Polygon Labs has launched sPOL, a native liquid storage token (LST) designed to mobilize over 3.6 billion POL accumulated in the network’s DeFi ecosystem.
sPOL is the first liquid proprietary token created directly by Polygon Labs and is backed by sPOL’s $100 million treasury commitment to seed liquidity from day one.
What gap is sPOL designed to fill?
According to PolygonMore than 3.6 billion POL tokens are stored across the network, however, only about 4 to 5% of this capital is liquid. This is a far cry from the roughly 30% of ETH held in liquid tokens on Ethereum.
The third-party liquid mortgage market has done little to fill this gap.
Current liquid tokens carry fees ranging from 5 to 16%, and mass adoption has remained shallow.
Providers including Ankr and Stader Labs have offered POL liquid storage products for years, but uptake has never approached the levels seen on Ethereum.
According to Polygon, when a user stakes POL through the new standard, they receive sPOL at a 1:1 exchange rate. The value of sPOL received accumulates over time as staking rewards accumulate.
The token can be traded, used as collateral, deployed in liquidity pools, or layered via DeFi return strategies.
Existing stakeholders are not left out of the mix as they can also migrate their positions through the staking portal shared by Polygon with no waiting period and no reward gap.
Polygon Labs committed $10 million at launch from its own treasury to support sPOL, with $90 million to follow gradually. He also mentioned that Uniswap V4 AMM pools are also available at launch.
The token’s arrival coincides with a governance effort from Polygon that, if passed, will change how network fees flow through Polygon’s validator suite.
Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal Written on X“This is part of a larger push we’re making for POL stakeholders. Priority fees on Polygon are up 1,000% since PIP-65 and with PIP-85, a larger portion of those fees will be shared directly with stakeholders and commissioners. We’re now unlocking liquid ownership as well.”
The polygon makes diversity pay
Total DeFi value locked at Polygon (TVL) is currently over $1.27 billion after recording a 40.1% year-on-year growth to reach $1.17 billion at the end of January 2026.
The bulk of this increase was driven by Polymarket, which now owns $438.08 million in TVL, a quarter of the entire ecosystem.
Polymarket’s exit from Polygon has the potential to shake up the network’s DeFi profile, and such a departure is becoming more likely with each passing day.
Polygon Labs has been proactive in distancing itself from Polymarket by directing resources to building the next payment infrastructure for businesses.
The company is reportedly in talks with… Raise up to $100 million For a new stablecoin payments company, having already acquired payments company Coinme and wallet provider Sequence.
peePolygon’s native token received no support as a result of the announcement, as it is currently trading around 0.083, down over 0.9% over the past 24 hours, as of the time of writing.
