Polygon, one of the leading Ethereum Layer-2 (L2) ecosystems, has had a pivotal first quarter in 2025.

The network is undergoing significant infrastructure changes, broadening its ecosystem, and laying foundational technology for multi-chain interoperability.

Below is a detailed analysis of the key developments, ecosystem metrics, technological advances, and future roadmap of the Polygon ecosystem in Q1 2025.

Key Milestones

  • Pessimistic Proofs Go Live: On February 3, 2025, Pessimistic Proofs were deployed on Agglayer mainnet, marking a significant step towards secure, efficient interoperability across heterogeneous chains.

  • Polygon PoS Chain Metrics:

    • DeFi Total Value Locked (TVL): $744.8M

    • Stablecoin Supply: $2B (+23.3% QoQ)

    • Daily Active Addresses: 546,000 (+4.4%)

    • Daily Transactions: 3.4M (+8.0%)

    • NFT Trading Volume: $1.4M/day (+68.2%)

  • Courtyard NFT Platform:

  • Recorded $56.5M in sales in March alone, with 51.2% attributed to officially licensed Pokémon NFTs.

  • POL Token Migration: 92.7% of MATIC supply migrated to POL; market cap decreased 54% QoQ to $1.7B.

Technological Innovations

Agglayer: Interoperability Backbone

Agglayer serves as Polygon’s interoperability layer, enabling secure, low-latency communication between various L2s and sidechains.

With the deployment of pessimistic proofs, it offers the ability to treat connected chains as untrusted by default and ensures transaction finality through fraud-proof-like validation.

Key Integrations:

  • Tria Protocol: Enables multi-VM abstraction across EVM, Solana VM, and MoveVM.

  • SOCKET: Supports seamless chain-abstracted dApps.

  • Karate Combat: Integrates cross-chain KARATE token.

  • Rome Protocol: Facilitates Ethereum–Solana bridging and supports RaaS and shared sequencing.

Roadmap Milestones:

  • v0.3 (Q2 2025): Multi-stack support for all EVM-compatible chains.

  • v0.4 (H2 2025): Achieve sub-5 second finality across connected chains.

Polygon CDK (Chain Development Kit)

Polygon CDK is streamlining the deployment of ZK-powered chains. Key projects launched using CDK this quarter include:

  • Ternoa 2.0

  • Ember Chain

  • Moonveil

  • Lumia

  • Wirex

The CDK evolved from v2.61.1 to v2.61.20, reflecting ongoing enhancements in performance and compatibility.

Financial and Network Metrics

Market Overview

  • POL Token: Despite the drop in market cap to $1.7B, POL remains the second-largest L2 token.

  • Transaction Fees: Average fees dropped to $0.01, bolstered by EIP-4844 implementation and blob integration. Total transaction fees fell 37.1% QoQ even as transactions rose 5.6%.

DeFi Sector

  • TVL: Down 14.5% QoQ to $744.8M

  • Leading Protocols:

    • Aave: $248.6M (-36.1%)

    • Spiko: $116.6M (+28.9%)

    • QuickSwap: $105.3M (+72.5%)

    • Morpho: $41.4M, debuting lending vaults on Polygon PoS

Ecosystem Expansion

Stablecoins & RWA

  • Stablecoin Dominance: Supply increased to $2B, with USDC activity surpassing all other chains.

  • WYST Stablecoin: Wyoming’s fiat-backed digital dollar launched on testnet via Polygon CDK; mainnet launch expected in July 2025.

NFTs

  • Courtyard’s Pokémon NFT surge fueled trading volumes, reaching a daily average of $1.4M. Ethereum bridging tools like Socket enhanced the user experience.

Prediction Markets

  • Polymarket:

    • Average open interest: $110.7M

    • Daily active users: 7.2K (+3.7%)

    • Daily trades: 15.5K (-66.4%)

    • Market creators decreased by 13.6% QoQ

Developer Tools & Governance

Open Intents & SDKs

  • Joined the Open Intents Framework to enhance cross-chain user experiences.

  • Released the Kohin SDK for building on-chain insurance for prediction markets.

  • Published the Pessimistic Proof Benchmark for zkVM performance testing.

Governance Developments

  • Executed Proposals:

    • Added new span message type to optimize data availability.

    • Implemented Danelaw hardfork.

  • Pending Proposals: Five proposals still undergoing deliberation.

  • Governance 2.0 Pillars:

    • Protocol Governance

    • Smart Contract Governance (via Protocol Council)

    • Community Treasury Governance

Conclusion

Q1 2025 demonstrated Polygon’s continued leadership in Layer-2 innovation, emphasizing security, scalability, and interoperability.

The aggressive rollout of Agglayer, expanded use of CDK, and strong on-chain metrics underscore Polygon’s commitment to creating a modular, ZK-powered multichain future.