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🟪 What happened: Polygon Foundation CEO Sandeep Nailwal and Polygon Labs CEO Marc Boiron announced the vision for the Open Money Stack, a framework for global money movement leveraging stablecoin infrastructure to bring institutions and enterprises onchain.  

The mission? “To move all money onchain," the executives wrote in the announcement.

This initiative comes as USDC on Polygon set an all-time high for daily transfers on January 8, recording 7.7 million transactions that moved $593 million. The network also hit an all-time high for demand and single-day fees, prompting Polygon to increase the gas limit from 60 million to 65 million and prepare a hard fork to adjust the EIP-1559 target gas limit.

🟪 Why it matters: The Open Money Stack addresses friction in global payments where traditional money movement requires days to settle and incurs unpredictable fees. As Nailwal and Boiron note, "today, money movement is slow, expensive and uncertain."

The stack is designed to enable instant transfers, allow idle funds to earn yield, and bring institutions onchain through blockchain rails, wallet infrastructure, on-ramps and off-ramps, and stablecoin interoperability.

“Onchain money generally needs to return offchain to be used,” Nailwal and Boiron wrote. “With Open Money Stack, however, money that comes onchain can stay — and be used — onchain forever.”

The USDC activity validates demand for this infrastructure. USDC transfers represented nearly 5x the activity of DAI, which recorded 1.6 million daily transfers on January 6. USDC supply on the network stands at $1.31 billion, representing 45% of total stablecoin market share. This marks a 58% year-over-year increase from $828.7 million in January 2025. In 2025, USDC processed $646 billion across 508.2 million transfers on Polygon, cementing its position as the primary settlement asset for real-world applications on the network.

USDC transfer segmentation shows micro-transactions under $100 accounted for 7.14 million of the day's activity, making up 93% of total transactions. Payment apps like Avenia, Paxos, and Revolut rely on the network to process millions of remittances, card settlements, and peer-to-peer transfers, while Moonpay hit an all-time high in weekly payment app volume with $8 million. Polymarket, where USDC serves as the primary stablecoin for predictions, ended 2025 with volumes hitting an all-time high of over $2.2 billion.

This activity shows the use cases the Open Money Stack is designed to scale with high-frequency, low-value transactions that require sub-cent settlement costs and instant finality for cross-border payments, remittances, and institutional settlements.

🟪The big picture: The Open Money Stack framework focuses on moving money onchain through integrated infrastructure. Polygon has processed over two trillion dollars in transactions, with current infrastructure supporting 5,000 TPS and ~5 second finality.

The record USDC activity shows sustained demand for stablecoins and onchain payment infrastructure. With 45% stablecoin market share and daily volumes in the hundreds of millions, USDC has become the primary settlement asset for payment apps, financial services, and prediction markets operating on Polygon. As the network continues scaling toward its 100,000 TPS roadmap while maintaining fees below $0.01, the Open Money Stack aims to provide the infrastructure layer for these applications to operate on programmable rails.

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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.