MEXC x Polygon: Tracking MATIC to POL & the Gigagas Roadmap

Recorded: Sept. 5, 2025 Duration: 0:43:12
Space Recording

Full Transcription

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Jam jam guys can you hear me?
Loud and clear wonderful what about Ashwary yeah
I can hear you guys are great let's get the show on the road all right welcome
everyone to this special AM session again. It is Mexi with Polygon, exploring scalability,
Matic to Pole Evolution, and the Gigagas Roadmap.
I'm William, along with Jazz, your AMA host for tonight.
Let's discover more about Polygon, a Layer 2 scaling solution for Ethereum
that provides faster, cheaper transactions,
and supports a multi-chain ecosystem.
Today our owner guest speaker is Ashwari, head of payments and RWA at Polygon.
Thanks for joining us today, so if you just unmute.
Hello, can you guys hear me?
Can you come again?
Sorry, I think I lost the voice for once.
Okay, just a brief introduction about yourself.
Absolutely. First of all, thank you everyone for tuning in and thank you MEXC for having me here.
This is Aishwere. I've been working at Polygon for four years now.
I lead the ecosystem from the business development side for payments, tokenization,
exchange relations, and liquidity on Polygon. Great to be here.
Wonderful. Thank you for making time for tonight. In this AMA, we're going to explore everything
there is that you need to know about Polygon. So let's just jump right in.
All right.
So the first few questions are about the project overview and of course the latest updates.
That being said,
what are the most recent developments
and achievements that Polygon has in 2025 this year?
I'd love to hear a little bit about this.
Absolutely.
I think, let me break it down into two particular verticals. One is on the infra side, and the other is on the overall ecosystem side. So if I look at it from the infrastructure perspective, I think the best thing that has happened is like, I think historically Polygon has been existing, like we completed our fifth anniversary.
like we completed our fifth anniversary and from a tech perspective like polygon pos we did a
recent upgrade which effectively increased our tps to a much higher uh number so like you can
actually go up to a thousand dps per sec uh on polygon pos without uh without any facing any
issues so i think that is the first big upgrade that we have had. There's another later upgrade that is happening this month, which effectively enables us to go giga gas, which enables Polygon to be overall going up and beyond 5,000 transactions per second.
So I think that has been one major development.
The second has been, so that is on the Polygon POS side.
And then the other product that we have is Aglare.
And in the Aglare side, I think what we did is like we earlier had Polygon CDK as a stack.
So what is Aglare?
Very simply put, it is Aglare enables anyone and everyone to actually go out and connect chains with it so that the
intercommunication between these applications or between the chains can happen seamlessly. So I
think under that there's a stack that Polygon used to offer earlier which was Polygon CDK
also known as Eragon Stack. We just added another stack on top of it which was the OP stack. So now you can actually go out and launch
any chain, any using OP stack connect to Aglare within the Polygon ecosystem. We are adding more
and more supports for multiple other chains, enabling Aglare to actually intercommunicate
seamlessly, not just with Polygon ecosystem, but with the entire EVM ecosystem first and then
going into the non-EVM ecosystem. I think that is the first thing on the overall infrastructure
side. The second thing is from a perspective of I think ecosystem. I think I'll point out some of
these stats which effectively we have right now. So since we have been starting to focus majorly towards the payments and the tokenization side,
I think you're the first layer to who has actually crossed
over a billion dollars in RWA,
which has multitudes of things,
including money market funds,
including like from the likes of BlackRock,
then other private funds.
There are a lot of private funds that have actually started issuing on Polygon.
Hamilton Lane is one of them.
Then if you look at commodities, so I think one of the other things is from the commodities
perspective, you have gold and you have other commodities like cotton actually issued on
So that way, uh overall totaling up
to a billion dollars plus i think ethereum is the only chain which is higher in the tvl uh when it
comes to like the rwa the second thing if you look at payment side i think polygon pos covers more
than uh 50 of the mine share or like the total volume when it comes to non-USD stablecoins.
And if you look at the USD stablecoins, then effectively if you look at the number of the
user base, basically the user base of USDC.
So we hold more than one fourth of the total user base of USDC as an active users.
So effectively being the biggest USDC chain when it comes to number of users.
For USDT, we are the third biggest chain.
