6 reasons why @0xPolygon needs to change its $POL economics. #1 — Compounding concentrates fees in the hands of a few

BREAKING: @trondao is now live on Polygon OMS. Move, program and store stablecoins anywhere on Earth. The full money flow, now on TRON.

I’ve been in crypto for 9 years. Writing about Polygon for 6. For almost 5 of those years, $POL has been going down. And for 5 years I’ve heard the same shit almost every day: Polygon is dead. The token is dead. Polymarket is leaving. Polygon is finished. So yes - when actually dead chains finally shut down, I’m going to make fun of it. At the same time, I genuinely wish their teams nothing but love and good luck with whatever they build next. Polygon earned its place here. It survived. It deserves a comeback. And I believe that comeback isn’t far away.

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POV: being the CEO of @0xPolygon

BREAKING: Vadim sold all his $POL at ath in 2021.

I went through the top 100 Polygon validators on @POLTRACK and one thing immediately stands out. Most validators exist to make money from validating. Professional staking companies. Infrastructure providers. CEXs. Independent staking pools. POLTRACK alone explicitly labels 15 as professional operators and 6 as custodial exchanges. There are few actual applications running validators to offset the cost of using @0xPolygon. I think that should change. There are basically two reasons to run a validator: Run validators as a business and earn a profit from other people’s stake. Run a validator because your application spends heavily on the chain and you want to recycle part of that cost while helping secure the infrastructure you depend on. Polygon already has plenty of #1. It needs much more of #2. Imagine Polymarket, major gaming apps, payment companies, DeFi protocols and other heavy Polygon users maintaining strategic POL reserves and validating the chain. They don’t even need to operate the hardware themselves. A professional operator could maintain it for them. The economic relationship is what matters. Instead of: App → buys POL → spends POL → validator captures revenue You get: App → holds POL → stakes POL → uses Polygon → earns part of its chain costs back → remains economically aligned with Polygon That turns Polygon’s largest customers into owners and security participants. The validator set shouldn’t only represent businesses that profit from validators. It should increasingly represent the businesses that actually make Polygon useful. @sandeepnailwal @0xPolygon @0xPolygonFdn @0xPolygonEco

ethereum:0x455e53cbb86018ac2b8092fdcd39d8444affc3f6 is about to fly. Safe flight everyone!

Polygon spent years building usage while $POL captured too little of the upside. That was a fair criticism. Now they are actively reversing it. Real network fees are being routed to stakers. POL is being burned. Staking is becoming increasingly funded by actual usage instead of only inflation. And somehow, now that @sandeepnailwal and some Polygon team members openly talk about creating value for $POL, that becomes the controversy. That makes no sense. For years the criticism was: “Great network, but where is the value capture?” Now Polygon is building the value capture. And suddenly talking about the value of the token is considered a problem? Crypto has no issue celebrating revenue, buybacks and token economics when it comes from trading platforms or memecoin launchpads. A blockchain should be allowed to care about the economic value of the asset that secures it too. Especially when that value is increasingly backed by: real usage → real fees → burn + real yield for over more than a year. You can’t spend years criticizing Polygon because $POL captured too little value — then call it a red flag when Polygon starts fixing exactly that. @0xPolygon @0xPolygonFdn @0xPolygonEco

Why isn’t @Polymarket running its own Polygon validator? Polymarket has bought roughly 188M $POL this year to keep its infrastructure running. Now imagine it maintained a strategic reserve of that size and staked it through its own validator. At the upcoming ~7.7% annualized staking rate, 188M POL would generate roughly: ~39.7K POL/day from staking Add its estimated validator share of current priority fees: ~2.2K POL/day Total: ~42K POL/day And that’s before block-producer revenue. So during that reward window, a 188M POL reserve could theoretically recycle a very meaningful share of its own network costs back into the business. That changes how large apps can think about POL. Instead of: buy POL → spend POL → buy more you can increasingly have: hold POL → stake → secure Polygon → earn POL → fund operations The point isn’t that Polymarket should buy $20M+ of POL purely for yield. The interesting part is that a company already using Polygon at scale can turn a strategic POL reserve into productive working capital. For Polygon’s biggest users, POL doesn’t have to be just gas anymore.

Polygon’s economics are going through a fundamental change. In March, the problem was obvious. Polygon was generating real revenue, but the benefits were heavily concentrated. In the February priority-fee distribution: 89.9% went to the top 20 validators. Delegators were putting the capital behind Polygon’s security, yet none of that priority-fee revenue reached them directly. The chain was succeeding. The economics weren’t sharing that success to all contributors. That is changing. Under the new model, every 100 POL in priority fees is roughly split into: 26 POL → block producers 37 POL → validators 37 POL → stakers And 27.3M POL already accumulated for stakers is now being pushed through the staking system. This is an important shift. Stakers are no longer meant to earn only from inflation. They are starting to earn from real economic activity on the network. Polygon seems to have figured out something fundamental: A sustainable economy isn’t just about how much revenue you generate. It’s about how that revenue flows. Block producers need an incentive to produce blocks. Validators need an incentive to operate and secure the network. Stakers need to be rewarded for putting billions of POL behind that security. Maintainers need resources to keep improving the system. And now it’s time to continue balancing the economy. Because there is one final piece: the reward itself has to keep its value. Paying everyone more POL means little if the asset they are being paid in continuously loses purchasing power. That is where the broader economic design matters. Real usage generates fees. Some of those fees reward the people securing the network. Other fees remove POL from supply. More valuable staking rewards can increase the incentive to own and stake POL. More POL staked means less liquid supply. And a stronger asset makes every POL earned by validators, stakers and maintainers worth more. That creates a very different loop: real usage → real revenue → rewards + burn → stronger POL economics → more valuable rewards → stronger ecosystem Polygon already figured out how to generate activity. Now it is figuring out how to distribute the value that activity creates — while protecting the value of the asset everyone is being paid in. That is what real economic alignment looks like. @0xPolygon @0xPolygonFdn @0xPolygonEco @sandeepnailwal

