Polygon Statistics 2026: TPS, Volume, and POL Data

The mid-2026 polygon statistics tell a compressed story: throughput, stablecoin volume, and consumer adoption all sit at network records while the POL token trades well beneath its 2021 highs. Polygon PoS closed the second quarter of 2026 with 743 million transactions, marking an all-time record for the network and a 160% increase from the same period a year earlier. The network is processing about 7.5 million transactions per day at the time of writing, with daily active addresses near 554,000.

Key Takeaways

• Per Polygon Labs, Rio is now live on mainnet and enables 5,000 TPS on the network as of October 8, 2025.
• Data from Polygon Labs shows: according to Polygon, 99% of the MATIC on the Polygon network has migrated to POL since the September 2024 upgrade.
• According to Crypto Briefing, Polygon moved $79.25 billion in stablecoin volume during May 2026, its second-highest month ever.
• According to Crypto Briefing, Polygon’s cumulative stablecoin transfer volume has now surpassed $2.4 trillion.
• According to Everstake, the Polygon PoS network is composed of 105 validators, with the current validator cap set to 105.
• According to CoinGecko, POL trades at $0.07277 with a market cap of $775,586,270, ranked #75 on CoinGecko as of the July 2026 snapshot.
• Per the Polygon Community Forum, the Polygon zkEVM Mainnet Beta sequencer will stop after a 12-month migration window that ends July 1, 2026.

Editor’s Choice

• Polygon processed 743 million transactions in Q2 2026, up 160% year over year.
• The network cleared 198 million USD-denominated stablecoin transactions in May 2026 and ranked first among all blockchains in transaction count for the month.
• Polygon has processed over 7 billion total transactions with 99.99% uptime.
• More than 190 dApps are now leveraging Polygon CDK to build their own appchains or sovereign chains.
• Polymarket’s monthly volume rose from $1 billion in mid-2025 to $8 billion by March 2026.
• DefiLlama shows Polygon PoS holding approximately $914.8 million in total value locked as of mid-2026.

Polygon PoS Throughput and the Rio Hardfork

Rio enables 5k TPS on the network, with a new block production model for 5k TPS and near-instant finality. The upgrade also implements witness-based stateless block validation (PIP-72), enabling nodes to verify new blocks without storing the entire blockchain state.

• Rio is now live on mainnet after the October 8, 2025 activation.
• Validator-Elected Block Producer (VEBloP) is a new block production architecture where validators on the network now elect a small pool of validators, each of which produces blocks for a much longer span.
• The network increases throughput by over 3x, and reorgs are essentially eliminated.

The prior baseline sat closer to 1,000 TPS after the Bhilai and Heimdall upgrades. The five-fold jump makes Polygon PoS a credible payments substrate rather than a gaming settlement chain that occasionally clears retail volume.

Quarterly Transaction Volume on Polygon PoS

Quarterly transaction growth on Polygon PoS accelerated through the first half of 2026, reflecting the Rio throughput unlock and the stablecoin volume routed through Polymarket, Meta creator payouts, and the Visa settlement pilot.

Source: Cryptopolitan, Crypto Briefing, on-chain data (Q2 2026)

• Polygon closed Q2 2026 with 743 million transactions, an all-time network record.
• The quarter marked a 160% increase from the same period a year earlier.
• Payment-focused projects built on Polygon generated $9.9 billion in transaction volume during the first half of 2026.

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Recent Developments in Polygon Statistics

• October 8, 2025: Rio is now live on mainnet.
• September 3, 2025: 99% of MATIC on the Polygon network had migrated to POL.
• February 2026: Polygon runs at its full 110 million gas capacity at all times, with a new base fee mechanism handling pricing without constraining available block space.
• Q2 2026: Polygon posted 743 million quarterly transactions, an all-time high.
• May 2026: Polygon surpassed both Solana and BNB Chain in stablecoin transaction count during May 2026.
• July 1, 2026: The zkEVM sequencer will run for the next 12 months from the sunset announcement, closing the migration window.

Stablecoin Volume Moving Through Polygon

Polygon moved $79.25 billion in stablecoin volume during May 2026, its second-highest month ever, and processed 198 million USD-denominated stablecoin transactions, ranking first among all blockchains in transaction count for the month.

