Polygon rallies as rising fees and Polymarket activity revive on-chain demand

Polygon (POL) became one of the week’s top gainers after the chain reawakened with increased fees. POL rose by 22% in the past month, on growing prediction pair activity. 

Polygon (POL) started a strong recovery in the past month, boosting the levels of a relatively old token. POL rallied by over 17.2% ahead of the weekend, trading near a one-month high at $0.15. POL also had a small spike in open interest up to $51M. The price action followed the January 5 burn of over 3M POL, leading to the most recent price expansion.

For POL, this was the biggest daily burn in history. Higher daily activity translates into higher burn demand and growing scarcity. POL is required to transact on Polygon as a utility token for gas fees.

POL extended its gains as Polygon showed signs of increased activity. The L2 chain, which was mostly idle after the Web3 boom in 2021, is starting to reflect the effects of Polymarket. 

Polygon fees rise to 14-month peak

Chain revenue on Polygon rose to the highest level since November 2024, reaching $1.1M for the past week. The chain revenue reflects raw transactions and their fees, mostly of POL and USDC for utility and placing predictions. 

Transactions on Polygon reached 5.3M daily, up from 2.8M at the start of 2025. The chain also recently marked a spike to 1.4M daily active users, based on TokenTerminal data. The recent spike was the highest since the summer of 2025. 

The increased activity has caused only small spikes in gas fees, with most types of transactions requiring less than $0.01 to be completed. Polymarket activity often uses bots and automation, demonstrating that Polygon was capable of carrying the bot-driven traffic.

The chain carries $3.35B in secured value, remaining the most widely used platform as a legacy Ethereum L2 chain.

Polygon sets to become rails for money movements 

Polygon’s initial L2 chain has carried several major crypto trends, including NFT, Web3 games, DeFi, and stablecoin transfers. 

Polymarket turned into the topmost liquid app on Polygon, with an estimated $258M in value locked. Polygon also set its own records for activity and fees produced in the past weeks. 

However, the Polygon team aims to go beyond a single app. The chain has ambitious plans to become one of the major payment rails. Recently, the team introduced the Polygon Open Money Stack, catching the trend of on-chain payment infrastructure. 

The next three years will define how money moves over the next thirty years.

The Polygon Open Money Stack will change everything.
• one vertically integrated stack to move all money onchain
• seamless global money movement enabled for anyone, anywhere.
• open, interoperable,… https://t.co/O8oCZKSWVh

— Polygon | POL (@0xPolygon) January 8, 2026

Polygon already carries over $2.9B in stablecoins, offering minimal transfer fees. The Polygon version of stablecoins is widely distributed on exchanges. Despite the chain’s slow periods, Polygon saw $365.8M in netflows for the past three months. Polygon receives most of its liquidity from Ethereum, while serving as a hub for other Layer 2s. The chain remains one of the production-ready networks to attract apps from different narratives and trends.

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