Polygon CEO shares Agglayer's "blue ocean" strategy for purpose-built chains
Polygon Weekly Overview - June 6, 2025
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By The Numbers
Polygon daily active users: 559.19K (+1.85%)
Polygon daily txns: 3.41M (+6.90%)
Polygon Total Volume Locked (TVL): $980.13M (+2.02%)
NFT weekly sales volume: $13.97M (-12.37%)
Top 3 NFT collections by sales volume:
Courtyard: $12.65M (-4.90%)
Infinitex: $285.89K (+3.46%)
Voxies: $73.65K (-14.04%)
The percentages and metrics are based on a 7-day timeframe, unless noted otherwise.
Agglayer Spotlight
🟪What happened: As crypto adoption grows, Agglayer’s expanding DeFi capabilities and evolving its vision. With new chains like Katana entering the space, there's opportunity to scale even further into the DeFi realm, Polygon Labs CEO Marc Boiron shared during Polygon's Quarterly Webinar with Token Relations.
🟪Why does it matter: This conversation comes on the tails of the launch of the DeFi-focused chain Katana Network. The chain, which was incubated by Polygon Labs and GSR, was highlighted as a key milestone for Agglayer.
Katana is engineered to provide high-yield and deep liquidity, not just for its own users, but for every chain connected to the Agglayer, Boiron said. “Ultimately the full idea behind Katana is to build it so all the chains on the Agglayer can tap into that liquidity.”
Katana Network also aligns with Agglayers vision of having specialized chains, opposed to general purpose chains. "Our view is every chain is going to become specific to a purpose whether they choose to or they are forced into it," Boiron said. While Katana’s mechanisms, such as the single sequencer, are specific to DeFi, its elements might not be the best for other use cases such as gaming or social decentralized applications, he added.
With most layer-1 blockchains, a decentralized validator set causes all the fees generated to go to validators or stakers. But Katana Network looks to rewrite the playbook by leveraging a single sequencer to bring fees back to the chains, allowing it to generate more yield.. “This construct makes sense for DeFi users, whether that’s retail targeting higher yield or institutions targeting deeper liquidity,” Boiron said.
But on the flip side, this type of mechanism isn’t really necessary for something like a consumer-centric chain, for example. Thus pointing to the importance of sector-focused chains that can scale for specific purposes.
Agglayer's vision for being an interoperable hub for purpose-based chains creates a more specialized network optimized for specific use cases. This contributes to the growth of the ecosystem by enabling shared liquidity and resources across connected chains. Thus allowing each specialized chain to benefit from the strengths of others in the ecosystem. Users can tap into different solutions via various chains, which will then drive fees to POL via crosschain transactions.
The Agglayer represents "a blue ocean from a competitive perspective," Boiron said. Each new chain added—whether its Miden, Katana, or Billions— can enhance the desirability of the entire network through shared benefits, he added. "It really has to do with having a holistic ecosystem with network effects built up across Agglayer."
This allows users to have a "one-click" experience to perform multiple actions on multiple chains without friction.
🟪The big picture: Over the years, Polygon PoS has pivoted toward more sustainable verticles, Boiron noted.
"Polygon started as a DeFi hub…what happened after that is an evolution toward building for the long term," he said. "Six months ago, we changed a lot of our focus toward payments, RWAs and stablecoins.”
Now, Polygon PoS has benefitted from the broader rising stablecoin adoption with the chain supporting 48 stablecoins in multiple currencies. While Polygon PoS is separate from the Agglayer, it is complementary to one another and the growth of each ecosystem helps the rising tide, so to speak.
As a result, key metrics have grown in recent months. On Polygon PoS, USDC velocity hit all-time highs of 4.72 while stablecoin supply grew 34% to $2.2 billion year-to-date. Meanwhile, Polygon PoS' lending TVL has grown 15% year-to-date to $489 million, with protocols like Morpho and Fluid leading the way. Lending makes up over 50% of Polygon's TVL, demonstrating how the category has led to significant growth, alongside Polygon PoS ranking first among all layer-2s in the amount of Real-World Assets tokenized.
Collectively, these developments have positioned Polygon PoS as foundational infrastructure for institutional blockchain adoption while supporting the broader Agglayer vision.
Into the Agglayer
Watch Polygon Labs Co-Founder Sandeep Nailwal explanation of Agglayer’s role in cross-chain settlement
Sentient Chat announced Dobby Plus, an unhinged AI model
Watch Polygon CEO Marc Boiron discuss Katana on Boys Club podcast
Listen to Katana’s X Space on creating a DeFi flywheel
Ecosystem Showcase
Courtyard announced it dropped marketplace fees to 0%
Polygon’s POL token is now live on NEAR Intents for cross-chain transactions and trading
Folks Finance announced a $300K deposit incentive program funded by the Polygon Foundation
Walapay announced its integration of Polygon PoS to accelerate onchain global money movement for emerging markets
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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.