Polygon plans to deploy a permissionless burn contract, with the first round burning 100 million POL

Sandeep Nailwal, CEO of the Polygon Foundation, stated that Polygon is preparing to deploy a permissionless burn contract that allows anyone to permanently burn 100 million POL, which accounts for approximately 83% of the 121 million tokens held by the Polygon base fee collector. The contract is currently live on the testnet and will be deployed to the mainnet after the security committee completes the final signature.

The first round of burns will permanently destroy 100 million POL, after which community members can trigger burns every quarter. Polygon's documentation indicates that the base fee is determined by the network and will be burned, with Nailwal stating that each base fee will inject POL into the collector. Based on the above data, approximately 21 million POL will remain in the collector after the initial burn.

This burn represents about 1% of the initial supply of 10 billion POL, and based on a total supply of approximately 10.716 billion as shown by Blockscout, it accounts for about 0.93%. The burn will not set a hard cap on POL, which will continue to be issued, with an annual issuance rate of about 2% after June 2025. Nailwal also mentioned that POL has entered deflation starting January 2026, citing data from his "ChatGPT Analyst" that Polygon's revenue in 2026 will be $24.5 million, higher than Arbitrum's $8.41 million and Near's $5.6 million.