Swap Polygon (POL)

The numbers below were checked on 14 October 2026 against docs.polygon.technology and Polygonscan.

Two layers, one chain

Polygon PoS is a proof-of-stake network that runs alongside Ethereum and shares its account model. Two pieces of software make it: Bor produces the blocks, and Heimdall — in its current version built on Cosmos SDK and CometBFT — validates them, builds Merkle trees of their hashes and periodically submits a checkpoint to Ethereum mainnet. Validators stake POL through contracts on Ethereum, and the stake decides who produces blocks. Polygonscan's block-time chart showed an average of about 1.5 seconds in mid-October 2026; the route data behind this site counts at 2 seconds.

Confirmations the site waits for

A POL deposit is counted after 4 confirmations and a USDC-on-Polygon deposit after 1. Four blocks at 2 seconds is eight seconds; the estimate reads 2–5 minutes because the rest is matching the deposit and preparing the payout. A swap from Polygon is in the fastest group here, with TRON, Solana, Base and the XRP Ledger.

Finality: milestones, then checkpoints

Polygon has two notions of final. Milestones are votes by Heimdall on Bor block hashes; the longest sequence of blocks backed by at least two-thirds of validators becomes the new milestone, and the docs say a transaction is typically finalised that way within 2 to 5 seconds. A wallet or explorer can ask the node for the latest finalised block. Checkpoints are the Merkle roots Heimdall submits to Ethereum, covering a contiguous range of Bor blocks; they anchor Polygon's state on Ethereum and are what a withdrawal through the official bridge waits for. For a swap only the first matters: four confirmations are past the milestone before the status page has finished counting them.

Gas: POL, from the sending wallet

Every transaction on Polygon PoS pays gas in POL — a plain POL transfer, and equally a transfer of USDC or any other token on the network. The sender pays. A wallet holding USDC on Polygon and no POL shows the balance and cannot move it. Gas is a per-unit price times the units used; a token transfer uses more units than a plain transfer, and both are usually a small fraction of a POL. The Polygon page above explains how to put a little POL into a wallet that has none.

POL and its supply

POL replaced MATIC as the network's native token on 4 September 2024. The docs give the initial supply as 10 billion, matching MATIC one for one at migration, with an emission schedule that the original proposal set at 2% a year — half to validator rewards and half to a community treasury — and PIP-26 adjusted for the validator share in the first two years, so that the full 2% applies after June 2025. For a sender, emission changes nothing about a transfer.

Polygon is fast, and the estimate is cautious. If the status page shows a Polygon deposit at 4 of 4 within seconds and then waits a minute or two, that is the payout being prepared, not a stuck transaction.

Polygon PoS uses Ethereum's address format: 0x followed by 40 hexadecimal characters, 42 in all. The same private key gives the same address on Ethereum, Polygon, Base, BNB Smart Chain and every other EVM network. The address does not say which network it is on; the person or service that gives it to you does, and a wallet knows by its chain ID — 137 for Polygon PoS, read on docs.polygon.technology on 14 October 2026.

What the form accepts

For a POL payout the form takes a 0x… address of 42 hexadecimal characters. It cannot tell Polygon PoS from Ethereum or Base — nothing can — so the check that matters is yours: the receiving side must expect POL on Polygon PoS. The deposit address the form shows for a POL or USDC-on-Polygon deposit is an ordinary 0x… address on Polygon PoS.

Which address to give

1. Your own wallet: the address on its Receive screen, with the wallet switched to Polygon PoS. In most wallets that is the same string as on Ethereum; switching the network changes what the wallet shows, not the address.
2. An exchange: the POL deposit address from its deposit page, with the network set to Polygon (or Polygon PoS). If the exchange offers POL on Ethereum as well, that is the ERC-20 token — a different asset — and its address is not for a payout from here.
3. Another person: ask for their Polygon address and say the network out loud. A 0x… address they use for ETH will also receive POL, but only if they know to look at Polygon for it.