So I think that is how we are kind of overall progressing from the perspective of stats on PolyGames.
Yeah, absolutely.
I like how you mentioned the stablecoins,
especially how there's a recent surge of stablecoins on your chain.
Great, wonderful. For those who may not be aware, or maybe those who have been
around for a while, but especially back in like, you know, 2020, people might remember, you know,
Polygon as Matic back in the days, and there was this Matic token. So how can, like, why? I'd love
to know a little bit more about that, because I'm sure some people in the audience might not be familiar or, you know, they weren't in the crypto in the world back in 2020.
But that said, like, why was there this huge Matic upgrade from the Matic token to, you know, the PULL token last year?
And, you know, what kind of like new key utilities does the new token P pull now really provide for both holders and stakers?
Absolutely. I think if you look at Polygon, earlier when we were like MATIC, the overall MATIC as a token was available for only the Polygon POS chain, which and as we upgraded to add more functionalities such as like your
Agler and other chains that are connecting to Aglers, I think now what we're doing is
we have increased it to kind of becoming an ecosystem. And now if it is an ecosystem,
then effectively what we are kind of going out and doing is like because of this ecosystem growth like polygon is evolving
into not just being the the token for uh the polygon pos chain but for the overall ecosystem
and because of this this is effectively where what is happening is like this network upgrade
and the token upgrade took place. You did experience the whole upgrade itself. Like, it was so seamless. It was just like one smart contract is assigned,
and then bada-beam, bada-boom, you got your pole tokens.
All right, wonderful.
Let's move on.
How can pole holders, existing holders of pole tokens,
and, of course, stakers, really generate and, of course,
accrue value with the Polygon ecosystem?
Like, if someone asked me that question about, like, a year ago, I might have had a good idea,
but it's been a while since I've been able to get some updates, so I'd love to hear directly
from yourself.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think poses are great.
I think one of the biggest things, apart from anyone who holds pool and stakes pool,
they're kind of going out and getting the staking yields for sure.
And I think there are two other things which effectively can actually be done.
While you're staking, there's one thing which is called as normal staking,
where you just go out and delegate your pole to a particular validator of your choice.
There's another thing which is called as liquid staking,
where effectively what you can do is you can use platforms like Stader,
which effectively will enable you to kind of go out and liquid stake your matting.
You still generate the staking yield, but then you get a liquid stake token,
and this liquid stake token can effectively be used as a collateral,
and as a collateral, it can as a collateral
it can be used to kind of borrow stable coins for you to kind of go out and generate additional
yields but that is on the pole staking side and then i think the other thing is what we have
we have a program at polygon which is aglair Breakout Program. Now, what Aglier Breakout Program enables you to do is
if you stake your pool, effectively all the chains or all the ecosystems that would be selected and
would be launched through this ecosystem, you will be eligible for an airdrop. Like, for example,
Katana recently launched with uh polygon and gsr
incubating it and effectively anyone who has take their poll they get a chance to uh be eligible for
the uh for the katana tokens airdrop later this year we will have poly like billions which is
coming out you can again you can get that same thing uh then you have myron coming out next year and there
is another one which we are working under wraps for like a very long time which probably will be
announcing next month as well so effectively the biggest benefit apart from what you're doing
with staking is kind of going out and getting benefits from the airdrops for just securing
the network on polygon that's a wonderful answer.
I'm just going to quickly add something in.
For those who've ever like unbonded their like, you know,
their staking amount on other blockchains,
I think a good example would be like Cosmos.
It actually takes 21 days to unbond on stake.
So if you actually have, like, a liquid
staking, you could actually just, like,
you know, swap it with, you know,
USDT or something. So,
something thick in mind. I think that's, like,
a huge advantage. Wonderful.
Let's move on.
The next question revolves around
the Gigaguzz roadmap
update. What are,
like, any key revelations,
any key things that the average crypto enthusiast
would need to know about this GigaGuzz road update?
I think there are three things.
If you look at Polygon back in 2021, 2022,
at that time when the network got created,
one of the biggest thing was,
like, Ethereum was, at that time when the network got created, one of the biggest thing was like Ethereum was at that point of time suffering and there was a massive narrative in the market of all L1s.
And like everyone was like, oh, Ethereum's gas fees are so high, so you should not use Ethereum.
And at that time, like I think Matic actually started coming into the picture.
