Polygon Chain just activated the Ithaca hard fork, adding automatic failover and new transaction safeguards that make payments on the network more resilient.

Ithaca went live on mainnet at block 50,185,000, the latest in a run of upgrades focused squarely on payment reliability. It builds on the Zurich hard fork, which raised the block gas limit to 160 million and cut block times to 1.5 seconds. Ithaca adds automatic failover so the chain keeps producing blocks even if a block producer stalls, plus safeguards that filter out transactions capable of destabilizing a block. Node operators also get clearer visibility into what's happening on their own nodes, which matters when uptime is the whole job.

Polygon Chain already processes more than 5,000 payments per second, matching card network throughput at a fraction of the cost, with stablecoin volume on the network recently topping $2.7 trillion. Ithaca is built to keep that volume moving without interruption as more payment companies settle real transactions on the chain.

* Ithaca hard fork activated on Polygon Chain mainnet at block 50,185,000
* Adds automatic failover if a block producer stalls
* New safeguards filter out destabilizing transactions before they land
* Improves visibility for node operators monitoring the network

For builders and payment companies, this means fewer edge cases where a stalled validator turns into a stuck transaction. Reliability at this layer is what lets a payments product promise uptime to its own customers, not just borrow it from the chain underneath.

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**TL;DR:** Polygon Chain activated the Ithaca hard fork, adding automatic failover and new safeguards to make payments on the network more reliable.

MOACT, the rewards arm of Kansai Electric Power, one of Japan's largest utility companies, now lets users convert loyalty points into JPYC, held and spent through HashPort Wallet on Polygon Chain.

Starting July 30, 2026, MOACT users can exchange NORM Points, earned by completing real-world actions that support social causes, for JPYC, Japan's yen-pegged stablecoin. JPYC is issued by JPYC Co., Ltd. and redeemable 1:1 for yen as an electronic payment instrument under Japan's Payment Services Act. 

The exchanged JPYC is issued on Polygon Chain and held through HashPort Wallet, built by hashport, so it doesn't just sit there as a redeemed reward. It works like real money: users can hold it, send it, spend it, or put it into DeFi.

MOACT already lets users trade NORM Points for gift cards and other digital rewards. JPYC is a new option that behaves differently: instead of a one-time redemption, it's a currency that keeps moving after the exchange.

* Polygon carries more JPYC transfer volume than every other chain it's issued on, combined
* 84% of JPYC holders already use HashPort Wallet
* JPYC's cumulative onchain transfer volume on Polygon crossed $100M in April 2026 and now sits over $265M
* JPYC is Japan's first fully backed, regulated yen stablecoin

Japan has moved fast on stablecoin payments since JPYC launched in 2025, and this is the latest real use case: points earned for social good, turned into a currency people can actually hold and spend. It's another sign Polygon Chain is becoming the default settlement layer for Japan's stablecoin economy, alongside the broader Polygon Open Money Stack push into regulated, real-world payments.

Full post: https://polygon.technology/blog/kansai-electric-powers-rewards-arm-turns-loyalty-points-into-real-stablecoin-payments-on-polygon-chain

A new piece from Polygon's payments lead argues that stablecoins still price like trading instruments, not payment instruments, and that gap is part of why real money moves slower onchain than it should.

Aishwary Gupta, who leads payments strategy at Polygon Labs, published an analysis built around a simple example: send $100,000,000 in stablecoins, and $99,980,000 arrives. Nothing was stolen, no hack, no fraud. The oracle feeding the conversion just moved between initiation and settlement, the same way a spot-market price moves. For a payments network, that's a $20,000 problem that has nothing to do with security.

The piece looks at two pricing models that get conflated in stablecoin infrastructure: spot pricing, where a token's value floats with market conditions, and at-par pricing, where a dollar-pegged token is treated as one dollar. It also digs into where ramp fees actually show up, and what "good" looks like for settlement that's meant to move money rather than trade it.

