Polygon was for years the answer to every fee question: anyone who found Ethereum too expensive moved to Polygon. Today it looks as if nobody is left there. Our own measurement on September 2
Polygon was for years the answer to every fee question: anyone who found Ethereum too expensive moved to Polygon. Today it looks as if nobody is left there. Our own measurement on September 28, 2026 gives a more precise picture, and it is less comfortable than the impression. The chain holds $765 million, and over 30 days it produced $37.05 million in fees, of which $30.98 million came from a single protocol. That is 83.6 percent. And that very protocol, the prediction market Polymarket, has announced that it is leaving Polygon.
This overview works through the ecosystem in order: what the chain is today, who actually uses it, where POL stands against its all-time high, how you get there in practice, where trading happens, and which risks an investor in Germany should know beforehand. All figures were collected on September 28, 2026 from the DefiLlama and CoinGecko interfaces.
Polygon is an independent network with chain ID 137 that presents itself as a fast and cheap complement to Ethereum. Technically it is EVM-compatible: the same smart contracts, meaning self-executing programs on the blockchain, run unchanged on both networks, and tokens follow the ERC-20 standard.
Since the switch, the network token is called POL and has replaced MATIC. POL does two jobs at the same time: it pays transaction fees, and it is the deposit in staking, meaning locking up tokens to secure the network in return for a reward. If you still hold old MATIC balances in a wallet, check whether the switch has gone through. On exchanges it usually ran automatically; in self-custodied wallets it did not always.
The project has also repositioned itself strategically. What was once a playground for applications of every kind has turned into a claim to be infrastructure for payments and stablecoins. That direction explains the changes to the network described further down.
Total value locked, or TVL, is the sum of the values held in a network's contracts. For Polygon, DefiLlama reported exactly $765,279,235 on September 28, 2026. For comparison, measured in the same query: Arbitrum $1.43 billion, the Robinhood Chain that launched only in July $1.02 billion, and Base $6.19 billion. A chain that ranked among the industry's largest in 2021 now sits behind a network three months old.
Trading looks similar. Polygon's decentralised exchanges handled $6.73 billion over 30 days, $1.35 billion over seven days and $207 million in 24 hours. Fees across all protocols together came to $37.05 million over 30 days, $7.10 million over seven days and $929,000 in 24 hours.
The impression of an abandoned network is therefore wrong, but only by half. Trading continues, and it runs into the billions. The question is who is doing it.
Of the $37.05 million in fees over the past 30 days, $30.98 million traces back to Polymarket, the largest prediction market in the industry. A prediction market is a venue where shares in the occurrence of future events are bought and sold. Measured by trading volume the share is smaller, though still large: $2.20 billion of $6.73 billion over 30 days, or 32.7 percent.
Polymarket has publicly announced a move to its own chain. Josh Stevens, responsible there for engineering in the DeFi area, wrote on April 25 that Polymarket's development had clearly outgrown its own infrastructure. The reason given for the move is competition for blockspace: when many applications compete for room in the blocks at the same time, fees fluctuate and confirmations are delayed, and a high-frequency venue copes badly with both. Its own chain gives full control over block time and fees.
Figures on the scale of the dependency differ, and the range itself is the news. Reporting on the move put Polymarket's share of Polygon fees at 56.3 percent. My own measurement on September 28 produces 83.6 percent. The dependency therefore grew while the move was being prepared. For Polygon that means the departure takes away the main source of revenue rather than one important customer among many. We described how Polymarket is positioned in regulatory terms in Europe in Polymarket and its EU authorisation.
No date for the move has been set publicly, and the target chain was not finally settled as of the most recent word on it. If you hold POL, follow that date, because it is the single most important factor bearing on the network's revenue.
Almost 84 percent of Polygon's fees come from one single protocol. If it moves on, the hall stays very empty.
The second tier deserves a close look, because it shows what the chain carries under its own power. In the 30 days to September 28 the network itself collected $2.21 million in fees. Behind it comes Courtyard with $2.17 million, a service that stores physical collectible cards in a vault and makes them tradable as tokens. Then follow Quickswap with $908,000, Uniswap version 4 with $680,000 and version 3 with $496,000, the prediction feature in MetaMask with $426,000 and the lending protocol Aave version 3 with $265,000.
Take Polymarket out of the count and around $6.07 million in monthly fees is left across all remaining protocols. This is not a dead chain, but it is a small one. The composition is worth noting: the strongest remaining single item is the tokenisation of real collectibles, ahead of every trading and lending protocol. Anyone testing the payments-chain story finds the first piece of evidence here that Polygon really is used away from pure crypto trading.
The plain figures, measured on September 28, 2026 at CoinGecko: POL trades at $0.1191, which converts to €0.1048. Market capitalisation stands at $1.265 billion, with roughly 10.62 billion tokens in circulation. The all-time high is $1.29 and dates from March 13, 2024. That leaves the token 90.8 percent below its peak.
The short view is friendlier than the long one. Over 30 days the price gained 13.6 percent; over twelve months it shows a loss of 46.3 percent. Both are observations and neither is a forecast. We do not issue a price target, and anyone who reads one should look at who set it and what it rests on.
The supply side matters for the classification. Circulating and total supply are practically identical for POL, so no large release of locked tokens is still pending that could weigh on the price on top of everything else. What does exist is a continuing issuance of new tokens that pays for staking rewards and an ecosystem fund. Holding POL without staking it means carrying that dilution without taking a share in it. The usual ways to change that are set out in our comparison of staking providers.