Three tokens called POL or MATIC

The address is the same everywhere; the asset is not. POL on Polygon PoS is native, has no contract, pays gas, and is what this page accepts and pays. POL on Ethereum is an ERC-20 at 0x455e53CBB86018Ac2B8092FdCd39d8444aFFC3F6, the form that sits in Ethereum wallets and on some exchange withdrawal menus. MATIC on Ethereum is the old token, still held by people who never migrated; Polygon's migration contract at 0x29e7DF7b6A1B2b07b731457f499E1696c60E2C4e converts it, and the blog post that announced it warns that MATIC sent straight to that address, rather than through its migration function, is lost. Only the first is handled here.

USDC on the same address

The same 0x… address on Polygon can hold USDC, and there are two: native USDC from Circle at 0x3c499c542cEF5E3811e1192ce70d8cC03d5c3359, and the older bridged USDC.e at 0x2791Bca1f2de4661ED88A30C99A7a9449Aa84174, which Circle does not issue. The site moves the native one. USDC native vs bridged: how to move it is the long version.

Every transaction on Polygon PoS has a 66-character hash beginning with 0x. The status page links the Polygon side of a swap to Polygonscan, which is built by the Etherscan team and lays a transaction out the way Etherscan does.

At the top: the status — Success, Pending or Fail — the block number and the confirmations since, the timestamp, the From and To addresses, the value in POL, and the transaction fee in POL with the gas price it was paid at. For a token transfer the Value line shows 0 POL, because no POL moved; the token amount appears in a separate "Tokens Transferred" line naming the token, the amount, the sender and the receiver. That line is where a USDC deposit is found — and where the token's name tells you whether it was USDC or USDC.e. Lower down: gas limit and gas used, the nonce, and the input data.

A deposit you sent

1. Copy the hash from your wallet or from the exchange's withdrawal history — the hash, not the address.
2. Open it on Polygonscan. If the page says the transaction cannot be found, it was not broadcast on Polygon PoS. A withdrawal sent on another network has a hash on that network's explorer; check the network named in the withdrawal record.
3. Check the To address (for POL) or the receiver in Tokens Transferred (for USDC) against the deposit address from the form, and the amount against the figure you entered.
4. Fail in red means the transaction was mined but reverted — out of gas, usually. Nothing moved except the fee; send again.
5. The status page updates on its own as confirmations arrive.

A payout you received

1. Open the payout hash from the status page on Polygonscan.
2. For a POL payout, your address is the To address and the Value line is "You get" from the form, with the network fee already taken out. For USDC, look in Tokens Transferred and check that the token is USDC, contract 0x3c49…3359.
3. A wallet that does not show the token: it arrived — Polygonscan's page for your address lists every token held — but the wallet has not been told to display it. Add the token by its contract address. Wallet shows zero after a USDT transfer walks through the same situation on other networks.
4. Keep the hash. It is the evidence the payout happened and what support on either side will ask for.

Finalised or not

Polygonscan marks a block as finalised once a milestone covers it. On a healthy network that is a few seconds behind the tip, so by the time the status page has counted four confirmations the deposit is final in the strict sense too. A block that stays unfinalised for minutes would mean milestones have stalled, which is visible on the explorer as a growing gap between the latest and the latest-finalised block.

What a block explorer shows about a swap does the same walk for other networks; Reading a swap status page explains each stage.

Polygon's mistakes are the mistakes of every 0x… network, plus two of its own: the token that changed its name, and the stablecoin that comes in two versions.

The same address on the wrong chain

A deposit address shown for Polygon PoS is also a valid address on Ethereum, Base, BNB Smart Chain and the rest. Send to it on any of those and the transaction confirms — on that chain. The swap watches Polygon PoS only. Read the network name in your wallet or on the exchange's withdrawal form, not the address. Sent USDT to the wrong network covers what can and cannot be done afterwards; the mechanics are the same for POL and USDC.

POL, POL and MATIC

The migration on 4 September 2024 renamed the balance in every Polygon PoS wallet without the holder doing anything. On Ethereum nothing was automatic: MATIC there is still MATIC until its holder calls the migration contract, and POL there is an ERC-20 with its own address. Exchanges label the networks; wallets usually do not label the token beyond its symbol. Before sending a deposit, make sure the wallet is on Polygon PoS and the balance you are spending is the native one.