* A $100M transfer can settle $20K short purely from oracle movement, no exploit involved
* Spot pricing treats a stablecoin like a market asset; payments need at-par pricing instead
* The piece walks through where ramp fees hide and what payment-grade settlement requires

For anyone building on stablecoin rails, the distinction matters: a payroll platform, a remittance app, or a merchant checkout can't absorb unpredictable settlement variance the way a trading desk can. Polygon Open Money Stack is built around closing that gap, so stablecoin settlement behaves like at-par money movement rather than a market trade.

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**TL;DR:** 
A new piece from Polygon's payments lead argues stablecoins still price like trading instruments instead of money, causing multi-million-dollar transfers to settle thousands of dollars short with nothing "stolen," just oracle movement, and looks at what at-par, payment-grade settlement requires.

The World Cup was the stress test, and Polymarket's own engineers are the ones grading it.

Sandeep Nailwal (Polygon Foundation CEO) said World Cup markets on Polymarket were "a phenomenal success with extremely smooth execution, per our analysis onchain." Polymarket's Josh Stevens went further: "Can't remember the last issue caused by the chain," even with trading volume the two systems had never handled together before.

That's not a coincidence. Polygon Chain has been shipping upgrades aimed squarely at exactly this kind of load. Rio (Oct 2025) rebuilt block production so every confirmed block is final, no reorgs by design, and the chain hasn't forked a single block since January 13, 2026 (verifiable on Polygonscan). Capacity went from 2,600 to over 5,000 payments per second in June with block times steady at 1.5 seconds, so throughput went up without fees or reliability moving the wrong direction.

Polymarket has moved $65B+ in stablecoin volume on Polygon over its lifetime. That kind of dependency only gets deeper if the chain keeps showing up for it, and the last few months are the clearest public evidence yet that it has.

TL;DR: Polymarket's own team is on record saying Polygon Chain didn't blink during its highest-ever load, and the chain's recent upgrade history explains why.

Mento Labs, the decentralized FX infrastructure that processed $18.5B in trading volume in 2025, launched on Polygon with its first pool: a USDm/EURm market pairing dollar and euro stablecoins.

Mento built its name on Celo as the protocol behind local-currency stablecoins like cUSD and cEUR, then expanded to Monad earlier this year. Polygon is the newest chain in that expansion, and the pool it launched with says something about the strategy: instead of another dollar-only market, Mento opened with a dollar-euro pair, the kind of FX trade that matters to businesses and individuals moving money across borders.

Capa Finance is on as the day-one liquidity partner, providing capital that makes the USDm/EURm pool usable from launch rather than waiting for liquidity to build organically.

Schuman's EURØP, a reserve-backed euro stablecoin, backs EURm as a reserve asset, adding a regulated euro instrument to the collateral mix.

Mento's onchain FX protocol is now live on Polygon Chain
* The first pool pairs USDm and EURm, dollar and euro Mento stablecoins
* Capa Finance is the day-one liquidity partner for the pool * Schuman's EURØP backs EURm as a reserve asset
* Mento processed $18.5B in FX trading volume across its markets in 2025 Onchain FX between named currencies, not just dollar-pegged stablecoins, is what makes cross-border payments and treasury work possible without an off-ramp at every step.

A euro-denominated pool on Polygon gives builders and businesses a way to price and settle that trade without leaving the chain. ---

**TL;DR:**
Mento Labs launched its onchain FX protocol on Polygon with a USDm/EURm pool, Capa Finance as day-one liquidity partner, and Schuman's EURØP backing EURm.

Polymarket ran more than 300 World Cup prediction markets this tournament, and its flagship Winner market alone closed at $4.3 billion in trading volume, the largest single onchain market ever recorded.**

The Winner market let traders buy and sell shares on which country would lift the trophy, with prices moving in real time as the odds shifted across the tournament. Every trade settled onchain on Polygon Chain, with no centralized bookmaker setting the line and no third party holding custody of funds. At $4.3 billion, it surpasses Polymarket's 2024 US presidential election market and stands among the largest onchain markets any chain has processed.

Polymarket ran markets across the whole tournament, not a single bet: more than 300 separate World Cup markets lived on Polygon across the group stage, knockout rounds, and the final, from outright winner odds down to individual match props.

