POL Inflation Analysis · October 2026 · Mixed flows · supply roughly steady
POL supply is roughly steady, with flows pulling both ways: Polygon mints new POL every day at a 2% yearly rate, and it burns the base fees its users pay in large batches no more than once every 90 days. Over the 90 days to Oct 25 2026 the mint added 52.30M POL and the first batch burn removed 100M POL, so supply fell 0.45%; the next 90 days carry the same mint against a 21.62M POL burn, for growth of about 0.29%. Polygon has no supply cap, and other trackers read −0.45% for the same 90 days.
The verdict, in one paragraph
Over the 90 days from Jul 27 to Oct 25 2026, POL supply changed by −0.45%: 52.30M POL was minted and 100M POL was burned. Other trackers read the same window at −0.45%, a gap of 0.00 percentage points, so the coin page carries no warning note. For the next 90 days, to Jan 23 2027, the same mint meets a smaller burn of 21.62M POL on Dec 22 2026, and supply is set to grow about 0.29%. Both readings sit inside the steady band, so the card says "Mixed flows · supply roughly steady". The short label for POL: a 2% mint coin with a batch fee burn that, in its first quarter, more than cancelled the mint, and in its second will cancel about two-fifths of it.
Sell pressure: where new POL comes from
Protocol inflation: 52.30M POL in 90 days. The POL token on Ethereum mints new coins once a day at a rate set to compound to 2% a year. Between Jul 27 and Oct 25 2026 the 90 mints, one a day, added 52,303,790 POL, about 581K POL a day. Each mint is split in half: one half goes to the staking contract, which pays the validators who run Polygon and the holders who delegate POL to them, and the other half goes to the Polygon Community Treasury. The mint is set by the day, not by the block, so Polygon's faster block times this year did not change it. A governance change in force from Oct 1 to Dec 1 2026 raised the reward paid for each checkpoint to 64,500 POL, but that extra comes from 27.33M POL of fees already collected, not from new minting. The next 90 days are projected at the same 52.30M POL.
Vesting unlocks: zero. POL replaced MATIC one for one in September 2024, and every original MATIC allocation for the team, the Foundation and early backers had finished unlocking well before that, so no POL vests in this window or the next.
Foundation and unscheduled unlocks: zero. Every POL in existence, apart from coins sent to the dead address, already counts as circulating, so when Polygon's treasury or team wallets spend, they move coins that are already counted and add nothing new. The Community Treasury sent 100.7M POL into staking on Oct 14 2026; that changed who holds the coins, not how many there are.
Long-term locked or bankruptcy: zero. No bankruptcy estate, court-held pile or long lock of POL is waiting to be released.
Buy pressure: where new POL goes
Programmatic buyback: zero. Nothing buys POL back on the market today. A draft plan from April 2026 would sell fixed-price block space to payment companies and use part of that money to buy POL for stakers and for the burn, but it has not gone live.
Protocol fee burn: 100M POL in the last 90 days, 21.62M POL in the next. Every transaction on Polygon pays a base fee in POL. Instead of destroying it block by block, Polygon collects it in a burn wallet on the chain. Anyone can trigger a burn from that wallet, at most 100M POL at a time and at most once every 90 days, and the burned coins travel back to Ethereum and land in the dead address. The first burn ran on Sep 23 2026 and sent exactly 100M POL to the dead address. That burn wallet still holds 21.62M POL, and its next 90-day slot opens on Dec 22 2026, inside the next window, so the next 90 days carry a 21.62M POL burn. Since March 2026, newer base fees collect first in a second wallet that pays gas rebates of up to $1M to AI-agent payment apps until Dec 31 2026 and passes the rest on to the burn wallet; it grew by 41.50M POL in these 90 days and held 66.60M POL on Oct 25 2026; they only join the burn once that wallet passes them on, so they are not counted forward.
Foundation buy: zero. Polygon Labs and the Foundation do not buy POL on the market. Banks and funds that now offer POL to customers buy coins that already circulate, so they take nothing out of the count.
