Polygon Prepares for Major POL Burn

Polygon Foundation CEO Sandeep Nailwal has announced plans to permanently remove 100 million $POL tokens from circulation, marking one of the most significant supply-reduction moves in the network's history.

How the Burn Will Work

Polygon is preparing to deploy a permissionless burn contract that allows anyone to permanently burn 100 million POL, accounting for approximately 83% of the 121 million tokens held by the Polygon base fee collector. Smart contracts are now live on the testnet and will be deployed to mainnet following final Security Council approvals.

The burn mechanism lets the community trigger the first burn, with quarterly base-fee burns to follow. At the stated figures, the first burn would leave about 21 million $POL in the collector before additional fees accrue.

The 100 million-token burn equals 1% of $POL's initial 10 billion-token supply. Blockscout listed total supply at about 10.716 billion $POL, making the planned burn roughly 0.93% of the total.

Deflationary Push and Broader Context

The announcement follows months of discussion within the Polygon community about how to make POL more deflationary as network activity continues to grow. Nailwal said $POL had been deflationary since January 2026.

Alongside the burn plan, Nailwal also cited revenue figures for the network. He claimed Polygon had generated $24.5 million in 2026 revenue, compared with $8.41 million for Arbitrum and $5.6 million for Near. However, he noted the comparison came from "my analyst at ChatGPT," and the post did not identify a dataset or methodology, so those figures should be treated with caution.

The next step is mainnet deployment after the remaining Security Council approvals. As of Nailwal's post, the first 100 million $POL had not yet been burned.

Sources:
Polygon Prepares Permissionless Burn of 100 Million POL - CryptoNews.net
Polygon To Permanently Burn 100 Million POL - Bitcoin Ethereum News
Polygon To Permanently Burn 100 Million POL - Blockchain Reporter