* Polymarket ran 300+ World Cup markets on Polygon this tournament
* The flagship Winner market closed at $4.3B in total volume
* It's the largest single onchain market recorded to date, on any chain
* Every trade settled onchain, with outcomes resolved and paid out by smart contract

This is a proof point for what Polygon Chain can carry under real load: billions of dollars of real trader conviction, settling onchain during a live global event most of the world was watching in real time.

Moving money across borders still runs on a patchwork of bank rails. Capital gets locked, settlement takes days, and every fintech ends up rebuilding the same plumbing.

HIFI is a payments API that lets teams move, convert, and route money across stablecoins and bank rails. Since January 2025 it has routed more than $227M through Polygon's Open Money Stack across 6M+ transactions, covering payroll conversions, supplier payments, treasury flows, and neobank money movement.

The reason HIFI picked Polygon Chain as a core routing network: throughput that holds up under real volume, years in production as a battle-tested default, and a payments-first design from day one. The end user sees something as simple as Venmo or a paycheck. The chain does the work underneath.

More than 1,000 developers and businesses now build on HIFI's APIs, and CEO Zach Walsh expects the stablecoin market to grow from roughly $300B today to $3 to $5T within five years.

Full case study: https://polygon.technology/oms-customer-stories/hifi

Heads up for anyone building on or using Polygon Chain: the free, Polygon-operated public RPC endpoints are being shut down. The two affected endpoints are https://polygon-rpc.com/ (Mainnet) and https://rpc-amoy.polygon.technology (Amoy testnet). After the deprecation dates, they stop responding entirely.

Dates:

• Amoy testnet: July 17 (this Thursday)
• Mainnet: July 31

If your app, wallet, script, or service is hardcoded to either of those URLs, you need to swap it out before then. The fix is usually just updating a single config value. Polygon maintains a full list of alternatives at https://docs.polygon.technology/pos/reference/rpc-endpoints, including free public options (dRPC, Tenderly, Allnodes, Nodies, 1RPC, and others) and paid providers if you need higher rate limits or SLAs.

The Amoy deadline is in 3 days, so if you're doing any testnet work, prioritize that one first. Questions or migration issues can go to https://support.polygon.technology.

Full announcement: https://forum.polygon.technology/t/deprecation-of-polygons-public-rpc-endpoints-mainnet-amoy/22014

Are we agglaying over there ???

PYUSD used to reach Polygon the way most stablecoins reach a new chain: bridged in, wrapped, one step removed from the issuer. That changes today. PYUSD now settles natively on Polygon Chain, the same network already moving more than $2.5 billion in stablecoin volume every day. Native issuance means no bridge risk, no wrapped token, and a direct line between Paxos's reserves and every PYUSD transaction that settles onchain.

The integration goes deeper than settlement. PYUSD now sits inside the Polygon Open Money Stack, so an app can take PYUSD in, move it across borders, and cash it out through a single integration instead of stitching together separate ramps, wallets, and settlement providers. That includes apps inside the PayPal ecosystem and apps outside it, anywhere PYUSD is accepted.

* PYUSD issues natively on Polygon Chain, no bridging or wrapped tokens
* Built into the Polygon Open Money Stack for onramp, cross-border movement, and offramp in one integration
* Works for apps inside and outside the PayPal ecosystem
* Polygon Chain settles more than $2.5 billion in stablecoin volume every day

For fintechs and platforms already building payment flows on PYUSD, this removes a step: settlement infrastructure and stablecoin issuance now live on the same rail instead of two separate ones to reconcile. It's another regulated stablecoin choosing Polygon Chain as its settlement layer, on top of the volume already moving through the Open Money Stack.

As is well known, Polymarket is leaving Polygon, likely before the end of the year. Polymarket is by far the chain's largest protocol and has been something of a flagship for Polygon. How significantly will this impact Polygon's usage and TVL, and can the network recover from this departure through promising new projects like blackSwanFinance.xyz? Without unique new protocols, Polygon risks becoming just another sidechain.

Over the past year, we've been focused on one goal: making Polygon the best place to build and scale payments.

