What Is Polygon? The Tried and True Ethereum Sidechain

TL;DR: Polygon is an Ethereum Proof-of-Stake sidechain that's been live since June 2020, processing near-zero-cost transactions across 159 million wallets. It powers Polymarket, and has become the go-to chain for enterprise stablecoin payments, with Revolut processing $1.2B in on-chain volume and partnerships with Mastercard, Jio/Reliance, and Google Cloud. In January 2026, Polygon formally pivoted to payments infrastructure with the Open Money Stack. You can bridge to Polygon in seconds via Across.

Most sidechains are still proving themselves. Polygon finished that phase a few years ago.

Founded in 2017 as Matic Network by Jaynti Kanani, Sandeep Nailwal, Anurag Arjun, and Mihailo Bjelic, it rebranded to Polygon in February 2021. Nearly six years of mainnet operation, $1.17B in TVL, and a growing list of enterprise payment integrations. While newer chains compete for attention, Polygon competes for adoption. In 2026, it's doubling down on what it does best: moving money.

Polygon is an EVM-compatible Proof-of-Stake sidechain for Ethereum, with near-zero average transaction costs, two-second settlement, and full compatibility with Ethereum tools and smart contracts. Its native token is POL (formerly MATIC) with a circulating supply of 10 billion. Transactions are validated on Polygon and periodically committed to Ethereum via checkpoints. Developers can deploy existing Ethereum code without modifications. As of February 2026, the network handles over 2,600 transactions per second.

Polygon PoS has been live since June 2020, securing transactions through validators who stake POL tokens and earn proportional rewards. This is where the vast majority of Polygon activity happens.

Validators process transactions on Polygon, bundle them, and submit Merkle root checkpoints to Ethereum roughly every 30 minutes. You get Polygon's speed and cost with the knowledge that the transaction data is anchored to Ethereum. Full EVM compatibility means MetaMask works, Hardhat works, your existing Solidity contracts work. Nothing to rewrite.

Nearly six years of uptime with this model. That's not a talking point. It's an engineering record.

In January 2026, Polygon formally transitioned from a general-purpose scaling chain to a full-stack payments ecosystem with the Open Money Stack.

The Open Money Stack bundles enterprise-grade wallets, compliant on/off-ramps (via the Coinme acquisition), cross-chain payment orchestration, and Polygon's stablecoin settlement layer into a single integration point. The goal: replace the fragmented web of vendors and APIs that institutions currently navigate for cross-border money movement.

Polygon backed this pivot with $250M in acquisitions (Coinme and Sequence), a leadership change (co-founder Sandeep Nailwal as CEO of the Polygon Foundation), and infrastructure upgrades that pushed max throughput to 2,600+ TPS. Monthly transactions hit an all-time high of 204 million in February 2026. Polygon became the number one chain globally for USDC transactions, processing over 12 million per day.

AggLayer is Polygon's cross-chain settlement layer, designed to unify liquidity across multiple chains through zero-knowledge proofs. The Chain Development Kit (CDK) lets teams launch their own chains connected to Polygon's infrastructure. AggLayer v0.3 launched in mid-2025, and the team continues to ship. Whether the multi-chain vision plays out as planned is still TBD, but the pieces are in motion.

Polygon also launched zkEVM in 2023 as a standalone zero-knowledge rollup, but announced in June 2025 that it would sunset the product due to low adoption. The ZK research was spun off into an independent project called ZisK. Polygon's ZK ambitions now live in the AggLayer and CDK, not as a standalone chain.

Polygon processes transactions at near-zero cost across 159 million wallets, $1.17B in TVL, and over $3.4B in stablecoin supply.

Cost. Revolut processed $1.2 billion in on-chain transactions on Polygon with total gas fees under $700. That's the cost argument in one stat.

Track record. Nearly six years of mainnet. 6.4 billion total transactions. Enterprise integrations with companies whose legal and compliance teams spent months evaluating the chain before committing.

Compatibility. Full EVM. Same tools as Ethereum. If you've built anything on Ethereum, you can deploy it on Polygon without starting over. No new language, no new framework, no new mental model.

Polymarket, the world's largest prediction market, runs on Polygon. It became the default venue for real-money prediction markets during the 2024 US election cycle and now accounts for roughly 24% of Polygon's TVL at $375M. QuickSwap remains the leading DEX, holding the largest TVL share at roughly 29%.

The DeFi landscape has shifted. Aave, formerly the largest dApp on Polygon by TVL, voted in February 2025 to wind down lending on Polygon PoS following a governance dispute, removing over $300M in deposits. Uniswap maintains a Polygon deployment.

This is where Polygon separates itself in 2026:

These aren't "exploring blockchain" press releases. Revolut and Paxos are running production stablecoin volume. The pattern is implementation, not exploration. For historical context: JPMorgan completed the first live DeFi trade on a public blockchain on Polygon in November 2022, and Polygon raised $450M from Sequoia Capital India, Tiger Global, and SoftBank in February 2022.

Bridge to Polygon in seconds for under $1 via Across at app.across.to. Across is deployed on 24 chains, supports 50+ tokens, and has processed $35B+ in volume with zero exploits. L2-to-L2 fills complete in about 3 seconds.

If you already use MetaMask or Uniswap, you're already connected to Across. Both are integration partners, which means bridging to Polygon is available through tools you likely already have installed. Note: you'll receive WETH on Polygon, and gas fees are paid in POL.

For a detailed walkthrough, see our How to Bridge to Polygon guide.

Polygon is an EVM-compatible Proof-of-Stake sidechain for Ethereum with near-zero transaction costs, 159 million wallets, and $1.17B in TVL. It has been live since June 2020. In 2026, Polygon is focused on stablecoin payments and enterprise infrastructure through its Open Money Stack. Major applications include Polymarket and QuickSwap, with enterprise integrations including Revolut, Paxos, Mastercard, and Google Cloud.

Polygon PoS has been operating since June 2020 with validators staking POL tokens. Transaction data is periodically checkpointed to Ethereum. Polygon is a sidechain with its own validator set, not a rollup that derives all security from Ethereum. Users should evaluate the security model for their use case.

Transactions on Polygon cost fractions of a cent. To get funds onto Polygon, you can bridge via Across for under $1 with fills in seconds.

Polygon has been open for business since 2020.
Bridge to Polygon in seconds at app.across.to | Developer docs