What Is the POL Token? Polygon's MATIC Migration Explained

Polygon launched in 2017 as Matic Network, and for years its native token — MATIC — powered everything on the network: gas fees, staking, governance. The Polygon 2.0 roadmap, announced in 2023 and executed through 2024–2025, was an architectural overhaul designed to transform Polygon from a single Layer 2 chain into a network of interconnected ZK-powered chains unified by the AggLayer. That overhaul required a new token designed for a more complex role.

POL is designed to be a "hyperproductive" token — meaning a single token that can simultaneously secure multiple chains, participate in governance across the ecosystem, and pay gas fees on any Polygon chain. MATIC was a single-chain staking and gas token. POL is a multi-chain coordination token. The migration happened at a 1:1 ratio — every MATIC became one POL — but the underlying function expanded significantly.

What POL Means for NFT Creators and Collectors

For day-to-day NFT activity on Polygon, the practical experience of the MATIC-to-POL migration is minimal. You still pay gas in the network's native token. You still hold NFTs in the same wallets. OpenSea and other Polygon-compatible marketplaces updated their interfaces to reflect POL. The biggest visible change is the token name in your wallet and on exchange listings.

What matters more in the longer term is what POL enables architecturally. The AggLayer — Polygon's chain aggregation layer — allows NFTs and tokens minted on one Polygon chain to move across other Polygon chains without traditional bridging friction. For the NFT space, this means a collection minted on Polygon PoS could become liquid on a Polygon zkEVM gaming chain without a complex cross-chain bridge transaction. That's the promise of Polygon 2.0 for NFT creators specifically.

For Strategic Crypto Reserve's Polygon-based NFT collections, POL is the token used for gas when minting or transferring SCR NFTs. Nothing about the SCR ecosystem changed functionally with the migration — but the infrastructure under it became significantly more capable. See our Polygon 2.0 and AggLayer explainer for the technical details, or our POL staking guide if you want to put idle tokens to work.

Searches for "how to swap MATIC to POL" usually come from people who still see MATIC somewhere and aren't sure whether they need to do anything. The conversion is always 1 MATIC = 1 POL, so no value is gained or lost. What you have to do depends only on where your MATIC sits.

1. MATIC on an exchange (Coinbase, Kraken and others)

Nothing to do. Major exchanges converted customer balances to POL for you. If your account still shows MATIC, check the exchange's help centre for its own conversion notice; don't send the tokens anywhere.

2. MATIC on the Polygon PoS network (MetaMask, Trust Wallet and others)

Nothing to swap. On Polygon PoS the native gas token itself became POL, so the balance you hold is POL. Some wallets still show the old symbol: in MetaMask go to Settings → Networks → Polygon Mainnet and change the currency symbol from MATIC to POL. The balance will not change.

3. MATIC as an ERC-20 token on Ethereum

This is the only case that needs a migration, and it is a straight upgrade rather than a market trade:

1. Go to the official Polygon Portal at portal.polygon.technology and connect your wallet on the Ethereum network.
2. Open the Migrate option and enter the amount of MATIC.
3. Approve the MATIC spend, then confirm the migration. That is two Ethereum transactions, paid in ETH gas.
4. POL arrives 1:1 in the same wallet. Add the POL token to your wallet if it doesn't appear automatically.

A DEX "swap" from MATIC to POL on Ethereum works too, but it goes through a market pool, so you pay trading fees and slippage. The Portal migration is exactly 1:1.

Once your POL is in place you can use it for gas and NFT mints straight away, or put it to work with our POL staking guide.