It started evolving.
And one of the best things at that point of time was like the tech at that plasma level was very new.
And when it was launched, of course, like when you launch a new technology, it has its own shortcomings.
But like over the time, what we have done is like, I think there are three things which were kind of like big pain earlier.
One was like there were some reorgs that
used to happen the second was that there could be some empty blocks that sometimes would come in
because let's say a validator did not actually add transactions in the in the block that they had to
and the third uh big challenge had been like the how much the chain can scale so addressing this like earlier this year
what we did is like we upgraded the chain and in the last hard fork that we did the first thing
that happened is the transaction per second got increased so now you can like like i said you can
go to a thousand transactions per second a block and we increase the gas fees uh like overall in
the block which enabled us to go out and do that.
And slowly and steadily, because the demand is coming on the chain, what we are doing is we are moving towards like the pace where more and more demand can be met.
Like, for example, one of the partners that we have been working with for the last three years, they have already amassed around 8.5 million users.
they have already amassed around 8.5 million users.
And tomorrow when I put them on the blockchain,
the blockchain should run as it should run as it is running today.
So that and then like one of the partnerships that we have recently done
is with an operating system, which is something we have yet to announce.
And the biggest thing with that is they have 180 million users.
Now, even if 10% of those users are coming in, that's 180 million users now even if 10 of those users are coming in that's 18 million users
so as a chain you have to build the tech in a way where it is always able to go out and take care of
the users that are coming in without having the chain to serve for any problem and that is exactly
what giga gas roadmap is it enables you to actually go out to scale the chain as the demand is coming in
so that there is no problem with the user base.
So that is one.
The second is the way we are looking at it is from the REOG's perspective,
we actually launched deterministic finality,
which means the chain actually achieves deterministic finality
and you cannot get into a REorg of more than two blocks.
So that is, I think, the second thing which is there.
And I think the third thing is also on the gas side.
So if you look at the average gas fees, which is there on the network for Polygon POS,
one of the best things that you will realize is the average gas fees on Polygon POS has been the lowest among all the EVM chains.
the average gas fees on Polygon POS has been the lowest among all the EVM chains.
So that is how like what we are doing is as more and more people,
as more and more demand is coming for the chain,
we are actually going out and working on increasing the capacity and the capability of the chain
so that the financial institutions of the world can actually go out and use it
without actually thinking about what will happen
if we increase the number of users
or like will there be gas spikes?
And like, so that is what we are trying to go out
and solve for with the Giga Gas roadmap.
Absolutely.
Oh my gosh, that really brings me back
some very interesting memories back in 2020
during the early DeFi days
where paid like 80 dollars in
ethereum gas fees all right wonderful oh let's move on to the next question and this one's related
to like real world assets and i think this is like a really big one um like like we heard like
all these recently news about what was it like pokemon like cards are getting like digitized
into world world assets now.
I don't know, just, it's just insane to see like it's coming for everything,
not just real estate and bonds and everything.
But that being said, what's happening in that RWA and the payments industry on Polygon right now?
gone right now love to hear any kind of like updates advancement on that end absolutely i
Love to hear any kind of like updates and advancement on that end.
think uh let's break the real world asset side on two uh two things one the type of assets so
like i think i was earlier alluding to um like if you look at multiple types of assets like money
market fund clo bonds uh triple rated clo bonds like secondary credit bonds, private credit, bond issuances.
So all that is actually shares on chain.
So tokenized stocks on chain.
So all those things we have already kind of gone out and we have already like made live
on Polygon so you can actually go out and get access to it.
So the way to look at it is like very simple.
And this is how I look at it from an
ecosystem perspective like i don't think like like so if you if you want to kind of go out
and get into the payments and real world assets side you need to look at who are you competing
with or who what exactly is something that you're trying to build and a very simple and easy example
that always comes into my mind when
I'm trying to think like what more to bring on Polygon and what to enable more on Polygon is
enabling a system or an ecosystem where you do not need to leave if you want to do something.
So very simply put let's say hypothetically assume like you have a bank account why do you have like so what
what can you do from a bank account you can receive money so when your salary
comes in your bank account is credited on polygon you have 110 wallets where
you can go out and receive that then after that you have a credit card or a
debit card which effectively used to do the payments and transactions so on
polygon you have like 13 different cards which have been issued,
both supported by Visa and MasterCard.
