Polygon launches sPOL liquid staking token to unlock native DeFi

Polygon Labs has launched sPOL, a native liquid staking token (LST) and it is designed to mobilize more than 3.6 billion staked POL into the network’s DeFi ecosystem. 

sPOL is the first liquid staking token built directly by Polygon Labs and it is backed by a 100 million sPOL treasury commitment to seed liquidity from day one.

What gap is sPOL designed to close?

According to Polygon, more than 3.6 billion POL tokens being staked across the network, however, only around 4 to 5%of that capital is liquid. This is a far cry to the roughly 30% of staked ETH that sits in liquid staking tokens on Ethereum.

The third-party liquid staking market on Polygon has done little to close that gap.

Existing liquid staking tokens carry fees ranging from 5 to 16%, and collective adoption has remained shallow.

Providers including Ankr and Stader Labs have offered POL liquid staking products for years, but uptake never got close to the levels seen on Ethereum.

According to Polygon, when a user stakes POL through the new standard, they receive sPOL at a 1:1 exchange rate. The received sPOL accrues value over time as staking rewards accumulate.

The token can be traded, used as collateral, deployed into liquidity pools, or layered across DeFi yield strategies.

Existing stakers are not left out of the mix as they can also migrate their positions through the staking portal shared by Polygon with no waiting period and no gap in rewards.

Polygon Labs committed $10 million at launch from its own treasury to back sPOL, with $90 million to follow progressively. It also stated that Uniswap V4 AMM pools are also live at launch.

The token arrival coincides with a governance effort from Polygon that, if passed, would change how network fees flow across Polygon’s validator set.

Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal wrote on X, “This is part of a bigger push we’ve been making for POL stakers. Priority fees on Polygon have surged 1000% since PIP-65 and with PIP-85, a larger portion of those fees will be shared directly with stakers and delegators. Now we’re unlocking liquid staking too.”

Polygon makes diversity push

Polygon’s DeFi total locked value (TVL) is currently over $1.27 billion after recording 40.1% year-on-year growth to reach $1.17 billion at the end of January 2026.

The bulk of that increase was driven by Polymarket, which now holds $438.08 million in TVL, a quarter of the entire ecosystem.

Polymarket’s exit from Polygon has the potential of shaking the network’s DeFi profile, and the possibility of that departure happening increases every passing day.

Polygon Labs has been proactive in weaning itself away from Polymarket by channeling resources into building the next payment infrastructure for businesses.

The company is reportedly in talks to raise up to $100 million for a new stablecoin payments business, having already acquired payments firm Coinme and wallet provider Sequence.

POL, Polygon’s native token, did not receive a boost as a result of the announcement, as it is currently trading around 0.083, down by over 0.9% in the past 24 hours, as of the time of writing.