Source: Polygon Labs stablecoin metrics, Crypto Briefing analysis, May 2026

• Cumulative stablecoin transfer volume on Polygon has now surpassed $2.4 trillion.
• AggLayer pools cross-chain liquidity and handle 53% of global USDC transactions, reducing fragmentation through unified asset access.
• Transaction fees on the payment path run around $0.002 with approximately two seconds settlement time.

By the numbers: Crypto Briefing: $79.25 billion in stablecoin volume passed through Polygon in May, its second-highest month ever. Cumulative stablecoin transfer volume across Polygon has now surpassed $2.4 trillion, a figure other L2 chains are still measuring in single-digit billions.

Polygon PoS Gas Fees and Cost Economics

Polygon’s gas economics are the reason Polymarket, Meta payouts, and Visa’s settlement pilot ended up here instead of on Ethereum mainnet. Gas fees on Polygon are typically fractions of a cent per transaction, usually between $0.001 and $0.01. See our DeFi market data for the wider protocol-level fee context.

• Polygon now runs at its full 110 million gas capacity at all times, with a new base fee mechanism handling pricing without constraining available block space.
• Average gas prices track closer to target with lower volatility, and priority fee spikes become less frequent and smaller when they do occur.
• Settlement time on Polygon PoS runs approximately two seconds with 110 transactions per second throughput capacity on the current base configuration, ahead of the Rio ceiling.

Polygon PoS Validator Staking Concentration

Staking on Polygon PoS is capped and concentrated. The Polygon PoS network is composed of 105 validators; with the current validator cap set to 105, it is currently not possible to join the set if the validator cap is reached.

Source: Polygon Community Forum staking report, February 2026

• Upbit Staking held 384,785,971 POL, the largest single validator stake on the network as of the February 2026 report.
• Coinbase held 337,193,778 POL across its validator, followed by Binance Node at 255,296,616 POL.
• The current gross reward rate is near 2.5% to 3%, with validator commission deducted before delegators are paid.
• The unbonding period runs roughly 3 to 4 days on Polygon PoS.
• The minimum stake is 10,000 POL, set by governance proposal PIP-4, for validators.

Key finding: Everstake: the 105-validator ceiling on Polygon PoS is a hard cap, meaning new operators cannot join without an existing validator being ejected, retired, or displaced. Concentration of stake in Upbit, Coinbase, Binance Node, Figment, and Luganodes reflects both custodial demand and exchange-operated validator economics rather than pure decentralization theatre.

How many validators secure Polygon PoS?

The Polygon Community Forum publishes a monthly staking report tracking validator stakes and delegators. The Polygon PoS network is composed of 105 validators secured under a 105-slot cap, with a minimum stake of 10,000 POL and an unbonding period of roughly 3 to 4 days.

Polygon Cross-Chain and AggLayer Footprint

AggLayer is what Polygon Labs settled on after zkEVM’s product-market fit stalled. It aggregates liquidity across CDK-built appchains instead of forcing everything onto one L2. More than 190 dApps are now leveraging Polygon CDK to build their own appchains or sovereign chains.

• Total TVL across CDK-based chains reached $420 million in March 2025, up from $108 million just six months prior.
• New CDK-powered chains like OKX’s X1, Astar zkEVM, and Immutable zkEVM went live in early 2025.
• AggLayer pools cross-chain liquidity, handling 53% of global USDC transactions and reducing fragmentation through unified asset access.

The smart contract side of CDK deployment shows why AggLayer sits at the center of the current Polygon thesis: instead of one flagship zkEVM competing for TVL, dozens of appchains inherit shared liquidity and settlement.

Polygon zkEVM Sunset

The zkEVM sequencer will run for the next 12 months from the June 2025 sunset announcement, ending July 1, 2026.

• Support for EIP-4844 took longer than expected, and ZK counters created impractical transaction conditions.
• The product didn’t stand out or deliver the user experience the community truly wanted on Polygon Labs’ own read.
• No funds will be lost; users will always have the ability to withdraw bridged assets.
• The sunset applies only to Polygon zkEVM Mainnet Beta and does not affect Polygon PoS or other Polygon ecosystem networks.

The timing sits inside Polygon Labs’ focus consolidation. Q2 2026 posted an all-time-high quarterly transaction count on PoS at the same time capital, developer attention, and marketing weight moved off zkEVM.

Is Polygon zkEVM being shut down?

