The Polygon Network Runs on POL Instead of MATIC: What to Watch in Your Wallet, Fees and Polygonscan

Anyone who has held crypto for a few years stands a good chance of still having a position in MATIC somewhere. The token no longer exists in that form. The Polygon network has replaced it with POL, as a pure change of name and function at a rate of one to one, without any haircut in value. Anyone who never carried out the exchange will find their balance either long since converted automatically or still sitting as the old token on Ethereum, depending on where it is kept.

This piece answers both questions: what happened to your MATIC, and how you use the Polygon network day to day. So setting up a wallet, judging the fees, reading the block explorer Polygonscan, and knowing the traps that most often catch people out when withdrawing from an exchange.

POL instead of MATIC: what actually happened in the token switch

Since September 4, 2024, POL has carried the jobs on Polygon's mainnet that previously belonged to MATIC: fees and staking. The exchange runs one to one, so for every MATIC you get one POL. According to the project, around a year later roughly 99 percent of holdings had been converted.

What matters for you is where your balance sits. A holding that was on the Polygon network itself was converted automatically; there you never had to do anything. A holding on Ethereum does not convert by itself. For that there is an exchange function in Polygon's official portal, where you confirm the swap yourself. That is how it is set out in the documentation on the transition from MATIC to POL.

At trading venues the switch mostly ran in the background: the balance in the account became POL overnight, often without any customer noticing. If your exchange still shows you MATIC today, it is worth a look at its announcements, because two separate balances would be a sign that something got stuck there.

One misunderstanding is persistent: the switch did not change the value of your holding. Where the token's price stands and how the project has developed is something you can check on our price page for the Polygon ecosystem token.

The network details: chain ID 137, POL as the fee token, Polygonscan as the explorer

Polygon PoS is an independent blockchain, closely linked to Ethereum and using the same address formats and the same kind of smart contracts. The chain ID, the identifying number by which wallets recognise the network, is 137. The block explorer is called Polygonscan. And the currency for fees is POL.

This is exactly where the most important difference from everything running on Ethereum and its extensions lies: on Polygon you pay with POL, not with ether. Anyone who sends stablecoins to the network without POL alongside them cannot move those coins on. An equivalent of one to two euros in POL covers a great many transactions and saves you that standstill.

A second point concerns readers who know the name Polygon from older guides. Alongside the mainnet the project ran several further components, among them a variant called zkEVM, whose operation was shut down on July 1, 2026. The Polygon PoS mainnet is unaffected by that and continues to run unchanged. If an older guide leads you to a different Polygon network, it is out of date.

Setting up the wallet: pick the network rather than create a new address

In most wallets Polygon is already stored as a network, and you pick it from a list. If you have to enter it by hand, you need three details: the identifying number 137, an access point, and POL as the network's currency. Your existing address continues to apply, because Polygon uses the same address format as Ethereum.

From that follows the same rule of thumb that applies on all Ethereum-adjacent networks: you do not have several addresses, you have one address on several networks. Which type of wallet suits which amount is set out in our comparison of software wallets; the general procedure for any network we wrote up in the overview of adding networks, bridges and explorers.

If your wallet shows an empty balance after switching over, usually nothing has been lost. As a rule the money is simply on another network, and the explorer shows you which one.

Fees on Polygon: what a transfer costs at the end of September

We recalculated several real transactions from a live Polygon block at the end of September. A simple transfer came to roughly 0.05 cents in converted terms. More demanding operations, such as a swap through a decentralised exchange, ranged between a good tenth of a cent and almost 2.6 cents.

The fee is calculated in POL and hangs on two figures: how busy the network is and the token's price. Because POL currently trades in the range of a few cents, the amounts stay small even when the load picks up. That is convenient, and at the same time it tempts people into making many small transactions, which quickly makes the later documentation for tax purposes hard to follow.

The way onto the network: exchange withdrawal versus a bridge through the Polygon portal

There are two ways to get a balance onto Polygon, and the simpler one is usually also the cheaper. At many trading venues you can pick Polygon directly as the target network when withdrawing. The amount then appears at your address within a few minutes, and you pay only the provider's withdrawal fee.

The second route runs through a bridge, in Polygon's case through the project's official portal. You send your balance from Ethereum to a contract that releases it again on Polygon. This route costs you a full Ethereum transaction and pays off above all when your holding already sits in your own wallet on Ethereum.

On the way back, Polygon PoS differs noticeably from the Ethereum extensions with a challenge period: there, withdrawals through the official bridge wait seven days, as we described using the example of Arbitrum and its seven-day period. At Polygon the waiting time for the way back to Ethereum is well below that, but it depends on the route chosen. What counts is therefore the span the portal or the provider shows you before you confirm, not a blanket figure from a guide.

Anyone using faster routes through third parties should know how they work: a liquidity provider fronts you the amount on the target network and handles the slow route itself. That costs a discount and brings an additional counterparty risk with it, because for the duration of the process you are trusting a contract and an operator. For small amounts that is often acceptable, for the bulk of a holding rather less so.

