Methodology & Data Sources

Overview

POLTRACK is a structural accounting layer for POL token mechanics, focused on deterministic and reproducible measurement of on-chain tokenomics. POL is the successor token to MATIC in Polygon's token migration, and legacy MATIC references are kept only where historical accounting still affects burn-adjusted supply. It operates against observable state on Ethereum mainnet (supply, emissions, mint, treasury) and Polygon PoS (native burn, chain activity), without relying on proprietary data or unverifiable assumptions. The objective is to produce canonical daily facts for each economic domain — supply, burn, fees, staking, and treasury — from which rolling metrics and derived ratios are computed in a traceable pipeline. All published figures reflect protocol-level mechanics as observable on-chain; market interpretation, valuation, and forecasting are explicitly outside scope.

Scope

What POLTRACK covers

What POLTRACK does not cover

• Price forecasting, valuation narratives, or trading recommendations.
• Full validator P&L (infrastructure cost side is not observable on-chain).
• Unverified wallet attribution.
• Multi-asset dashboards unrelated to POL tokenomics.

Data Collection by Domain

Each domain is collected from a specific public source, stored as raw snapshots, and then reconciled into canonical daily records.

Supply

Supply data comes from direct on-chain RPC queries (via Chainstack archive nodes on Ethereum mainnet), where the POL token contract state is queried periodically. This gives two direct on-chain values:

• Total supply — the raw token supply at the time of the snapshot.
• Staking contract balance — the POL balance held by the staking contract. Note: this includes unclaimed rewards and buffers, so it is higher than the sum of actual delegated stakes.

Two derived values are computed from these plus burn data:

• Net supply — total supply minus all tracked burn components, applied at read time.
• Circulating supply — equal to net supply (POL has no locked tokens or vesting schedules).

Staked supply (actual delegated stakes) is sourced separately from the validator registry, which reports per-validator self-stake and delegated amounts. This is lower than the staking contract balance by approximately 2–3% (the difference being unclaimed rewards).

Burn

Burn is the most complex domain because POL tokens are removed from circulation through three distinct mechanisms across two chains. Each is tracked independently.

The daily delta formula is max(balance[day] − balance[day−1], 0) — if a snapshot is missing for a given day, that day is marked unavailable rather than filled with a spike.

Burn occurs in batches: base fees accumulate in the routing wallet (PIP-82 base fee recipient) and are periodically transferred to the permanent burn address. This means daily burn data has spikes on transfer days and zeros between them. Rolling averages smooth this effect.

Staking & Emissions

All emission data comes from Etherscan (Ethereum mainnet) — ERC-20 transfer event logs from the POL emission manager contract. Every transfer is classified by recipient address into one of four categories:

• staking_actual — transfers to the staking contract
• treasury_actual — transfers to the community treasury
• treasury_legacy — transfers to the legacy treasury safe
• legacy_migration — transfers to the POL migrator contract (MATIC→POL conversion)

This produces daily emission totals per category. 30d rolling aggregates for staking and treasury emission are computed from this data and exposed separately.

The combined emission rate is approximately 1% + 1% of initial supply per year (staking + treasury), with equal daily amounts (~288K POL each).

Fees & Chain Activity

Fee and activity data is collected directly from the Polygon PoS chain via RPC. For each block, POLTRACK fetches the block header and transaction receipts, then computes per-block metrics: gas used, gas limit, base fee, priority fee (tip), transaction count, and gross fees. These are aggregated into daily canonical records.

Gross fees are split into base fee and priority fee components:

• Base fees — routed to the burn mechanism (via routing wallet → permanent burn)
• Priority fees — distributed to validators and stakers through PIP-65/PIP-85

Under PIP-85, the priority fee pool is split: 37% to stakers, 63% to validators. This split is used in staking yield calculation.

USD values are derived from POL fees using the CoinGecko daily price: fees_pol × price_usd.

Fee allocation

Fees are allocated across three protocol-defined components — burn, staking rewards, and rebates — each tracked separately on daily and 30d rolling basis.

As of PIP-82 (February 2026), rebates are a temporary incentive layer for public x402 facilitators, tracked against a fixed $1,000,000 budget through December 31, 2026.

Treasury

Treasury data comes from Etherscan (Ethereum mainnet) — ERC-20 transfer logs for the community treasury address. Every transfer in or out is recorded with direction and amount.

Daily inflow, outflow, and netflow are aggregated from raw transfers. The cumulative balance is recomputed from the earliest affected date forward on every ingestion run.

Price & Market

Price data comes from CoinGecko — daily price (USD), market cap (USD), and market cap rank. From these, POLTRACK derives:

• Security budget — staked supply × price, the economic cost to attack the network.
• Market cap — circulating supply × price. Since POL has no locked tokens, circulating supply equals net supply.