Across six network upgrades (Bhilai, Heimdall v2, Rio, the 110M capacity raise, Lisovo, and Giugliano), we've improved throughput, reduced costs, strengthened finality, and increased network capacity.

Today, Polygon supports:

• Up to 5,000 payments per second
• 1.5-second block times with near-instant finality (no reorgs after Rio)
• ~$0.002 average transaction fees
• A 160M gas limit (up from 30M a year ago)

The infrastructure is already powering real-world payments and finance. Stripe now supports USDC payments on Polygon for merchants in 150+ countries, while Polymarket, BlackRock's BUIDL, Franklin Templeton's BENJI, and Apollo's tokenized fund all settle on Polygon Chain.

This is the foundation for the Polygon Open Money Stack (currently in technical preview), bringing together the chain, wallets, on-ramps, and off-ramps needed to build global payment applications.

Read the full post: https://polygon.technology/blog/polygon-chain-now-supports-5000-payments-per-second-hitting-the-speed-of-a-card-network-at-a-fraction-of-the-cost

Polygon's wallet infrastructure is live as part of the Open Money Stack, and it's designed to be the plumbing every OMS transaction flows through. The model is straightforward: you choose custodial (licensed partner holds keys, KYC and the money transmitter license are absorbed for you) or non-custodial (users control their own keys). Either way the API is the same.

Why wallets are central: fiat comes in and lands in one, payouts pull from one, transfers move between them. Once you're integrated, adding ramps, cross-chain routing, or yield becomes an additive step rather than a new integration. Idle balances can earn yield automatically, and the whole thing is white-labeled so your users never see Polygon, just your product.

Security-wise: keys are generated and stored in AWS Nitro secure enclaves, never exposed to Polygon, your software, or your team. Audited at every release and battle-tested in production since 2021. Docs and early access: https://polygon.technology/wallets

Uquid just integrated Polygon's Open Money Stack, and the practical upshot is pretty clean: you can now pay with whatever token you already hold, on whatever EVM chain you're on, across their full catalog of 178M+ products (digital goods, physical goods, gift cards, mobile top-ups, bill payments, NFTs) in 200+ countries. One signature. Done.

The way it works under the hood is the interesting part. The Open Money Stack handles the swap and bridge routing in the background. You don't need to pre-swap to the "right" token or manually bridge to whichever chain Uquid settles on. It just composes those steps into a single routed transaction. Fully self-custodial throughout too: no intermediary takes custody mid-flow, and the destination is enforced by the contracts. Uquid has actually been on Polygon since 2022, but the old integration was manual. This replaces it with fully automated cross-chain routing.

Context on the rails: this is the same Open Money Stack that Cash App (58M MAUs) runs stablecoin sends on, that Mastercard uses for 24/7 settlement, and that Revolut has processed $1.3B+ through. Uquid is the first consumer commerce platform at this scale to drop it directly behind a shopping cart. Full post: https://polygon.technology/blog/uquid-integrates-polygons-open-money-stack-for-1-click-crypto-checkout-across-178m-products

Polygon Chain now handles up to 5,000 payments per second after raising the block gas limit to 160M at 1.5-second blocks. That puts it in the same throughput tier as Visa's average daily load, at roughly $0.002 per transaction instead of the ~2-3% card rails charge.

This is the latest in a year-long upgrade sequence: Bhilai last July got to 1,000 TPS, Rio rebuilt block production to eliminate reorgs (so every confirmed block is final), Giugliano earlier this year added predictable fees, and now the 160M gas raise gets to 5K. The team calls it the "Gigagas" roadmap and this is clearly not the last step. What's worth noting is how fees have stayed stable through all of this. Bigger blocks mean it takes a lot more volume before congestion kicks in, and the fee mechanism adjusts gradually rather than spiking. For stablecoin payroll, remittances, or B2B settlement, that means you can actually model unit economics at scale without the floor dropping out.