Native USDC and USDC.e

Circle launched native USDC on Polygon PoS on 10 October 2023 and stopped supporting the bridged USDC.e in its own services a month later, but USDC.e still exists in wallets and on some exchange pages. The two are different tokens with different contracts and the same symbol on many screens. The site moves native USDC; a USDC.e deposit is a different asset. The contract address is the only reliable test.

Nothing on Polygon PoS is reversible once a milestone covers it , and that takes seconds. The checks happen before Send.

Polygon changes often — by hard fork on Bor and by upgrades to Heimdall — and most changes are invisible to a sender. Three are not. Dates and figures are from docs.polygon.technology, Polygon's blog and Circle's blog, read on 14 October 2026.

Native USDC, October 2023. Until then USDC on Polygon was a bridged copy, created by the official bridge locking USDC on Ethereum. Circle's native issuance gave the network a USDC it mints and redeems itself, and the bridged token was renamed USDC.e to tell them apart. Circle's post says its own services stopped accepting USDC.e on 10 November 2023; the token itself continues to exist. The route data here uses the native contract.

POL, September 2024. The token change was announced for 4 September 2024, and the docs describe the result: POL is the gas and staking token, the initial supply is 10 billion matching MATIC one for one, and an emission schedule applies afterwards. Holders on Polygon PoS did nothing. Holders on Ethereum call the migration contract — the blog post warns that sending MATIC directly to its address loses the tokens — or use the Polygon Portal. Exchanges relabelled their pages at different speeds, and some still show MATIC as a network option; it means Polygon PoS.

Finality, 2025. The architecture pages describe the current Heimdall as a rewrite on Cosmos SDK and CometBFT with 1–2 second blocks of its own, and the finality page says deterministic finality on Polygon PoS is now 2 to 5 seconds through milestones. Earlier, milestones were introduced to replace a checkpoint-only model in which a transaction was final only when Ethereum had the checkpoint. For a swap the practical effect is that the four confirmations the site waits for are past finality, not merely past four blocks.

Block time. The docs do not state Bor's block interval on the pages read; Polygonscan's chart averaged about 1.5 seconds in October 2026. The route data counts at 2 seconds, so the estimate is a little generous.

What has not changed. The 0x… address, gas paid by the sender, Polygonscan as the place to look, and the same wallet that works on Ethereum. A transfer made under MATIC in 2021 and one made under POL today look the same on the explorer; only the symbol differs.

Most people who hold POL hold it because of USDC on Polygon, and the question they bring is which network to receive USDC on. Three of the four USDC networks here use the same 0x… address, so the choice is about fees, confirmation times and the gas token — not about the address. The table uses the confirmation counts and times the site is built from, Circle's contract list, and the Ethereum slot time on ethereum.org, all checked on 14 October 2026; the fourth network, Solana, has a different address format and is covered on the USD Coin page.

The address is the trap, on all three. One 0x… string holds three separate USDC balances on three networks, and a transfer lands on exactly one. Ask the receiver which network before anything else; the address cannot answer.

Fees. Ethereum is usually the most expensive of the three to move USDC on, and the form's "You get" reflects that in the payout fee. Polygon and Base are usually cheaper by a wide margin. The gas token differs: POL on Polygon, ETH-on-Base on Base — a balance separate from ETH on Ethereum — and ETH on Ethereum. A wallet that receives USDC on any of them and holds none of that network's gas token cannot move it on; the form can supply POL for Polygon directly.

Time. Polygon's one confirmation and Base's two are seconds; Ethereum's fifteen at 12 seconds each are three minutes before processing. If the swap's speed matters, either of the cheaper networks finishes sooner.

Look-alikes. Polygon has USDC.e, the pre-2023 bridged token, which is still around. On Ethereum there is only one USDC. Whatever network you receive on, the contract in the table is the test. USDC native vs bridged: how to move it covers Polygon's pair, and Pay USDT to a different network shows the same cross-network move for USDT.

Routes. The route pages into and out of USDC are on the USD Coin page. POL itself has one route page, POL → USDT TRC-20, and appears as the receiving side in the form for a wallet that needs gas.