Polygon’s Comeback in Q3 2025

• Polygon completed major technical upgrades in Q3 2025, including the Bhilai hard fork achieving 1,000 TPS along with near-zero gas fees and adding support for EIP-7702 for gasless transactions, followed by the Heimdall v2 upgrade reducing block finality to ~5 seconds, advancing the network toward 5,000+ TPS scalability. 

• Average daily active addresses on Polygon PoS increased to 600,000 (+10% QoQ), while daily transactions reached 3.8 million (+12.0% QoQ). 

• DeFi activity rebounded strongly, with Spiko and QuickSwap growing their TVL by 31.5% and 20.5% QoQ, respectively, while DeFi TVL rose 10% QoQ to $1.18B. 

• Stablecoin supply on Polygon PoS grew 23.3% QoQ to $2.98B, making Polygon the eighth-largest blockchain by stablecoin supply and a leader in USDC active addresses. 

• NFT trading activity rose 68.2% QoQ, driven by Courtyard’s Pokémon NFTs, which generated $56.5M in August sales. 

• Polygon is rolling out significant technical upgrades, such as the ‘Rio’ upgrade (live on testnet, mainnet launch planned for October 2025), which aims to boost network capacity to approximately 5,000 transactions per second (TPS).  

• MATIC to POL token migration is 99% complete.  

• POL’s market capitalization rose 54% QoQ to $2.45B amid broader market strength. 

Polygon is a suite of Ethereum-based scaling solutions that has evolved from a single Proof-of-Stake (PoS) sidechain into a fully realized Polygon 2.0 ecosystem — a network of ZK-powered Layer-2 chains connected through the AggLayer. Designed to enhance Ethereum’s scalability, Polygon enables low-fee, high-speed transactions while preserving Ethereum’s security guarantees. 

Polygon Labs, the core contributor to the ecosystem, has built multiple scaling protocols and developer frameworks, including: 

• Polygon PoS — serving as one of the largest execution environments in the Ethereum ecosystem. 

• Polygon zkEVM — will be deprecated by 2026. 

• AggLayer — Polygon’s interoperability protocol, which unifies liquidity and users across heterogeneous chains via pessimistic proofs. 

• AggLayer CDK — an open-source toolkit for launching custom ZK-powered chains that connect seamlessly into the AggLayer. 

The network operates under a multi-chain, unified liquidity model, where applications and assets can move seamlessly across chains without the need for traditional bridges. 

The ecosystem’s native token, POL, replaced MATIC as the central asset of Polygon 2.0. POL functions as gas, staking collateral, validator rewards, and governance for all chains within the network. Its design supports infinite scalability by enabling validators to secure multiple chains simultaneously. 

Polygon’s vision is to create an “internet of value” — a horizontally scalable, ZK-secured network of interoperable blockchains, mirroring the openness and resilience of the internet itself. 

• Market Capitalization: $2.45B (+50% QoQ) 

• TVL (Polygon PoS) : $1.18B (+10% QoQ) 

• Stablecoin Supply: $2.98B (+23.3% QoQ) 

• Average Daily Active Addresses: 600,000 (+10% QoQ) 

• Average Daily Transactions: 3.8M (+12% QoQ) 

• Average Daily NFT Trading Volume: $1.4M (+6% QoQ) 

• POL Token Migration: 99% completed by mid of Q3 

AggLayer 

The AggLayer is Polygon’s interoperability protocol, designed to unify liquidity and user access across chains by aggregating proofs, verifying chain states, and settling to Ethereum. Leveraging ZK proofs, the AggLayer enables secure cross-chain communication, asset transfers, and data sharing. 

• AggLayer v0.3 (live since June 2025): Full multistack support, allowing any EVM or non- EVM chain to connect. 

AggLayer Integrations 

• July 2025: MoveVM-based Layer 2 chains can be integrated with Agglayer, unifying liquidity and community across aggregated chains. 

• September 2025: IoTeX collaborates with Polygon Labs to integrate with AggLayer for cross-chain DePIN liquidity 

These integrations highlight AggLayer’s role as a unifying infrastructure for diverse execution environments and use cases. 

AggLayer CDK 

The Polygon Chain Development Kit (CDK) is an open-source framework for launching ZK-powered L2s and transitioning existing EVM L1s to L2s. Adoption continued in Q3 2025 with multiple launches: 

September 2025: OKX integrated USDT0 across multiple networks, including Polygon and its X Layer (built on AggLayer CDK). This enables seamless, native USDT0 transfers, enhancing liquidity and interoperability. 

May 2025: Katana Foundation announced Katana Network (live on private mainnet), incubated by Polygon Labs and GSR as a DeFi – first chain. It is the first Agglayer CDK chain to leverage CDK OP Stack, kicking off AggLayer’s multistack adoption. 

These launches showcase AggLayer CDK’s flexibility across payments, and financial applications. 

Decentralized Finance 

• NFTs: Courtyard Pokémon NFTs drove $100M in Q3 sales (+30% QoQ).  

• AAVE remained top DeFi protocol ($288M TVL, +15% QoQ). 

• Polymarket: $156M TVL (+25% QoQ), with strong sports betting activity. 

• Morpho-powered lending vaults launched in March 2025 reached $60M TVL. 

• Daily transaction volume on Polygon DEXes has also increased by 50% QoQ, led by Polymarket, Uniswap and Quickswap.  

• Stablecoin transfers remain dominant (60%) in daily activity. 

Real-World Assets 

The real-world assets have grown to reach $335M TVL (+30% QoQ), led by Treasury Bills on Spiko, a money market funds tokenization platform.  

On July 23, BeToken was launched on Polygon. It is the first fully regulated security token offering (STO) under Spanish law, and one of the first in the EU. The token represents real shares, not abstracted claims or proxy instruments, and delivers economic and governance rights to token holders: dividends, voting power (subject to BeToken’s shareholder rules), and a voice in corporate general shareholder meetings. 

Institutional Adoption 

Partnerships with firms such as Cypher Capital and regulated platforms like 21X expand institutional access to POL, particularly in Europe and the Middle East. 

Polygon saw strong growth in Q3 with more users, higher transactions, and rising DeFi activity, while POL performed well along with the broader market. Its ecosystem supports over 7,000 dApps across DeFi, gaming, and NFTs, also backed by low transaction fees. The AggLayer represents a critical catalyst: when additional chains adopt it through CDK, liquidity and users will consolidate across networks. This dynamic has the potential to drive new cross-chain applications and reinforce Polygon’s position as a leading Ethereum scaling solution. 

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Disclaimer – Research   

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