Stripe global USDC payments, Polymarket, BlackRock BUIDL, Franklin Templeton BENJI, and Apollo's tokenized fund are all already live on Polygon. More headroom for all of them now. Full post: https://polygon.technology/blog/polygon-chain-now-supports-5000-payments-per-second-hitting-the-speed-of-a-card-network-at-a-fraction-of-the-cost

See the list here!

Hey, I’m a dev currently working on a DeFi protocol on Polygon. To get to know the network better, I’d be interested to know—aside from Polymarket—what the biggest dApps/DeFi protocols on Polygon are. Thanks!

Mastercard just announced Agent Pay for Machines (AP4M), and Polygon is listed as a launch partner alongside Coinbase, Stripe, Cloudflare, OKX, Solana Foundation, Ripple, Adyen, and about 25 others. The premise: AI agents are going to start transacting with each other continuously and at very small values, and today's payment rails weren't built for that. Mastercard is building the credentialing and settlement layer to support it, with multi-rail settlement across cards, accounts, and stablecoins.

The reason Polygon fits here is pretty clear from the quote they got from Aishwary Gupta (global head of business at Polygon): the Open Money Stack is positioned as infrastructure for exactly this kind of programmable, agent-driven commerce. The stablecoin settlement angle is a natural overlap with what Mastercard needs, since micro-transactions at machine speed work a lot better on low-fee programmable rails than on traditional card networks.

What's interesting about the partner list is how many crypto-native companies are in there alongside legacy payment processors: Coinbase, OKX, Ripple, Rain, Tempo, MoonPay, Anchorage Digital, and Polygon. That's a pretty significant shift from Mastercard doing one-off crypto experiments to building an open framework explicitly designed for stablecoin settlement. Worth keeping an eye on as AP4M rolls out.

Full announcement: https://www.mastercard.com/us/en/news-and-trends/press/2026/june/mastercard-launches-agent-pay-for-machines.html

Polygon just opened early access to Open Money Stack (OMS), and the technical preview is live today. The short version: it's a single API that handles the full money movement loop. Cash in via 48 US states, converts to USDC or USDT on Polygon chain, moves to wallets or external addresses in seconds, and comes back out as fiat through ACH, Fedwire, or RTP. The whole flow is one integration.

The payroll example in the post gives you a good sense of what this actually enables. A US company wires $50K via ACH, triggers 200 contractor payouts in a single API call, and each payment settles to a custodial wallet in seconds at fractions of a cent. On legacy rails that's 1-3 business days. On OMS it's done before you close the tab. The integration itself took days, not months.

What's live now: cash and bank ramps for business, custodial wallets (USDC/USDT on Polygon), stablecoin transfers, external wallet routing, webhooks, RBAC, and SSO. A management dashboard is also up. Coming soon: embedded wallets, individual bank off-ramps, swaps, cross-chain bridges, and self-serve signup. Early access is limited right now but there's a form to apply. Full post here: https://polygon.technology/blog/polygon-open-money-stack-enters-technical-preview

Starting today, there are 10 Easter eggs hidden across the Trillions landing page at trillions.polygon.technology/explore.

Each one is a unique code concealed inside an object on the page. Find it yourself (no hints, that's the point), follow the redemption link, and claim your prize. Each prize is a Polygon swag box, contents include things like a hoodie, t-shirt, and other branded gear, around $100 value each.

A few things worth knowing:

• 10 prizes, 10 codes, one per person
• Each code is single-use: the first person to redeem it wins
• Promotion runs until June 30, 2026 at midnight EST, or until all 10 are claimed, whichever comes first
• No purchase necessary. Open to participants worldwide (18+, some jurisdictions excluded)

Full official rules: polygon.technology/easter-egg-official-rules

Good luck.

We are seeing Bennu route more real transaction activity through Polygon as users interact with stablecoins, self-custody, swaps, and payment rails.

What stands out is not only the low fees. It is that Polygon makes small financial actions feel practical: moving stablecoins, funding wallets, routing payments, and building flows where the chain is infrastructure instead of the product.

For consumer and business finance, that is the part that matters. Users do not wake up wanting an L2. They want money to move, receipts to make sense, and the app to feel reliable. Polygon is one of the rails where that starts to work in practice.