On November 16th, gas fees on Polygon unexpectedly surged by 1,000%, reaching a peak of 5,073 gwei (approximately $0.1 USD). Currently, Polygon gas fees have returned to their initial levels, around 1,000 gwei.
According to Sandeep Nailwal, the founder of Polygon, the sharp increase in gas fees was likely due to the POLS token frenzy. POLS, built on the PRC-20 protocol (similar to the BRC-20 token standard), is a new token on the Polygon network inspired by Bitcoin Ordinals.
Over the past 24 hours, the minting of POLS tokens has been extremely active, consuming 102 million MATIC (approximately $86 million USD) in gas fees. Currently, there are over 18,100 POLS token holders, and 8.7% of the total supply of 2.1 trillion POLS tokens has been minted.
Not only Polygon but also the Bitcoin network experienced a similar situation when Ordinals emerged. In May of this year, the excitement in the community over NFTs and Ordinals’ BRC-20 tokens caused Bitcoin’s gas fees to reach record highs, the highest since April 2021.
However, like the early days of Ordinals on Bitcoin, POLS on Polygon has garnered mixed opinions.
*Gas fees quantify the computational power required to execute transactions on the Polygon network, with 1 gwei equivalent to 0.000000001 MATIC.