6M POL in the collector, 65.9M in the Safe. Priority fees: Polygon Labs and Regen Financial multisig 0x7ee4...66b0 (3-of-n), monthly payouts, 26% to block producers and 74% to validators by stake and performance (PIP-65, Oct 2025 parameters); Feb 28, 2026 payout 5.99M POL to 103 validators. PIP-85 (50% of the validator pool to stakers) and PIP-87 (fixed-price payments revenue converted to POL buybacks for burn and stakers, posted Apr 30, 2026) have no activation date
Revenue: DefiLlama Polygon chain fees $30.08M over the 365 days to Oct 22, 2026 (prior year far lower: $0.15-0.93M a month in Sep-Dec 2025; Jan 2026 $3.83M and Feb $4.96M on Polymarket's fee-bearing 15-minute markets; Oct 1-22, 2026 $1.54M). Base-fee accrual sampled from collector balances: ~173M POL (~$16.9M) over the trailing year, ~0.42M POL a day in Oct 2026. Nailwal's $24.5M 2026 revenue claim (Sep 19, 2026) is roughly consistent
Distribution: MATIC genesis 10B (2019, as published at launch): Binance Launchpad IEO 19% ($5M at $0.00263, Apr 2019), seed and private rounds 3.8% (seed at $0.00079), team 16%, advisors 4%, foundation 21.86%, ecosystem 23.33%, staking rewards 12%; all vesting ended Dec 2022. Post-2023 emissions ~737M POL, about half to the Community Treasury run by a Treasury Board (no holder vote). Insider share ~69% of genesis, ~67% of all POL issued
Holders: Ethereum top holders (Ethplorer, Oct 23, 2026): StakeManager 3.81B (35.5%), PoS bridge 3.05B (28.4%), Binance 397.6M (3.7%), migration contract 373.6M, then unlabelled wallets of 0.25B and below; Community Treasury holds only 2.6M POL on L1. Foundation and ecosystem reserves on PoS are not disclosed
Security: L2BEAT (Oct 2026): 104 validators (cap 105), ~3.61B POL staked, permissioned entry via single-use passes since PIP-91 (2026-10-16); state validation none (2/3 stake signatures on checkpoints); PolygonMultisig 5/9 upgrades most core contracts including StakeManager through a zero-delay timelock (42 upgrades, latest 2026-10-13); exit window none. Validator-Elected Block Producers since the Rio upgrade (Oct 2025). Incidents: Heimdall halt of ~1 hour on Jul 30, 2025 after a validator exit triggered a bug (Bor kept producing); 10-15 minute finality stall on Sep 10, 2025 fixed by an emergency hard fork (Bor 2.2.11-beta2, Heimdall 0.3.1); Austin and Kyoto forks fixed unexploited DoS bugs (disclosed Aug 27, 2026)
Usage: L2BEAT: ~4.62M transactions a day, TVS $3.84B (stablecoins $2.87B); DefiLlama stablecoins on Polygon $3.32B (from $2.58B a year earlier), DeFi TVL $716M (from $1.25B)
Liquidity: CoinGecko 24h volume $48.7M (5.0% of market cap), 30-day average $83.5M; largest reported venues BitDelta, Deepcoin, Binance, WhiteBIT, Bybit
Institutional access: no single-asset US POL ETF or trust filing found on EDGAR; POL is a 0.13% component of the pending KraneShares Coinbase 50 Index ETF (S-1/A No. 4, May 6, 2026)
Market cap (approx): $974,000,000

Market figures at report date (Oct 23, 2026)

Price (approx): $0.0916
All-time high / low: MATIC $2.92 (2021-12-26); POL ATH $1.29 (2024-03-13), ATL $0.0677 (2026-07-01); -52% over 1y

Sources (19)

Compare with

How the ranking works and how POL compares: see the full ranking. This entry as JSON:

GET https://tokens.10102.io/api/v1/tokenomics?symbol=POL