A stablecoin is a token tied to a currency whose value it is meant to track. On Polygon, DefiLlama measured $2.99 billion in such tokens on September 28, 2026. That is more than the chain's entire TVL and the real reason the project sees its future in payments: whoever sends a transfer has no use for credit or yield; what they need is a fee in the cents range and a confirmation that arrives reliably.
On its own site the project puts this focus front and centre and describes the network as groundwork for moving money rather than a field for speculation, see the official Polygon site. Part of it is the Agglayer, a layer intended to pool liquidity across several EVM networks so that a balance does not fragment across dozens of chains.
For you as a user in Germany the practical point lies elsewhere: a stablecoin on Polygon is no bank deposit. There is no deposit insurance, and the peg to the reference value depends on the issuer's backing. If you genuinely want to use crypto for paying, a card is the more common route; the differences are set out in the comparison of crypto credit cards.
A hard fork is a change to the network rules that every participant has to adopt. On July 29, 2026 the fork named Ithaca went live on Polygon's mainnet, according to the accompanying reporting the fourth update within five months.
Its content fits the payments strategy exactly. Ithaca brings automatic failover that keeps operations running when a block producer drops out, additional checks that filter out particularly demanding transactions, and better monitoring tools for node operators. None of that excites investors. These are the properties a payment provider demands before it sends real money across a network.
For holders one thing matters above all: exchanges suspend deposits and withdrawals for a few hours around such changes. Anyone who wants to withdraw at that moment has to wait. Ahead of an announced date, look up whether your provider has flagged a pause.
By exchange or by bridge: the route onto the chain decides your fees and your waiting time.
There are two routes onto Polygon, and the more convenient one is rarely the one guides name first.
The simple route runs through an exchange: buy POL or a stablecoin and withdraw it directly to the Polygon network. Look closely when selecting the network, because the same currency often exists on several chains, and a withdrawal to the wrong network is lost in the worst case. Always send a small test amount first.
The second route is a bridge, a service that locks an amount on the source network and credits it on the target network. It costs fees on both sides and pays off above all when your balance already sits in a self-custodied wallet. You enter the chain with chain ID 137; most widely used wallets now know Polygon on their own, so there is nothing to type in by hand. Never enter a network access point that somebody sent you in a message.
You can look up every movement in the Polygonscan block explorer. An explorer is the network's public ledger search, in which every transaction, every address and every contract can be viewed. For everyday use two functions matter most there: the overview of the approvals you have granted, and the option to trace a stuck transaction.
Measured by trading volume over the past 30 days Polymarket leads with $2.20 billion, followed by Uniswap version 4 with $1.79 billion, Uniswap version 3 with $727 million, Ramses with $579 million, Metric with $510 million and Quickswap with $302 million.
Quickswap deserves a mention because it is one of the few large venues that grew up on Polygon alone and still runs today. On fees it even sits ahead of both Uniswap versions. If you swap on the chain, compare two things beforehand: the venue's fee and the depth of the market in the pair concerned. In thin pairs the spread costs more than any fee.
In 2021 and 2022 Polygon was the standard choice for cheap NFT projects, because minting there cost cents instead of dozens of dollars. Little of that wave is left. What has taken its place is more interesting: the chain's second strongest fee earner after Polymarket, at $2.17 million over 30 days, is a service for physical collectible cards that makes the stored cards tradable as tokens and provides for redemption against the real card.
This is a different kind of NFT from a profile picture: behind it sits an object in a vault. For valuation that means two risks come together, namely that of the collectors' market and that of the custodian who holds the object and has to hand it over in a dispute.
Four points belong on the list before money goes onto this chain.
Concentration risk. A chain that draws 83.6 percent of its fees from a single application depends on that application. This risk is currently the largest at Polygon, and it has already been announced.
Stale approvals. Anyone active on Polygon since 2021 has in all likelihood granted approvals there to contracts that have long stopped being maintained. An approval stays valid until you revoke it, and a contract taken over later can use it. Work through the list in Polygonscan once; it is the most effective half hour a long-standing user of this chain can invest.
Thin liquidity in old tokens. Many projects from Polygon's heyday are barely traded any more. A quoted price does not mean there is a buyer at that price.
Custody. Leaving POL on an exchange means trusting the provider. For longer-term holdings a wallet whose keys you hold yourself is the obvious choice, with the recovery phrase secured away from your home.
Three points are relevant for investors in Germany, and the second is regularly overlooked.
First, the sale. Under Section 23 of the German Income Tax Act (EStG) selling or swapping POL is a private disposal. After a holding period of one year the gain stays tax-free; below that an exemption limit of €1,000 per calendar year applies to all such transactions together, and once it is exceeded the entire gain becomes taxable. Swapping POL into a stablecoin already counts as a sale here.
Second, the staking rewards. They have to be recorded as other income, valued at the time they arrive, and a separate and much lower exemption limit of €256 a year applies to them. The amount received is at the same time the acquisition value for a later disposal, from which the one-year period starts again. Receiving rewards monthly therefore builds up twelve individual items over the year.
Third, the switch from MATIC to POL. Whether such an exchange counts as a disposal for tax purposes or as a mere renaming depends on the specific technical arrangement and is a question for a tax adviser, not for a line in an article. Keep the record of the date and the price of the switch to hand, and you can support either reading.
Polygon is still in use, and heavily dependent on one application. The network earns real money, but the largest part of it comes from an application that wants to leave. Alongside that, a smaller and self-standing ecosystem has grown up in which payments, stablecoins and tokenised collectibles set the tone, while the token trades 90.8 percent below its high of March 2024.
(As of September 28, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)