Protocol Constants

Supply baseline

• Start date: 2023-10-25 (POL token genesis)
• Start supply: 10,000,000,000 POL
• Schedule duration: 10 years

Inflation schedule

Allocation caps

Caps are computed by simulating compound emission growth over the 10-year schedule:

• Community Treasury max: 1,109,146,957 POL
• Staking Rewards max: 1,260,646,957 POL
• Combined max new issuance: ~2,369,293,914 POL
• Max expected supply (start + issuance − burn): burn-adjusted, decreases as more POL is burned

Key on-chain addresses

Ethereum mainnet:

Polygon PoS:

Methodological Principles

• On-chain first. On-chain state is primary evidence. Third-party aggregates are supporting layers, not authoritative replacements.
• Raw-to-canonical pipeline. Source data is always stored as-received before normalization. Rolling metrics are derived from canonical daily facts.
• Reward type separation. Emission rewards and fee-based rewards are always tracked and reported separately.
• Null over fill. Missing data produces null output — no interpolation, no zero-fill, no extrapolation.
• Common as-of date. All sections of a published response share one reference date anchored to the latest common availability across required datasets.

How Metrics Are Calculated

Supply, issuance, and inflation

Circulating Supply and Net Supply are the same value. Both refer to Total Supply − Burned Total.

Net Supply = Total Supply − Burned Total
Net Issuance (day) = Emissions (day) − Burn (day)
Net Issuance (30d) = Sum of Net Issuance over last 30 days

Burn mechanics

Native burn is measured as a balance delta:

Native Burn (day) = max(Cumulative Burn[t] − Cumulative Burn[t−1], 0)

Fee allocation

Non-Burn Fees (day) = max(Gross Fees (day) − Burn value (day), 0)
Rewards From Fees (day) = Non-Burn Fees (day) − Rebates (day)

Staking yield (APR)

Two components summed to give total:

APR From Fees = ((Staking Rewards From Fees POL 30d / 30) × 365 / Avg Staked POL 30d) × 100
APR From Emission = ((Staking Emission POL 30d / 30) × 365 / Avg Staked POL 30d) × 100
APR Total = APR From Fees + APR From Emission

This is a trailing 30-day run-rate annualized to one year. APR (linear), not compounded APY.

Value flow allocation

The Value Allocation chart shows daily flow to three destinations:

Burn = daily permanent burn
Treasury & Rebates = daily treasury emission + daily rebates
Validators & Stakers = daily staking emission + daily fee rewards (after burn and rebates)

Daily data is smoothed with a 7-day rolling average to reduce batch distribution spikes.

Validator Monitoring (beta)

Data sources

PIP-65 fee redistribution

After PIP-64/PIP-65 (October 2025), block fees are redistributed through the PIP-65 multisig:

• 74% validator pool — distributed pro-rata by delegated stake weight
• 26% block producer pool — directed to the elected block producer

POLTRACK Score

Each validator receives a composite score (0–100) based on seven weighted components: reliability (25%), decentralization (20%), record (20%), health (15%), consistency (10%), commission (5%), transparency (5%).

Limitations specific to validators

• Delegator yield uses approximation methods that may overstate during large stake exits.
• PIP-65 distributions lag approximately one month behind fee collection.
• Commission rate is recorded at snapshot time and may not reflect mid-period changes.

Limitations & Known Constraints

• Data lag. Fee and gas data follows the chain with confirmation lag. Price data from CoinGecko may lag up to 1 day. Supply and balance data updates periodically via direct RPC.
• Batch distribution effects. Burn and fee distributions happen in batches, not continuously. This creates spikes in daily data that are smoothed by rolling averages.
• Third-party dependency. Explorer and market APIs can rate-limit, revise data, or fail. POLTRACK treats source failures as coverage gaps — affected outputs go null.
• Staked supply sources. The staking contract balance (used in some historical views) includes unclaimed rewards. The validator registry sum (used in current metrics) reflects actual delegated stakes.

Versioning

This methodology is a living document. Changes that materially affect metric definitions will be documented here. Metric naming is kept stable where possible.

Structured Summary (For Research & AI Parsing)

• Net Supply / Circulating Supply: interchangeable, equal to total supply − burned total.
• Net Issuance: emissions minus burn over a selected period.
• Fee Allocation: gross fees split into burn, staking rewards, and rebates.
• Staking Yield Split: emission-driven APR + fee-based APR, reported separately.
• PIP-85 Staker Share: 37% of priority fees allocated to stakers, 63% to validators.
• Security Budget: staked supply × price.
• As-Of Date: single reference date across all metrics, anchored to latest common data availability.
• Data Basis: derived from observable on-chain state and public data sources. Coverage gaps produce null outputs.
• Value Flow: source-to-destination mapping of all protocol value (fees + emission → burn + treasury + validators/stakers).