Reading Polygonscan: status, token transfers and open approvals

A block explorer is a search window into the blockchain. You enter an address or the identifier of a transaction and see what was actually recorded, regardless of what your wallet happens to be showing. For Polygon that tool is called Polygonscan.

Four fields are decisive in everyday use. The status reveals whether a transaction went through or broke off with an error; a failed transaction still costs a fee. Under token transfers you see which tokens really changed hands in the operation. The transaction fee field names the fee actually paid, in POL. And the token approvals tab lists every approval your address has ever granted.

That last tab is the most useful and the least often opened. Anyone swapping on a network over the years builds up a long list of open permissions there, most of which have not been needed for a long time. Tools that pull such lists together across several networks you will find in our comparison of analytics platforms.

Typical mishaps on Polygon: wrong network, missing POL, fake tokens

The withdrawal to the wrong network. You accidentally pick Ethereum instead of Polygon at the exchange, and the balance lands at the right address on the wrong network. That is not a total loss, because the address belongs to you on both networks. You do have to move the amount across a bridge, though, and pay Ethereum fees for it that can come to a multiple of the sum you saved. So always check the target network in the withdrawal window before you confirm.

The missing fee token. Without POL on the network every transaction fails, including passing stablecoins on. Set a small amount aside before you transfer larger sums.

The worthless token in the wallet. On open networks anyone can create a token with any name they like and send it to other people's addresses. The fact that a well-known name turns up in your overview says nothing about whether it is genuine. What counts is the contract address alone, and you match that in the explorer against the project's own statement. A token sent to you unasked that invites you to swap it on an unfamiliar site is the entry point to an attempted fraud.

The old guide. Because Polygon has run several networks and the token was renamed, plenty of outdated step-by-step texts are circulating. A guide that names MATIC as the fee token or points to the discontinued zkEVM is older than today's state of affairs.

Revoking approvals and spotting phishing on Polygon

An approval is the permission you grant a smart contract to move a particular token from your address. Without it no swap on a decentralised exchange works. The problem is the duration: many applications ask by default for an unlimited approval, and that stays in force until you actively withdraw it.

The revocation itself is unspectacular. You call up the list of your approvals, select what you no longer need, and send a transaction that sets the value to zero. On Polygon that costs you fractions of a cent. A pass like that makes sense whenever you have not used an application for a longer stretch, or when you read of an incident at a project you once gave access to.

With phishing, the most dangerous form has long since stopped being the faked input screen for the recovery phrase. Heavier still is the signature you give for something you have not read. Your wallet shows you before every confirmation which contract gets which permission. Anyone holding larger amounts is in any case better off keeping them separate from the wallet they use day to day.

POL in the network: staking, validators and the lockup on giving it back

POL has a second job on Polygon alongside the fees. The token serves to secure the network: anyone depositing POL supports a validator, an operator that confirms transactions, and receives a share of the network's rewards for it. The procedure is called staking.

Two things matter here for investors in Germany. First, the balance is tied up while it is deposited, and a waiting period applies to giving it back, one whose length varies with the route. Second, the income is to be treated differently for tax purposes from a price gain. According to the project, around a year after the start roughly 99 percent of holdings had been converted. How the various staking providers and routes differ is shown by our comparison of staking platforms.

Anyone using Polygon purely as a cheap payment network needs none of this. For everyone else the rule is: income and lockups belong in the same schedule as purchases and swaps, otherwise half the figures are missing at the end of the year.

Tax in Germany: keeping the exchange, bridging and swapping apart

For investors in Germany the principle from section 23 of the Income Tax Act applies: selling or swapping a cryptocurrency is a private disposal. If the purchase lies more than a year back, a gain stays tax-free. Below that it counts towards taxable income as soon as the sum of all private disposals in a year exceeds the exemption limit.

On Polygon three operations have to be kept apart, and they are easily confused. The exchange of MATIC into POL is a technical switch of the same asset at a rate of one to one; the tax administration has published no separate rule on it, and the prevailing view does not treat it as a disposal. Bridging between Ethereum and Polygon moves your own balance between two networks and is therefore likewise not a sale. A swap of one token for another on the network, by contrast, is a disposal just as it would be on any exchange.

Because Polygon's low fees mean many small operations pile up, the schedule quickly grows long. Keep the record as you go rather than retroactively in the spring. These statements are no substitute for tax advice; how a specific case is to be assessed belongs in expert hands.

Polygon: the key points for your decision

1. First establish where your old holding sits. A balance on the Polygon network was converted into POL automatically long ago, while a balance on Ethereum may still be waiting for your confirmation in the official portal. For a holding at a trading venue you check the display in your account. Which providers are authorised in the EU is shown by our comparison of regulated crypto exchanges.
2. Set POL aside for the fees before you transfer anything. An equivalent of one to two euros covers a great many transactions and prevents the most common standstill on the network. How the ecosystem around Polygon stands today we examined in our stocktake of Polygon 2026.
3. Document every movement from the outset. Note the date, amount and equivalent value for every swap, so that the holding period stays traceable later. Which programs record this automatically is shown by our comparison of tax and portfolio tools.

(As of September 29, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)