Polygon Labs, the main developer firm behind the layer-2 network Polygon, said Wednesday that it will be performing the technical upgrade that swaps out its MATIC token for its new POL token starting on Sept. 4.

The migration comes as a part of Polygon’s planned revamp laid out last year in its “Polygon 2.0” roadmap. The change was initially proposed in July 2023 to its community, and would make POL the main token for all Polygon networks.

The switch will consist of a technical upgrade that enables POL to be the native gas and staking token for Polygon’s main proof-of-stake chain (Polygon PoS). In the next stages of the upgrade, POL will begin to also secure other blockchains in Polygon’s wider “aggregated” network, including the AggLayer.

“POL is a hyperproductive token that can be used to provide valuable services to any chain in the Polygon network, including the AggLayer itself,” Polygon wrote in their blog post.

According to the Polygon team, MATIC holders on the Polygon PoS chain won’t have to do anything for this upgrade and their tokens will show up in POL.

For those using MATIC on Polygon’s zkEVM rollup, on centralized exchanges, or on the Ethereum blockchain, they will need to go through various steps, Polygon detailed in their blog post.

As part of the network’s migration, Polygon will tested the token upgrade on July 17 in a test network environment, in order to identify or fix any issues before POL is live on mainnet.

layer 2 Polygon Polygon labs token MATIC

Margaux Nijkerk

Margaux Nijkerk reports on the Ethereum protocol and L2s. A graduate of Johns Hopkins and Emory universities, she has a masters in International Affairs & Economics. She holds a small amount of ETH and other altcoins.