Polygon: burning 100 million POL and pivoting towards stablecoins, where is the project now?

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September 21, 2026Rémy Rencurel

100 million POL soon to go up in smoke?

Sandeep Nailwal, the CEO of the Polygon Foundation, recently unveiled a massive burn plan aimed at destroying 100 million POL tokens. The uniqueness of the mechanism lies in its openness. Once the smart contracts are validated by the Polygon Security Council, any community member can trigger the destruction of the tokens.

The operation relies on a collector wallet that accumulates the network's base fees. This collector already holds 121 million POL, worth approximately 13 million dollars at the current rate. After the first burn is executed, quarterly operations will follow according to the same community logic.

On paper, the announcement fits into a deflationary dynamic that has been in place since January 2026, according to Nailwal. However, there remains a recurring criticism from the community, which is evident in the responses to the original tweet: the POL supply is experiencing an annual inflation of 2%, which translates to about 200 million tokens issued each year. Therefore, the burn of 100 million is not mechanically sufficient to make the net supply deflationary over twelve months. This frustration has already been expressed by holders, as highlighted by the previous backlash regarding POL's tokenomics at the end of 2025.

BIG UPDATE: 100M POL ready to be permanently BURNED.

Polygon is printing revenue. $24.5m YTD. We are deploying a change that lets anyone in the community trigger its burn.

2026YTD Revenue

Super happy about $NEAR and $ARB getting much deserved love, but in terms of revenue, my... pic.twitter.com/NRvsGUA7YD

--- Sandeep | CEO, Polygon Foundation (※,※) (@sandeepnailwal) September 18, 2026

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An on-chain health improving since the beginning of the year

Sandeep Nailwal highlights protocol revenues of $24.5 million for Polygon since the beginning of 2026, a figure he compares to those of Arbitrum and NEAR, which would be $8.41 million and $5.6 million respectively. Polygon would thus generate << 3 times more revenue than Arbitrum and 5 times more than NEAR >> during this period. But be careful, Nailwal himself says that it is his << ChatGPT analyst >> (an AI analysis) that provided him with these figures, so take them with a grain of salt.

Data from DefiLlama confirms a good dynamic on the on-chain fees side for Polygon, with more than $1 million in daily App fees since April. And even $1.32 million in the last 24 hours, with a total of 355,873 active addresses during this period.

On the side of its TVL (total value locked), the Polygon network has nearly $788 million in locked assets, which is still quite far behind Arbitrum, which has $1.43 billion in TVL.

The dynamics of App fees (fees paid by users across all protocols/applications) on Polygon have been on the rise since the beginning of the year. (DefiLlama)

Polygon's Shift to Stablecoins and Payments is Fully Embraced

Initially designed as a scalability solution for the Ethereum (ETH) network, Polygon had to diversify in response to the declining transaction costs on the ETH network and the low costs of competitors like L2 Base or Arbitrum, as its cost of use was initially its strongest selling point.

For several months, Polygon has clearly shifted towards payments, particularly through stablecoins. The official documentation of the network highlights a finality of 2 to 5 seconds thanks to the Heimdall v2 upgrade, fees around $0.0001 per transaction, and integrations with Stripe, Shopify, Revolut, and MoonPay.

This strategy has been reinforced by several major announcements, notably at the end of 2025, with the choice of the neobank Revolut to use Polygon as its main crypto infrastructure and Mastercard's extension of its verified aliases on the POL network.

Polymarket: The Predictive Market is a Central Driver of Activity on Polygon

It is impossible to discuss activity on the Polygon blockchain without mentioning Polymarket. The predictive markets platform, which has become a global phenomenon since the 2024 U.S. elections, operates entirely on the Polygon network and represents a significant share of the network's exchanges. Indeed, according to data from DefiLlama, of the $1.32 million in App fees in 24 hours that we previously mentioned, Polymarket alone accounts for $998,428, or 76% of all protocol fees!

This dependence on the famous predictive market is, of course, a double-edged sword. On one hand, Polymarket has provided Polygon with a unique showcase and a constant flow of active users, contributing to the growth of active addresses and exchanges on the network. On the other hand, it exposes the blockchain to very real regulatory risks, such as the total blocking of Polymarket ordered by French authorities, against which the platform has since filed an appeal.

For the Polygon Foundation, the challenge now is to diversify high-value use cases, particularly between stablecoin payments and tokenization, to prevent a regulatory shock on Polymarket from leading to a sharp decline in on-chain activity.

A Market That Remains Generally Skeptical Despite a Small Increase in POL

The announcement of the upcoming burn of 100 million tokens by CEO Sandeep Nailwal has caused a slight increase in the price of POL, which rose from below $0.10 before the tweet to about $0.108 at the time of writing, representing an increase of around 8%.

However, POL still shows a decrease of 91.6% compared to its ATH (all-time high) of March 2024, when it reached $1.29. Will the Polygon Foundation's decision to accelerate deflationary mechanisms succeed in pushing POL back up? The coming months should provide a good indication of this question, although the health of the leading cryptocurrency Bitcoin (BTC) will also be essential for a sustainable recovery in POL prices.

Sources: Sandeep Nailwal on X, DefiLlama, Polygon Documentation

Rémy Rencurel76 articles
Intrigued by Bitcoin and blockchain technology since 2013, I became a professional in the sector by becoming, since 2018, a specialized writer in crypto news. I have followed the crypto sphere through its cycles, from amateur mining in the early days to the gradual structuring of the sector. Now independent, I cover crypto news, financial markets, and regulation.