Today, Polygon proposes upgrading its native token MATIC to POL to validate multiple chains. This technical upgrade is subject to approval from the Polygon community.
After the Polygon community approves, the current MATIC token will be renamed POL. According to the official post by Polygon, “POL is a proposed technical upgrade of MATIC. If the community reaches consensus to adopt it, MATIC holders will have their tokens upgraded to POL in 1:1 ratio. There will never be two native tokens.”
After the degradation of MATIC to POL, “Holders can become validators and receive rewards, but with two major improvements:
- Validators can validate MULTIPLE CHAINS
- Chain can offer MULTIPLE ROLES (and corresponding rewards) to validators
As per the announcement, “Technical details of POL smart contracts and migration will be laid out in an upcoming PIP (Polygon Improvement Proposal).”
“Validators are required to stake POL in order to join the validator set. Staking is instrumental for the protocol in multiple ways: (i) preventing Sybil attacks, (ii) aligning validators with the success of the ecosystem and (iii) enabling slashing, i.e. punishment of malicious validators.”