New long-term lock: zero. About 3.85B POL sits in the staking contract, including the treasury's new 100.7M POL, but staked POL still counts as circulating, so staking removes nothing from supply.
Foundation and overhang
Because every live POL already counts as circulating, none of these balances can add new supply; they matter because they show where POL can move and where burns come from. The Polygon Community Treasury on Ethereum receives half of every mint, about 291K POL a day, and held 3.22M POL on Oct 25 2026, down from 77.48M POL on Jul 27 2026 after it sent 100.7M POL through a treasury safe into staking on Oct 14 2026.
On the Polygon chain, the burn wallet holds 21.62M POL for the Dec 22 2026 burn, the newer base-fee wallet holds 66.60M POL, and the priority-fee wallet that pays validators and stakers holds 11.11M POL. The MATIC swap contract holds 373.54M POL for MATIC that holders have not yet swapped, down from 385.85M POL at the start of the window. Polygon Labs' own operating wallets are not publicly mapped. If the treasury or the fee wallets fall between refreshes, the outflow enters the foundation and unscheduled unlocks row at the next refresh, and a larger burn wallet balance would raise the next burn.
How POL compares to other Ethereum scaling chains
Most tokens of Ethereum scaling networks, such as Arbitrum's ARB and Optimism's OP, have no fee burn at all: their sequencers collect fees in ETH, and their supply grows through scheduled team and investor unlocks rather than a mint. POL is built differently. It has no unlocks left, it mints a fixed 2% a year to pay validators and fund a treasury, and it is the gas token of its own chain, so the fees users pay are POL and can be burned. That makes POL's supply depend on usage in a way ARB's and OP's does not.
Against Ethereum itself, the shape is close but the timing is not. Ethereum destroys its base fee in every block, so its burn is smooth; Polygon collects the base fee and burns it in batches, so its burn arrives in steps of up to 100M POL every 90 days. Ethereum's issuance also floats with the amount staked, while POL's 2% is a fixed rate whatever the stake. In a quarter with a full batch burn POL shrinks, as it did to Oct 25 2026; in a quarter with a small batch it grows, as it is set to do next.
What to watch in the next 90 days
Dec 22 2026: the next burn slot opens, with 21.62M POL in the burn wallet. If no one calls it, or if the wallet has grown, the next-90-day reading changes.
The newer base-fee wallet: it held 66.60M POL on Oct 25 2026. If its holders move that POL to the burn wallet before Dec 22 2026, the next batch could be far larger than 21.62M, up to the 100M cap.
Dec 31 2026: the gas-rebate program for AI-agent payment apps ends, so base fees stop waiting in the second wallet and flow to the burn wallet again, which would make the batches after Dec 22 2026 larger.
Dec 1 2026: the higher checkpoint reward ends and returns to its base level; a permanent way to share fees with stakers is planned as a separate change.
The draft payment-fee buyback plan: if it is approved and starts, POL bought with payment fees would add a buyback next to the burn.
Community proposals to end the 2% mint: a forum proposal from Oct 6 2025 asks for the mint to stop; it has had no vote. A vote to cut the rate would change the sell side at once.
Summary
POL supply was roughly steady over the 90 days to Oct 25 2026, at −0.45%, because the first batch burn of 100M POL on Sep 23 2026 outweighed 52.30M POL of new minting. Polygon mints POL at a fixed 2% a year, split between stakers and the Community Treasury, and burns the base fees its users pay in batches of up to 100M POL no more than once every 90 days. The next batch opens on Dec 22 2026 with 21.62M POL, so supply is set to grow about 0.29% in the next 90 days unless more fees reach the burn wallet first. POL has no supply cap and no unlocks left; its supply now depends on how much people pay to use Polygon.
MrNasDog Pressure Framework analysis of POL, Metric 1 — Inflation. Data + explanation only. Not financial advice. Checked Oct 25 2026.