So now you can have your own card which can be recharged through your stable coins.
Then after that, what you would want to do is you would want to pay your groceries
and other things to credit cards.
That is something that we are bringing on polygon very soon the next
thing is you want to earn a return so let's say you want if you want to earn a return uh it could
be in the form of like defy yields it could be form uh in the form of real world asset yield
all that is available here so effectively the way uh and then like anywhere else like if you want to
invest in a stock that is also available as those
so the point being if you are able to kind of go out and give your ecosystem each and everything
that is available your users would always come stay and they don't have to leave and that is
why like if you look at the numbers of polygon like the active user base you find a consistent
active user base on polygon because that is exactly what
is happening. Like users, once they come on Polygon, they're able to kind of go out and
very efficiently and effectively do all the things. And that is why like the numbers that
I told you on the payment side, so like on the real world assets sides, we've already,
we are the first layer to kind of go out and cross a billion dollars in RWA TVL. Then on
the payment side side slowly and steadily
you're seeing the growth uh like i said like it's not just the us it's a lot of like non-us countries
in africa in latem where we have in singapore where we have a massive user base so singapore
like singapore dollar uh the total volume that singapore dollar does is highest on polygon
apart from other networks so that is what is happening
so the numbers like i already told you about uh on the stats side but a lot of actually fintechs
across the world are also kind of using polygon so like if you look at um us stripe uh robin hood
they you they allow you to kind of move money on polygon if you look at europe your revolute allows
you to do it if you look at
middle east there are a couple of uh startups like uh which are enabling you to go out and off-ramp
money like m2 exchange then if you look at uh like apac uh like singapore you have grab if you look
at philippines you have coins i mean i can go on but effectively the my point being like a lot of
people a lot of financial institutions, banks,
all of them are very actively leveraging Polygon to reduce their costs, take the benefit of low-cost
transfer of funds much faster, much easier. And that is what is happening on Polygon in the payments and RWA space.
Yeah, and how does Polygon's AgLayer CDA enable the unification of blockchain ecosystems?
And what role does it play in achieving Ethereum layer 2 scalability with ZK technology?
Absolutely. One of the biggest point to note basically is that you cannot kind of go out and get everything on one single chain.
So from that perspective, like if you look at it, like what Polygon AgLayer enables is, for example, like Polygon POS I talked about,
like we have been extensively working towards payments and real world asset side.
On the other hand hand what you need to
look at is the like you look at DeFi so if you look at DeFi you have Katana which is effectively
enabling a very good ecosystem on the DeFi side and then so that is something which is there
so effectively what Aglare enables is Aglayer enables you to go out and connect to all these chains interoperably and that you want to do it through aglair
leverage the ecosystem on all the other chains which are connected to aglair and seamlessly
feel like okay all this thing actually is available on on the polygon ecosystem overall
so that is what aglair enables
That's fascinating how ECLayers CDK bridges ecosystems and enhancing scalability.
It's like a game changer for Ethereum Layer 2s, I think.
So speaking of performance improvements, let's shift to the upgrades on Polygon POS that's
approaching its capabilities even further.
So what specific upgrades like the Billi upgrade in July 2025 are being implemented to boost
Polygon POS to over 1,000 TPS with sub-five-second finality and ultra-low gas fees?
finality and ultra low gas fees.
Yeah, exactly.
I think the Billi hard fork actually enabled us to go into deterministic finality.
So earlier Polygany was like not a deterministic finality.
What deterministic finality means like once the deterministic finality is achieved, there
is no way like a transaction can be re-auged.
So that was the first thing that effectively was achieved through the Willi hard fork.
The second thing that we achieved was like the transaction throughput, which is like effectively, like I said,
you can kind of go out and have more than a thousand transactions per second or like.
And the upgrade that is coming in, which is the giga gas is basically also enabling us to kind of go out and increase this throughput even more. So you can actually go out and do more transactions to a road which leads up to 100,000 transactions per second. So I think that is where we are like that is where we are going. And it every upgrade that we're are doing overall what you will see is faster blocks
more more capacity for the transactions to be included in the block uh so yeah that is what
is happening with the upgrades this upwards clearly demonstrates polygons commitment to high speed
efficient if in structures with such strong metrics already in place,
I am actually more interested in how this translates
to broader adoption and rewarding back.
