Institutional POL access expands in the Middle East and Europe

Polygon Weekly Overview - September 12, 2025

Welcome back to the Polygon Weekly Overview, the best place for the Polygon community to get up to speed on the chain’s latest updates, metrics, releases, insights, ecosystem developments and more. All in one place.

By The Numbers

• Polygon daily active addresses: 580.1K (+19.98%)

• Polygon daily txns: 3.62M (+17.92%)

• Polygon Total Volume Locked (TVL): $1.22B (-0.57%)

• NFT weekly sales volume: $6.55M (-52.39%)

• Top 3 NFT collections by sales volume:

  • Courtyard: $5.65M (-55.45%)

  • OKX NFT Creation: $86.63K (+91.87%)

  • neokhat: $74.38K (-14.03%)

The percentages and metrics are based on a 7-day timeframe, unless noted otherwise.

Polygon Spotlight

🟪 What happened: Institutions now have greater access to POL, as Polygon Labs has partnered with Cypher Capital to provide Middle Eastern institutions direct POL exposure and yield strategies. Meanwhile, Santander's Openbank also launched POL trading for German customers, compliant with MiCA rules.

🟪 Why it matters: This partnership represents a change from traditional crypto investing. Instead of betting on price appreciation, institutions can gain exposure to the underlying economic activity driving Polygon's tokenized real-world assets, payments volume, and growing regulated securities infrastructure.

"POL is the foundational asset powering Polygon's global infrastructure. This initiative aims to translate that value into institutional-grade opportunities, offering a path for investors to earn real yield by engaging directly with the economic engine of the Polygon ecosystem," Sandeep Nailwal, CEO of Polygon Foundation, wrote in an X post.

Additionally, POL staking powers both Agglayer and Polygon PoS, with stakers earning fees from premium features like fast interop and bundled settlement across connected chains. Stakers supporting the validation of transactions on the network are airdropped 5% to 15% of native tokens, and these airdrops have included Polygon incubated projects such as Miden, Katana and Privado ID. Such an approach helps create additional yield layers for institutional POL holders beyond network validation rewards.

The compliance with MiCA rules is equally significant, as the regulation sets a precedent for institutional-grade crypto infrastructure in Europe, and reduces uncertainty for traditional financial institutions. In turn, this opens pathways for pension funds, insurance companies, and sovereign wealth funds to participate in DeFi.

Furthermore, the opportunity for yield-stacking differentiates POL from single-purpose tokens, as institutions can earn base staking rewards, transaction fees and project airdrops simultaneously. This makes for diversified return streams that aren't correlated to token price movements.

🟪 The big picture: The institutional POL expansion points to how quickly blockchain infrastructure is maturing and weaving into traditional finance.

The developments also coincide with additional infrastructure and adoption milestones.For instance, the first EU-regulated onchain exchange, 21X, was built on Polygon and recently adopted Chainlink data standards to bring real-time tokenized securities data directly to the Polygon network. Black Manta Capital's USMO became the first regulated security to use this integration.

As bonds, securities and other asset classes continue being tokenized, Polygon provides regulated infrastructure that meets institutional compliance and scalability requirements.

Polygon's Gigagas roadmap also progressed this week with the Rio upgrade on Amoy testnet, increasing the block limit from 45 million to 60 million, and aiming to increase transactions per second by 33%.

As this scaling continues, institutions will be able to tap into 100,000 TPS and fast finality, as well as Agglayer's interoperability. In turn, institutional POL holders will be able to leverage network effects as Europe's tokenization infrastructure scales. The convergence of institutional access, regulatory clarity, and technical capability positions POL as the foundational asset for institutional blockchain exposure in regulated markets.

Into the Agglayer

• Learn about Lumia's Hyperlaunch enabling token creation directly within Telegram, X and Discord

• Read about EO Network's launch on Katana, enabling secure oracle infrastructure for RWA tokenization and DeFi applications

• Daily active addresses on OKX's X Layer reached a new all-time high of more than $4M

• Check out L2Beat’s Agglayer dashboard to see ecosystem stats

• Tune into QuickSwap's The Aggregated X Space on “Memecoin Mania”

Ecosystem showcase

• Read about how the Rio upgrade on Amoy testnet increased TPS by 33%

• John Egan, Stripe's former Head of Crypto, is joining Polygon Labs as its Chief Product Officer

• Coinbase is converting all MATIC to POL tokens by October 17, 2025

• Dune's RWA report shows that Polygon hosts 62% of all tokenized bonds globally

• Learn more about 21x’s Chainlink oracle integration for verifiable market data

Join in the fun

Want to dive into the Polygon ecosystem full-time?

• Join CoinDCX's Polygon logo hunt contest for a chance to win rewards

• Explore Wilder World’s super early access on Epic Games

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This information is for entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial advice, nor should it be used to make investment decisions. Cryptocurrencies are high risk and you should consult a financial professional before making any financial decisions. Make sure you do your own research.