L2 Discussion - Polygon Matic token migration to Pol along with the Polygon ZkEVM release. How will this effect the tokenomics? Is there some clarity on whether token supply will be increased?

Hi all. Hopefully there are still some people here who are interested in having serious critical discussions about one of the major L2s on Ethereum, Polygon.

With Polygon being one of the most popular and well known Ethereum Layer 2 solution, many of us are probably invested in Polygon. However there are several very big things coming out for Polygon in the near future, which could have a huge impact on future price action.

As a holder of decent Matic bags, I would like to open the discussion with the community about how these new changes will effect the Matic price going forward. I have always been very bullish on Polygon, however with these upcoming changes I do have some worries that I have not yet been able to alleviate. First off a little summary of the changes:

- Recently Polygon launched the beta version of its Polygon ZkEVM scaling solution. By harnessing the power of ZK proofs, Polygon is supposed to decrease transaction costs while increasing throughput. Zk Proofs & Zk rollups are some of the biggest tech upgrades coming to the EVM space at the moment, with many different companies (ZkSync, Polygon ZkEvm, Starknet, etc.) fighting to create this infrastructure. The fact that Polygon is upgrading to include this is a very bullish thing, and had me feeling very good amount the potential of Polygon. However...

- With this upgrade, Polygon will be creating a new token called Pol, and it will be migrating all Matic tokens to Pol. Pol will include both the Polygon & Polygon ZkEVM chains, which in itself is bullish. However what worries me is that Matic is currently at 93.19% of its max supply (very bullish). However with the migration to Pol, this could change. It is possible that they will increase the total supply of Pol, which will fundamentally change the tokenomics.

I have been looking everywhere for information on this, but I haven't been able to find anything conclusive. In the official Pol Whitepaper they say the following:

5.1 Initial supply

The initial supply of POL is 10 billion tokens. The entirety of the initial supply should be dedicated for migration, i.e. token swap from MATIC to POL. This migration would need to take place in order for POL to succeed MATIC as the native token of the Polygon ecosystem, and it is discussed in § 8.

The initial supply of POL matches the supply of MATIC, which should make the migration quite straightforward.

Once the migration is complete, the distribution of POL would essentially match the current distribution of MATIC. MATIC has already gone through an extensive process of token distribution which has resulted in more than 600,000 holder addresses 2 , and likely even more actual holders, given that centralized crypto exchanges’ and DeFi protocols’ addresses represent multiple users. This implies that POL would be widely distributed from day one, which is instrumental for overall decentralization and resilience of the ecosystem.

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For me, this answers exactly nothing. It says that the 'initial supply' will be 10 billion tokens which will used entirely for the migration to swap Matic to Pol. This is good. However the implication of 'initial supply' and then no further mention of any future supply is what worries me. Any changes to the total supply will have an immense and fundamental impact on the tokenomics, which makes me worried as a Matic (Pol) bag holder.

Additionally there have been rumors of a potential Pol airdrop along with Polygon ZkEVM. This is obviously nothing more than rumors - however it is something to take into consideration. An airdrop would be great for me as an active Polygon user and farmer, but it would be catastrophic to me as a bag holder.

So as you can see I am a little uncertain about Polygon at the moment. Not the project, but purely the tokenomics and value of holding a bag during this migration. I am curious to hear any opinions from the community here. If anyone has any more insight into the future tokenomics of Pol, that would be great because that's my main source of uncertainty. But as of now, I haven't been able to find anything conclusive.

Thanks for any insight and discussion!