So with impressive stats like $141 billion
in transfer volume and over 5.3 billion transactions,
how is Polygon driving mass adoption through
its support for stablecoins, global pavements and apps of specific chains? Ash, do you hear me?
I think he missed the mic, so I'm just going to pass it to him quickly and see if he can reconnect. Thank you. Oh, seems like our guest speaker has disconnected.
So let's just give him a few more seconds to reconnect.
And I'm just going to pass the mic when he's back.
All right, so Ash is back.
I should just give him a few seconds to reconnect.
Can you guys hear me now?
Yeah, we can leave you here. Welcome back.
Ash, I tried to repeat a question for you.
I think there's something that happens.
So just how does Pelican driving mass adoption through its support for stablecoins, global
pavements and app-specific chains?
So I don't know why it's about something. Can you guys hear me?
Loud and clear.
Yeah, sorry.
I think now that...
Can you repeat the question once?
So with impressive stats like
141 billion dollar in transfer volume and over 5.3 billion transactions
How is Polygon driving mass adoption through its support for stablecoins global payments and app specific chains?
Absolutely, yeah, I think like the couple of points which I which I which can be included here one, I think there are a couple of points which can be included here. One, I think more and more actually retail user base is joining Polygon.
So one of the biggest thing that we have seen at Polygon is because
the infrastructure has been super stable over the last five, six years,
a lot of confidence has been developed both on the retail side and the institutional side.
So because of that, like you look at all these bigger fintechs actually going out and using it.
And on this, not just these fintechs, like if you go to places like LATAM where the payments ecosystem is still evolving,
like particular, like let's say, let's like take an example of Brazil.
So Brazil has a very good ecosystem which is for the payment
side which is known as PIX. So almost 10% of the total payment volume on Polygon is at PIX where
users are able to go out and use stable coins in Brazil to go out and make payments for their
day-to-day expenses. Similarly like a lot of places where people wanted to kind of go out
and where their currencies are actually going out and depleting in value, they have been using it
in day-to-day life to actually go out and start getting paid in their native currencies,
but actually using stable coins to get onboarded on Polygon and then like using it on a day-to-day basis for
their user base. I think one of the biggest examples is City of Lugano, like where you have
the famous like Bitcoin architecture. So effectively like in one of the biggest thing in that
region is like most used work in that is actually
Polygon where people are actually using Polygon into their day-to-day lives so that is where like
I think a lot of retail is coming in and a lot of more and more like institutions are actually
adopting it like if you look at recently I think BlindPay which got which just started like Formal has already done like a hundred million plus volume on Polygon.
So I think from that perspective,
like a lot of other LATM companies,
in fact, like in Guatemala,
there is a bank which effectively embedded a wallet on Polygon and enables
users to actually go out and take the services directly on Polygit using the wallet.
So the wallet name is like the Zuku wallet.
So effectively that way what is happening is the retail which is kind of was coming
and is sticking around because they love the technology.
It's the institutions which are kind of now evaluating and they are slowly and steadily
coming in.
In fact, like I think by next month, there is a payment provider.
There's a payment processor, which is kind of going out and enabling Polygon to go out and pay in stable coins across the US in more than 400,000 outlets to stable coins on Polygon.
So that way, slowly and steadily, the adoption is increasing.
A lot more people have started kind started moving their money on Polygon. And as we reach out to more, as stablecoins get more adoption,
I think we will see a lot more activity actually coming in on Polygon.
Yeah, it's impressive to see how Polygon is leveraging the stats to onboard more users
through practical applications.
So to build on that ecosystem growth, could you tell us about some of the key partnerships
that are making this possible?
Yeah, absolutely.
I think like all the fintechs that I named that are one. If you look at,
apart from fintechs, I think a lot of enterprises have effectively started using Polygon. The one
operating system that I told is known as SkyOS. They're coming in with more than, I think,
as sky os they're coming in with more than i think 100 uh they're coming in on their operating system
where you can actually go out and do all the transactions on polygon itself uh then like
another is i think which is something we are going to announce is a very big erp provider one of the
biggest ones which has just actually built out of entire payments module on
so you have volume where like companies can just go out and subscribe to module and start using or start sending money directly through stable coins so that has been like another one which we were
promising later this month so you'll have to keep an eye on that uh apart from that i think the other one other uh major ones have been
the ones that i've already told you uh in the fintech side and i think in the rw side like a
lot more are coming in so we are seeing like uh i think we have blackrock hamilton lane franklin
timberton hamilton lane uh apollo apollo fun in fact like, Polygon is the only chain
which effectively has a big use case of RWA
where you can actually go out and use Apollo acreage fund
in DeFi, use it as a collateral to borrow against it.
