Polygon Labs has launched a new Polygon token, POL, with the Ethereum contract. The process, which was announced to the public on October 25th, aims to replace the existing token, MATIC, in the Polygon ecosystem. However, the team has stated that users do not need to exchange their MATIC assets with POL at the moment.
Highlights for POL
According to Ethereum blockchain data, the new token was created on October 25th at 09:06 UTC. The full name of the token is Polygon Ecosystem Token. In the announcement, the Polygon team claimed that POL provides power to a wide ecosystem consisting of Layer-2 chains based on zero-knowledge technology.
This allows investors to stake their assets on multiple chains and implement a re-staking protocol that serves multiple functions during this process. According to a post shared by the team, the release of the token will pave the way for the implementation of other aspects of Polygon 2.0 roadmap, including the launch of a new staking layer for the Polygon ecosystem, upgrading the existing Proof of Stake (PoS) network to zkEVM Layer-2, and creating a shared liquidity protocol for all Polygon networks.
The team also emphasized that POL is not currently used for any system on the Polygon network. Both staking on Polygon PoS and Polygon zkEVM are still carried out using the old token, MATIC, and gas fees on the PoS network are paid with MATIC. Therefore, users, validators, and application developers do not need to exchange their MATIC for POL at the moment.
What is Polygon 2.0?
Polygon Labs took its first step by announcing the development of a new Layer-2 ecosystem on June 29th. The new ecosystem was named Polygon 2.0 by the team. On September 14th, the team announced that Polygon 2.0 would utilize a new token called POL. At that time, the token had not yet been created or distributed to Ethereum.
The Layer-2 ecosystem proposed by Polygon will use zero-knowledge proofs system to verify transactions between networks. It will also utilize optimistic rollup technology proposed by Optimism Labs to secure messages between networks, attracting attention in the Web3 space.
