The traditional staking model locks users onto a single chain, while Polygon achieves an innovative mechanism of "one stake, multi-chain rewards" through AggLayer.
· Diversification of revenue sources: When users stake POL on zkEVM, the system automatically recognizes the validator's status and allocates part of the profits to a cross-chain incentive pool. These rewards are synchronized to other layers in less than 10 minutes, including PoS chains and various application chains connected by AggLayer.
· Stability of revenue distribution: Data as of early October 2025 shows that the annualized yield of POL staking averages 7.3%, with cross-chain rewards from AggLayer accounting for about 12%. This multi-source revenue structure enhances the stability of returns and reduces the impact of fluctuations from single-chain activities.
🔗 AggLayer: The backbone network for revenue circulation
AggLayer, as Polygon's cross-chain settlement layer, is not only the foundation for technical connectivity but also the pipeline for value distribution.
· Profit clearing center: AggLayer functions similarly to a 'clearinghouse' in traditional finance, aggregating, verifying, and distributing rewards from different chains. The Rio upgrade further optimizes this process by reducing node load, allowing the system to verify and synchronize data more quickly.
· Balance between security and efficiency: Although multi-chain revenue distribution slightly increases confirmation speed (from an average of 2.8 seconds to about 3.2 seconds), it brings about greater security. This 'step back' strategy reflects Polygon's pursuit of long-term sustainability rather than merely chasing speed metrics.
📊 Structural changes in fund behavior
The multi-chain revenue model is changing the duration and flow of funds within the Polygon ecosystem.
· Stable growth of staked funds: As of October 2025, the total amount of POL staked has reached approximately 180 million tokens, with a monthly growth of 9%. This indicates that the multi-chain revenue model effectively enhances fund stickiness.
· Self-reinforcing cycle of the ecosystem: As more projects integrate AggLayer—from GameFi, RWA to DeFi—the sources of profit flowing into Polygon become more diverse, making the yield base for stakers more solid. This design gradually positions Polygon as the profit payment hub in a multi-chain world.
💎 Structural advantage: Polygon's long-term competitiveness
While other blockchain projects are still competing for TPS (transactions per second) metrics or creating price effects through token burns, Polygon has chosen a different competitive path—building long-term competitive advantages through economic design.
The core innovation of the multi-chain revenue model lies in its integration of profit distribution as an inherent function of the network infrastructure, rather than an externally added incentive. This deep economic design difference may represent Polygon's most sustainable competitive advantage in the next decade.
By embedding profit mechanisms deeply into the network structure, Polygon not only helps transactions process faster but also builds a smarter and more self-consistent value distribution system. This shift in thinking from 'how to create profit' to 'how to correctly distribute profit' is the key evolution of the next generation of blockchain economic models.
