POL (ex-MATIC)

POL is the native token of the Polygon network, a Layer 2 scaling system built on top of Ethereum that aims to make transactions faster and cheaper than transacting directly on the Ethereum base layer. It is designed for developers who want to deploy smart contracts and for users who want to interact with decentralized applications without paying the higher fees typical of Ethereum mainnet. Polygon incorporates zero-knowledge technology as part of its technical roadmap, positioning it within a broader family of Ethereum scaling approaches.

Polygon processes transactions on its own chain, which has a block time of effectively zero minutes according to the stored data, meaning blocks are produced very rapidly, and then those results relate back to Ethereum for security. POL serves as the token used within this ecosystem — paying for transaction fees and participating in the network's validation and governance functions. The fully diluted valuation equals the market capitalization, and 100 percent of the circulating supply of 10,703,646,111 tokens has already been issued, with no maximum supply recorded and no dilution overhang remaining.

The network generated 2,042,260 USD in fees over the trailing 30 days and 26,719,356 USD over the trailing 12 months, paid by users conducting transactions on the chain, where the median transaction fee was 0.012086 USD on the most recent full day. Fees grew 59.56 percent over the last 30 days, and revenue grew 59.63 percent over the same period. The protocol retains nearly all of what users pay: the take rate — the share of fees kept by the protocol rather than passed to third-party suppliers — was 99.885176 percent over the trailing 30 days, with supply-side participants receiving only 2,345 USD across that same period. The market-cap-to-fees ratio stands at 45.55, calculated by dividing the current market capitalization by fees annualized from the trailing 30 days.