Creator: Jae, PANews
In the lengthy historical past of Ethereum scaling, Polygon was as soon as remembered as a “sidechain.” Now, it’s quietly shedding its previous shell, trying to be reborn.
Not too long ago, Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal declared 2026 as the “12 months of rebirth” for POL. In the week following his submit, the value of the POL token surged by over 30%.
With Polygon’s acquisition of Coinme and Sequence and the disclosure of its know-how roadmap, it goals to evolve from an Ethereum scaling answer right into a “cost and tokenization basis” for the world market.
Spending over $250 million on a serious acquisition, bridging the final mile of money on-chain know-how.
Polygon has begun to undertake a extremely aggressive technique, straight penetrating the monetary gateways of the bodily world.
On January 13, Polygon Labs introduced the completion of its acquisition of two crypto firms, Coinme and Sequence, for a complete transaction worth exceeding $250 million. Coinme focuses on the change of money for crypto property and operates a community of crypto ATMs in the United States; Sequence supplies on-chain infrastructure companies, together with merchandise reminiscent of crypto wallets.
Polygon Labs CEO Marc Boiron and Sandeep Nailwal said that this acquisition is a crucial half of their stablecoin and funds technique, aiming to strengthen Polygon’s presence in the infrastructure sector. This transfer additionally marks Polygon’s growth from “sensible contracts” to “bodily infrastructure.”
It is value noting that Coinme was one of the first licensed Bitcoin ATM operators in the United States. This deal not solely acquired its ATM community masking 49 states and tens of hundreds of retail places (reminiscent of massive supermarkets like Kroger), however extra importantly, it acquired a complete set of licenses important for cost establishments in the United States—Cash Switch Licenses (MTLs).
The underlying logic of this acquisition lies in establishing a bodily community for depositing and withdrawing funds. For abnormal customers who don’t have conventional financial institution accounts or entry to CEXs (centralized exchanges), Polygon supplies a channel via Coinme’s ATMs to straight convert money into on-chain property (reminiscent of stablecoins or POL) at grocery store checkouts.
It is a shortcut to “on-chain money,” but in addition a major compliance barrier. Buying an entity that has been working for over a decade with a mature compliance framework will present Polygon with an especially excessive entry threshold. Though Coinme nonetheless faces some regulatory challenges (reminiscent of the refund order from Washington State’s DFI), for Polygon, this stays the optimum answer for unlocking liquidity in the bodily world.
Briefly, this large-scale acquisition is not only about shopping for gear, but in addition about shopping for entry, licenses, and belief.
Sandeep Nailwal said frankly that this transfer will put Polygon Labs in direct competitors with Stripe. Over the previous 12 months, Stripe has additionally acquired stablecoin and crypto pockets startups and developed its personal public blockchain for cost situations to construct a complete know-how stack from cost processing to person asset storage.
Total, on this new spherical of stablecoin arms race, Polygon Labs is trying to acquire a foothold on the identical beginning line as conventional fintech giants via acquisitions.
A efficiency surge from 5,000 to 100,000 TPS
The battle for stablecoin funds can’t be gained with out robust technical assist.
In accordance to Sandeep Nailwal’s TPS (transactions per second) roadmap, Polygon goals to elevate the execution effectivity of blockchain to the stage of the conventional web.
Polygon’s current Madhugiri exhausting fork improve has yielded preliminary outcomes, growing on-chain TPS by 40% to 1,400 TPS.
The group’s first-phase plan is to attain 5,000 TPS inside 6 months. The purpose of this section is to remedy the congestion drawback that PoS chains at present face throughout peak transaction intervals, enabling Polygon to deal with the throughput calls for of world retail funds.
The extra aggressive second-phase improve plan goals to enhance the total ecosystem’s TPS to 100,000 inside 12 to 24 months, which means Polygon is poised to deal with Visa-level transaction density.
Attaining this purpose is determined by two main technological leaps:
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Rio improve: Introduces stateless verification and recursive proof, decreasing transaction finality from minutes to about 5 seconds and eliminating chain reorganization threat;
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AggLayer: By means of ZK proof aggregation, it allows seamless sharing of liquidity throughout a number of chains, guaranteeing that 100,000 TPS just isn’t a load on a single chain, however fairly a distributed synergy of the total Polygon community.
It could possibly be stated that Polygon just isn’t reworking a sequence, however constructing a federation.
Fee companies penetrate retail situations, integrating three main Fintech giants.
As soon as the deposit and withdrawal channels and throughput capability are each in place, cost will naturally observe.
Polygon is positioning itself as the technological basis of a worldwide funds community via deep partnerships with fintech giants.
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Revolut’s full integration: As Europe’s largest digital financial institution with 65 million customers, Revolut has built-in Polygon into its most important infrastructure for crypto funds, staking, and buying and selling. Revolut customers can straight conduct low-cost stablecoin transfers and POL token staking via the Polygon community. As of the finish of 2025, Revolut customers’ buying and selling quantity on Polygon has been steadily growing, with its cumulative buying and selling quantity approaching $900 million.
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Flutterwave’s Settlement Bridge: African funds big Flutterwave has additionally chosen Polygon as its default public blockchain for cross-border funds, specializing in stablecoin settlements. Given the excessive conventional remittance prices in Africa, Polygon’s low charges and quick settlements present a greater possibility for native driver funds and commerce on platforms like Uber.
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Mastercard’s id answer: Mastercard makes use of Polygon to energy the “Mastercard Crypto Credential” id answer, introducing verified usernames to its self-custodied wallets. This considerably reduces the barrier to entry and the threat of deal with identification throughout transfers, whereas additionally enhancing the cost expertise.