So I think overall, these are some of the partnerships
that we have.
There are a lot more to come,
which we probably will be rolling out and announcing later this year.
Absolutely wonderful.
All right, the next few questions are going to be about the tokenomics and governance part of Polygon.
Beyond staking, of course, how does the poll tokenomics model,
of course, including the role in its the community funds
and in the deflationary mechanisms how does that really support any law the long-term ecosystem
growth and uh love to hear a little bit on how this impacts decentralization as well
i think the biggest point of uh like the whole token, there are two big use cases of pole token.
One is to secure the network.
So effectively, the security of the network is dependent on how much pole you stake.
So that is the first case for Polygon.
The second big use case is gas fees.
So you can use Polygon token as gas fees.
And as we are kind of increasing the number of transactions on chain, the consumption of gas fees increases and so does the utility of Polygon as a token.
there is a major upgrade or anything that is getting upgraded on polygon it has to go through
a governing council which effectively like where anyone even someone who holds like one poll can
actually go out and voice out there i look really well because like recently we have seen that like
we've uh like there have been certain proposals were put uh for polygon to be adopted. And the ecosystem voiced in and they were loud enough to kind of make their voice.
Which means the system can take the network in more and more manner where the governance
is decentralized without actually kind of using the token as a governance tool
wonderful absolutely
yeah and i think uh with agler coming in like one of
I guess it was closed by chains effectively to kind of go out and submit it.
We've been logged like later during the year.
That's awesome.
Absolutely.
For more information, definitely you would do your own homework but you
heard it from the man himself all right so let's moving on to our last but not least question here
so looking ahead we got 2026 next year and beyond um any particular major milestones you actually
have outlined on the polygon uh roadmap anything like you know, transactions per seconds or like, you know, any kind of like
revamp of the governance model? Any like how's the stable coin payments going to like,
going to be impacted or any particular challenge you think that the blockchain industry is going to
experience in the foreseeable future?
I think like a couple of things which are happening in the ecosystem. Oneable future? I think a couple of things
which are happening in the ecosystem
one, I think I've already told
kind of making the Polygon
POS chain much more
upgraded so that irrespective of how much
user base is coming in, Polygon is able to
go out and handle it. On the transactions
also I think we are working on
the upgrade which is
coming into this month uh the idea for that is to reduce the reduce the empty blocks to zero
by adopting a new mechanism of like how the blocks are processed today so i think that is the second
thing that we are kind of going out and getting and the third is like i think the biggest focus
for us is to kind of go out and onboard like a lot of non-USD stablecoins.
So we've already onboarded like seven big stablecoins and we are in the process of onboarding nine more,
which effectively are from different countries, which enables Polygon to become like one of the biggest place to kind of go out and have much more currency trades available.
So I think that is something which is also in the works.
And as far as the transaction speed is concerned i think we are also working on it which probably
will be rolled out later this year by the end of this year where we are reducing even like the
transaction uh like the block finality even lesser uh with zero like reox at all so that is something
that we are looking on the side of Polygon POS.
I think on the aglier side,
what we're looking at is faster interrupt,
which means like,
if in order for anyone to be able to go out
and in order for anyone to like,
feel like all these chains are one,
they need a very fast interrupt.
And that is something that we're rolling out later this year.
So I think these are the two major things on the product side that we're working on
and that is something that we should be looking at for the rest of the year
the rep is the main part of our ama and thank you so much ashbury for joining us today and sharing
this exciting insight.
Absolutely.
Thank you so much for having me.
That was a pleasure to have you on board.
Be sure everyone to join the MEXE EN official Telegram group for more events.
That being said, I really appreciate everyone making time tonight.
Definitely stay tuned for more updates.
Be sure to follow us both on MEXE as well as polygon for the latest news and updates until next time guys have a good one Thank you.