Polygon is undergoing its long-anticipated token upgrade from MATIC to POL today, as part of its “Polygon 2.0” roadmap that was announced in June 2023.
POL will replace MATIC as the native gas and staking token on the Polygon PoS sidechain (not to be confused with Polygon zkEVM chain), formerly known as the Matic Network.
MATIC token holders on Polygon PoS will be automatically upgraded by September 4, as will all currently staked MATIC.
Token holders on Ethereum mainnet, Polygon zkEVM and on centralized exchanges will have the option to upgrade their tokens to POL with no deadline enforced.
Based on the Polygon Protocol Governance Call #24, the POL token upgrade is not a hard fork and will therefore be executed across three multisigs: the governance multisig, the PoS bridge multisig, and the Protocol Counsel executor multisig.
At a market cap of $3.9 billion today, Polygon CEO Marc Boiron told Blockworks that it’s the “biggest little upgrade that’s ever happened with a token,” and that the decision-making process was largely inspired by Ethereum’s culture around decentralized governance.
