Polygon recently provided more details on the proposed migration of MATIC tokens to its new POL tokens. This forms part of Polygon’s plan to build “aggregated blockchains” as its innovative approach to scaling these networks.
Everything To Know About MATIC’s Migration To POL
Polygon revealed in a blog post that the mainnet upgrade from MATIC to POL is expected to occur on September 4. In the initial phase of the upgrade, the POL token will replace MATIC as the gas and staking token of the Polygon PoS (proof-of-stake) network. Meanwhile, depending on the community’s decision, POL’s utility could extend to Polygon’s aggregation layer (AggLayer).
The network revealed that a testnet migration went live on July 17th, indicating their preparedness to proceed with this historic upgrade. As part of the upgrade, MATIC holders on Polygon PoS won’t required to do anything, as POL will automatically be upgraded to become the network’s utility token without users having to do anything.
However, MATIC holders on Ethereum, Polygon zkEVM, or centralized exchanges (CEXs) will need to take action if they desire to upgrade their MATIC tokens to POL. MATIC holders on Ethereum will be given a migration contract, which is already deployed to enable holders to upgrade from MATIC to POL permissionless.
MATIC holders who do not have the technical knowledge to use these migration contracts can use a third-party decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator. These DEXs already integrated the migration contracts, so holders can easily swap their MATIC tokens for POL tokens.
MATIC holders on Polygon zkEVM interested in the upgrade may bridge their MATIC tokens from zkEVM to Ethereum and then use the migration contracts to update their MATIC tokens to POL. Alternatively, they can use a zkEVM DEX or DEX aggregator to swap their MATIC tokens to POL.
Polygon noted that MATIC holders on CEXs might need to review the guidance provided by their particular exchange to understand how to migrate from MATIC to POL. However, they added that most major exchanges will likely automatically assist users with this upgrade.
Promoting Blockchain Interoperability And Scaling Ethereum
The POL upgrade forms part of Polygon’s big plan to promote blockchain interoperability and further scale the Ethereum network. In the long run, POL is expected to become the native token of Polygon’s AggLayer, which is simply a network of zero-knowledge (ZK) powered layer-2 chains.
These chains will have access to shared liquidity, users, and state across all networks on the AggLayer. This is where POL comes in, as users on any of these chains on the AggLayer will no longer need to bridge tokens and send a wrapped version since they can easily send the native POL token across these chains.
From an Ethereum point of view, chains on the AggLayer are taken as a single rollup. As such, Ethereum holders can easily move their ETH tokens across these chains while maximizing the most of each chain.