17 November 2023
The POLS mint was arguably the most anticipated event on the Polygon (MATIC) blockchain this year and the stats have corroborated this. On Thursday, the Bitcoin BRC-20-inspired mint took place and the burn figures have been nothing short of impressive. Over 100 million MATIC tokens were incinerated as a result of this event. But data suggests that this rush is far from over.
POLS Mint Triggers Massive MATIC Burns
The POLS token mint saw a massive turnout from the Polygon community as thousands of investors clamored to mint their tokens. As a result, the fees on the network skyrocketed and the ensuing token burn crossed 100 million MATIC.
According to reports, the fees on the Polygon network skyrocketed by over 13,000% sending fees as high as 4,005 gwei at the peak. Polygon founder Sandeep Nailwal acknowledged this increase in network activity, posting a chart that showed that the network had processed over 6 million transactions in a 24-hour period, amounting to a 170 transactions per second (TPS) rate.
What is going on on @0xPolygon POS chain? 6m transactions in last 24 hrs. 170 TPS on average. 1mn+ MATIC burnt by the protocol. The chain worked smoothly, gas fees went crazy though but no reorgs or 0 blocks etc.
I hear there is some game Baby Shark Launching, could that be the…
— Sandeep Nailwal | sandeep. polygon (@sandeepnailwal) November 16, 2023
EVM data shows that the POLS mint saw over 100 million MATIC burned which translated to over $80 million in fees alone. The NFT collection is rising in popularity and by Friday, a total of 10.32% of the collection has been minted.
Why Polygon Is Just Starting
One of the major drivers of the POLS popularity is its similarity to the BRC-20 standard that allowed for minting NFTs on the Bitcoin network which has been incredibly successful so far. Given the success of the BRC-20 tokens, this bullishness has translated to the PRC-20 tokens.
With only 18,480 owners of the POLS tokens and over 400,000 daily users on the Polygon network, there is still a lot of room for the new Polygon standard to catch on. When this happens, the expectation is that more investors will get into the tokens.
Polygon users are also actively awaiting the rebranding of the MATIC tokens into the new POL token. This rebranding is expected to give the token a sort of ‘fresh start’ that could propel the price upward. Users will have to convert their MATIC tokens to POL. However, the team has said that holders will have up to four years to do this.
The MATIC price initially benefitted from this surge in user activity by rising above the $0.94 level on Thursday. However, the altcoin has managed to lose some of those gains after falling 6.61% on Friday, according to data from Coinmarketcap. It is currently trading at $0.8626, albeit with a 2.67% gain on the weekly chart.