Yes. The zkEVM sequencer will run for the next 12 months, though no funds will be lost since users will always have the ability to withdraw bridged assets, and the sunset applies only to Polygon zkEVM Mainnet Beta and does not affect Polygon PoS or other Polygon ecosystem networks.

Polymarket and Consumer dApps Built on Polygon

Polymarket operates on the Polygon network and denominates transactions in the stablecoin USDC, with all trading, clearing, and settlement happening on the Polygon blockchain with near-instant finality and negligible transaction costs.

• Polymarket went from $1 billion monthly volume in mid-2025 to $8 billion by March 2026.
• In April 2026, Polymarket US saw $1.3 billion in trading volume, compared with $9 billion on Polymarket International.

POL Token Market Position

POL trades at a discount to its 2021 MATIC-era peak while the network posts all-time-high usage. That divergence sits at the center of the mid-2026 POL thesis debate.

• POL trades at $0.07277 with a 24-hour trading volume of $24,364,551.56 as of the July 2026 snapshot.
• POL’s market capitalization is $775,586,270, ranked #75 on CoinGecko.
• Approximately 11 billion POL tokens are tradable on the market.
• DefiLlama tracks approximately $914.8 million in total value locked across DeFi on Polygon PoS as of mid-2026.

The gap between POL market cap and Polygon PoS DeFi TVL is unusual: the token’s aggregate market value trails the value of assets deployed on-chain across its DeFi protocols. Peer chains typically trade at multiples of on-chain TVL rather than at a discount.

Worth noting: POL sits at $0.07277 with a market capitalization of $775,586,270 and is ranked #75 on CoinGecko. That is a full turn beneath the MATIC-era highs, even as the network processes all-time-high quarterly transactions and clears record stablecoin volume. Price and usage moved in opposite directions this cycle.

What replaced MATIC?

POL replaced MATIC as the native gas token on Polygon PoS. Since September 2024, every transaction that takes place on Polygon PoS has used POL as the native gas token, and the upgrade established a 1:1 conversion ratio between the two tokens. 99% of the MATIC on the Polygon network has migrated to POL as of September 2025.

Brand and Enterprise Deployments on Polygon

Enterprise deployment on Polygon in the current cycle sits in two categories: stablecoin payment pilots that scaled, and NFT loyalty programs that mostly did not. The NFT side of the ledger looks thinner than during the last NFT wave, while payments look meaningfully larger.

• Nike RTFKT: On December 17, 2025, Nike quietly sold the RTFKT brand to an undisclosed buyer on undisclosed terms.
• Starbucks Odyssey: launched in September 2022 as a blockchain-based loyalty program built on Polygon that layered NFT collectible stamps on top of the existing Starbucks Rewards ecosystem, enrolling more than 2 million members.
• Reddit Collectible Avatars: phased out between late 2025 and early 2026, with marketplace features and transfer support removed.
• Visa stablecoin pilot: added Polygon in April 2026 as part of a settlement pilot flowing through the same corridor as the network’s stablecoin volume metrics.
• Meta USDC creator payouts: went live on Polygon earlier in 2026 for creator monetization.

Data compiled from BlockEden.xyz aggregated coverage and Crypto Briefing, March-June 2026.

Utility beat collectibility this cycle: Starbucks kept a redemption-linked loyalty program on Polygon while pure-collectibles brands wound down or sold off.

Is Starbucks Odyssey still on Polygon?

Yes. Starbucks Odyssey remains a blockchain-based loyalty program built on Polygon that layers NFT collectible stamps on top of the existing Starbucks Rewards ecosystem. The program’s persistence contrasts with Nike’s RTFKT sale and Reddit’s avatar wind-down over the same period.

Conclusion: What the Polygon Statistics Tell Us

Polygon in mid-2026 is a different network than the one that spent 2023 chasing generic Ethereum-scaling narratives. Q2 2026 posted an all-time-high 743 million transactions, up 160% year over year, while cumulative stablecoin transfer volume cleared $2.4 trillion. The MetaMask wallet data shows the same pattern of usage-driven consolidation across dominant self-custody tools that Polygon’s numbers now project on the settlement side.

The forward-looking picture is straightforward. Rio’s 5,000 TPS ceiling plus more than 190 dApps leveraging Polygon CDK to build appchains give Polygon a payments-plus-appchain footprint most competing L2s do not have. What remains unresolved is the POL market cap of $775,586,270 against network usage running at all-time highs, a divergence the next POL price cycle will either close or entrench.