Polygon is combining: real revenue ongoing burn direct rewards to stakers one of the lowest revenue multiples among major chains Let me break it down in numbers: 30d revenue Polygon: $2.24M Solana: $2.72M Ethereum: $2.57M BNB Chain: $2.15M Valuation Polygon: $1.12B Solana: $75.4B Ethereum: $325.5B BNB Chain: $104.1B Staking Current yield: ~3.3% With real revenue: ~7.7% annualized From 27.3M POL already set aside for stakers 37% of priority fees allocated to stakers Burn 100M POL burned burn continues with network usage And this is what makes Polygon different: the chain makes a lot of money and a meaningful part of that money goes directly back to the people staking and securing it. That is much rarer than just having high fees. @0xPolygon @0xPolygonFdn @0xPolygonEco @stacy_muur @sandeepnailwal

Polygon is moving toward something more important than another narrative: ecosystem alignment. Polygon is building an open economic system where real usage can increasingly sustain the infrastructure around it. Users create demand. Useful Apps turn that demand into activity. Validators and stakers secure the network. Maintainers keep it alive and improving. And the economic value created by that activity increasingly has a path back to the participants who make the ecosystem work. use → build → secure → maintain → strengthen → grow The most beautiful part is that it’s an open network. Anyone can use it. Anyone can build on it. Anyone can secure it. Anyone can maintain it. Anyone can participate in the value it creates. You don’t just use the system. You can become part of it. Users, apps, delegators, validators and maintainers aligned. 💜 @0xPolygon @0xPolygonFdn @0xPolygonEco @sandeepnailwal

Polygon is about to go on a legendary run. Not because of memes. Not because of an inflated metric. Because the chain is generating real money — and it’s going directly to stakers, not to an expensive conference booth. From April 8 to September 8, 27.3M ethereum:0x455e53cbb86018ac2b8092fdcd39d8444affc3f6 in priority-fee revenue accumulated specifically for the stakers securing Polygon with their capital. From October 1 to December 1, that revenue is set to be distributed through the existing staking system. Gross staking yield goes from ~3.0% to ~7.7% annualized during the distribution window. And the additional yield is not new inflation. It is money users already paid to use the network. Real activity → real fees → real rewards for the capital securing the chain. PIP-92 distributes the accumulated revenue. PIP-93 is being developed to make the process permanent and automated going forward. If network usage grows, so does the real revenue available to stakers. Now go look at your favorite coin. How much real revenue does the network generate? And how much of it actually reaches the people securing it? The answer will probably surprise you. @0xPolygon @0xPolygonFdn @0xPolygonEco @sandeepnailwal

Something notable is happening with @0xPolygon’s fee-sharing design. Back in March, I proposed routing priority-fee revenue through the existing staking infrastructure so validators and delegators could receive it through the same system already used for staking rewards. PIP-85 took a different approach: the staker share was intended to be distributed through separate Merkle claimers. Now PIP-92 is using the existing staking-reward mechanism to distribute the accumulated fees, and it explicitly says PIP-93 is being developed as the permanent, automated solution through the staking system. So while PIP-93 may differ technically from what I proposed, the architecture is moving much closer to the same underlying model. Why I think this system is superior, and why I’m glad they went this route: Stakers already secure the network with their capital. The StakeManager, validator accounting and delegator reward infrastructure already exist on @Ethereum. Using that infrastructure means fee revenue can become part of staking itself instead of creating a second reward system alongside it. network activity → priority fees → staking infrastructure → validators & delegators No separate claiming system for users to understand. No parallel reward accounting. No separate distribution UX. And fee revenue becomes directly connected to the system securing the chain. One claim. One reward. The implementation of PIP-93 is still forthcoming, but the direction is clear: real network revenue is becoming native to Polygon staking. @0xPolygonFdn @0xPolygonEco @davidesilverman @sandeepnailwal

0xMiden has proven on testnet that $ETH can move from @Ethereum into a private chain through @Agglayer. Real-world crypto robberies show exactly why that matters. Most wallets are still public. Balances can be tracked, transfers can be followed, and onchain activity can reveal significant holdings. At the same time, physical attacks targeting crypto holders are rising. Miden gives assets like ETH a private environment to hold and use. Balances, amounts and counterparties can remain private inside Miden, while the asset can later move back out. Agglayer is what can make that bigger than just ETH. Once a chain connects to Agglayer, its supported assets can move across the wider Agglayer ecosystem. That means liquidity can move between public chains, into private execution on Miden, and back out again. ETH has already been demonstrated on testnet. Potentially $BTC, $SOL, $AVAX and others could follow if those ecosystems ever connect. If that network grows, Agglayer becomes a way to connect fragmented crypto liquidity while Miden adds something that crypto still largely lacks: privacy.

Incredible. I already have @Cursor's answer as to why the limits are disappearing. Users who have Cursor Ultra through the SuperGrok Heavy subscription have had their "Other Models" usage pool reduced from $400 to $100. A 75% cut overnight. Without warning. Or at least I hadn't noticed. In fact, I could swear I read somewhere that the pool was now $500 and I was happy about it, until today. Has anyone else heard about this? The best subscription in my stack and my favorite harness are now useless. What a disappointment. @SpaceXAI , @grok

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Polymarket perps are here! They are not here to be one of the perps, its here to be THE PERP! Powered by Polygon!!