Polygon can also be considerably penetrating on a regular basis client situations. Dune knowledge exhibits that by the finish of 2025, the quantity of small-amount cost transactions (between $10 and $100) on Polygon will strategy 900,000, a report excessive, representing a rise of over 30% in contrast to November.
Leon Waidmann, head of analysis at Onchain, emphasised that this transaction vary extremely overlaps with on a regular basis bank card spending, indicating that Polygon is progressively changing into a serious channel for cost gateways and PayFi (cost finance).
BlackRock invests $500 million in tokenization enterprise focusing on the institutional market.
If cost is Polygon’s entry level for person site visitors, then tokenization is the basis of its institutional-grade infrastructure.
In the discipline of RWA (Actual-World Asset) distribution, Polygon has turn into the testing floor and most popular platform for high world asset administration establishments. Its low interplay prices and seamless compatibility with the Ethereum ecosystem give Polygon a major benefit in the on-chain migration of conventional monetary property.
In October 2025, BlackRock, the world’s largest asset administration agency, deployed roughly $500 million in property on the Polygon community via its BUIDL tokenized fund.
This transfer represents the highest stage of assurance concerning the safety of the Polygon 2.0 structure. With the large-scale influx of institutional funds, Polygon’s TVL (Whole Worth Locked) and liquidity depth could also be additional enhanced.
AlloyX’s Actual Yield Token (RYT) launched on Polygon is a first-rate instance of the integration of conventional finance and DeFi. This fund invests in short-term, low-risk devices reminiscent of US Treasury bonds, and its distinctive function is its assist for a looping technique. Buyers can use RYT as collateral to borrow funds in DeFi protocols and then reinvest it in the fund to amplify returns.
NRW.BANK’s issuance of digital bonds on Polygon represents a major breakthrough for it in Europe’s regulated capital markets. These bonds function beneath Germany’s Digital Securities Act (eWpG), demonstrating that Polygon can challenge not solely standard crypto tokens but in addition assist compliant property with stringent regulatory necessities.
POL reveals robust deflationary traits, and token worth seize has restarted.
Returning to the underlying asset itself, the shift from MATIC to POL just isn’t merely a change in token symbols, however fairly a reconstruction of financial logic.
Since the beginning of 2026, Polygon has generated over $1.7 million in transaction charges and burned over 12.5 million POL tokens (roughly $1.5 million).
Citadel Labs factors out that the most important motive for the surge in charges is that Polymarket launched a 15-minute prediction market price function, which straight introduced Polygon greater than $100,000 in each day income.
Beforehand, the Polygon PoS community set a historic report: 3 million POL have been destroyed in a single day, equal to roughly 0.03% of the whole provide. This was not unintentional, however a pure consequence of the ecosystem getting into a high-frequency utilization section.
In accordance to the EIP-1559 mechanism, when block utilization stays above 50% for an prolonged interval, fuel charges will enter a fast upward development. At present, Polygon’s each day burning quantity has stabilized at round 1 million POL, with an annualized burning price of roughly 3.5%, greater than double its annualized staking yield (roughly 1.5%). Which means that via on-chain exercise alone, the circulating provide of POL is being “bodily eliminated” at a substantial price.
This high-density worth seize might assist what Sandeep Nailwal calls “token rebirth”.
The moat coexists with 4 sorts of dangers
Though Polygon’s present scenario appears very promising, it nonetheless faces 4 main challenges:
- The double-edged sword of regulatory policy: Whereas the acquisition of Coinme introduced Polygon a license, it additionally uncovered it straight to the regulatory oversight of numerous US states. If Coinme’s previous compliance points escalate, it might impression POL’s deliberate “rebirth” in 2026.
- The fragmented technical structure presents challenges: Polygon 2.0 contains a number of advanced modules, together with PoS, zkEVM, AggLayer, and Miden. Whereas this multi-component structure provides better performance, sustaining such a big ecosystem with various technical approaches presents important engineering challenges and safety dangers. Particularly, a vulnerability in AggLayer’s cross-chain interactions might set off a systemic catastrophe.
- Intense competitors in the public blockchain market:
- The rise of Base: Backed by Coinbase, Base has achieved extraordinarily excessive person development and is eroding Polygon’s market share in areas reminiscent of social networking and funds.
- The stress from high-performance public chains: Excessive-performance L1 blockchains reminiscent of Solana nonetheless have a number one benefit in transaction velocity and developer expertise, whereas Polygon’s purpose of 100,000 TPS nonetheless wants time to be validated.
- Monetary sustainability issues: Token Terminal knowledge exhibits that Polygon suffered a internet loss of over $26 million in the previous 12 months, with its transaction price income failing to cowl validator prices. This reliance on ecosystem incentives means it stays in a “burning cash for market share” section. Even when Polygon returns to profitability by 2026, the sustainability of its income era stays to be seen.
Clearly, Polygon is now not content material with being a “plugin” for Ethereum, and its transformation path deserves cautious consideration: breaking via efficiency bottlenecks via technological scaling, decreasing the entry threshold via funding and mergers and acquisitions, acquiring credit score endorsement via high establishments, and lastly strengthening person stickiness via high-frequency situations.
2026, designated as the “12 months of Rebirth,” might be marked not solely by fluctuations in the POL token value but in addition by Polygon’s profound resonance with the world monetary pulse as infrastructure. For buyers, monitoring the technological implementation progress of Polygon 2.0, the influx and turnover of funds, and its monetary efficiency might be key to figuring out whether or not Polygon can efficiently rise from the ashes.
