Polygon now in ‘POL’ position to replace MATIC

• Polygon Labs announced that the POL contract has been deployed on the Ethereum Mainnet.
• 10 million MATIC holders have switched to the POL address.

Times are changing, and for web3 project Polygon [MATIC], this could be the period to finally phase out the current ticker of its token, and replace it with another laced with more functionalities.

How much are 1,10,100 MATICs worth today?

According to the official X (formerly Twitter) handle of Polygon, POL has been deployed on the Ethereum [ETH] Mainnet.

The POL token upgrade is now live on Ethereum mainnet.

Polygon 2.0, released this summer, is a roadmap for scaling Ethereum to build the Value Layer of the Internet. POL unlocks that future.

POL is a next-generation token that can power a vast ecosystem of ZK-based L2 chains.… pic.twitter.com/gmrsu0ZqLz

— Polygon (Labs) (@0xPolygonLabs) October 25, 2023

Polygon’s plans change to operation 

Interestingly, this is not the first time Polygon mentioned that POL would be the new ticker for its native cryptocurrency. In July, AMBCrypto reported how the project notified the crypto community of its intention to replace MATIC with the POL token.

During that time, Polygon said that the decision for the switch was necessary and in line with its Polygon 2.0 objective to build the “value layer of the internet.” Attached to its post on X (formerly Twitter) was a blog post with extensive details about the deployment. 

According to Polygon, there was already a contract address for the POL token. In terms of utility, the statement noted that holders would be able to validate multiple chains and access shared liquidity. The post read,

“POL holders to validate multiple chains and perform multiple roles. The POL upgrade also paves the way for the next series of milestones in the Polygon 2.0 roadmap.”

MATIC’s reaction to the development was, however, negligible. For a token that has gained 25.22% in the last seven days, it remained around the $0.63 region after the announcement till press time.

 Full migration expected in 2024

Concerning the Network Growth on the Polygon network, Santiment showed that the metric tanked. Network Growth shows the number of new addresses interacting with a network.

So, the decrease means that new entrants who confirmed adoption through transactions have refrained from making them.

But it was a contrasting case for the Active Addresses 24h. At the time of writing, MATIC’s active addresses had grown to 2237. Daily active addresses show the number of distinct addresses speculating around a token.

Therefore, the hike in the metric suggests increased crowd interaction with MATIC.

Source: Santiment

Meanwhile, Tom Wan, a research analyst at 21co, disclosed that some MATIC holders were already migrating to POL. According to Wan, about 10 million holders of the token out of the total 57 million have made the move.

Contract Address of Polygon’s POL is live, currently with 10,000,028,681 supply

0x29e7DF7b6A1B2b07b731457f499E1696c60E2C4e seems to be the migration contract, with the function to migrate MATIC to POL

So far, 10M MATIC has been migrated. The unmigration function isnt being… pic.twitter.com/A7xpmudKVd

— Tom Wan (@tomwanhh) October 25, 2023

However, Wan also seemed concerned about the inability to migrate from the POL contract back to MATIC. But David Silverman, VP of product at Polygon Labs, addressed this issue. Silverman mentioned that the migration from MATIC to POL has begun, and will be in stages.

Read Polygon [MATIC] Price Prediction 2023-2024

He also noted that the complete activation of the PIP-19 in 2024 would ensure quick movement by holders. For context, PIP-19 is the updated Polygon Proof-of-Stake (PoS) bridge contract, ensuring the compatibility between MATIC and POL.

The VP said,

“Migration is happening in stages. Users can migrate between MATIC <> POL on Ethereum today. When PIP-19 gets activated early 2024 all MATIC on Polygon PoS becomes POL. Lastly staking will migrate to POL in mid 2024 to complete the migration.”