A Polygon PoS explorer is a search engine for Polygon's main chain, chain ID 137. You paste a transaction hash, address or block number and see what happened on-chain. PolygonScan, Blockscout and OKLink all cover it, and our live Polygon explorer checks any PoS transaction in seconds. Since September 2024 they all show the native token as POL rather than MATIC.
The live numbers above come from Blockscout's Polygon instance: POL price, average gas, block time, yesterday's transaction count and the total number of addresses seen. On the day we updated this page, that last figure was close to a billion, and the chain was processing five to six million transactions a day.
How the Polygon PoS chain is built
Polygon PoS is an EVM-compatible proof-of-stake chain that periodically anchors its state to Ethereum. Under the hood it has two layers, and knowing which one you're looking at explains most of the "why can't I find this?" questions we get.
Bor: the block producer
Bor is the execution layer. It produces a block roughly every two seconds, runs the EVM and holds all the transactions, balances and contracts you see in an explorer like PolygonScan.
Heimdall: the consensus layer
Heimdall manages the validator set and staking, and submits checkpoints: compact proofs of ranges of Bor blocks, written to Ethereum. It has its own API and explorers.
When you search a transaction hash in a Polygon PoS chain explorer, you're reading Bor data. Validators, staking and checkpoints live on Heimdall, and ordinary block explorers show only fragments of them. Our Heimdall checkpoints explorer reads that layer directly, with the latest checkpoint, the Bor block range it covers and the active validator set.
Staking itself happens on Ethereum: validators and delegators stake POL through contracts on Ethereum mainnet, and Heimdall watches those contracts. That's why staking transactions show up on Etherscan, not on a Polygon explorer, which surprises a lot of first-time delegators.
Polygon PoS network specs at a glance
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Network name | Polygon PoS (formerly Polygon Mainnet / Matic) |
| Chain ID | 137 (0x89) |
| Native / gas token | POL |
| POL token address on PoS | 0x…1010 system contract |
| Block time | About 2 seconds |
| Finality | Deterministic, about 5 seconds |
| Settlement anchor | Checkpoints to Ethereum |
| Consensus | Heimdall v2 (CometBFT, Cosmos SDK) |
| Default explorer | polygonscan.com |
For RPC endpoints and the exact values to paste into MetaMask, use our Polygon network settings page, which has one-click "add network" buttons and endpoints we tested this month.
From MATIC to POL: why explorers changed the token name
If you used Polygon before autumn 2024, you remember MATIC. Every explorer showed balances in MATIC, fees were paid in MATIC, and "Matic explorer" was a common search. So what happened?
On 4 September 2024, Polygon began migrating from MATIC to POL. On Polygon PoS, the native token (the one held at the system address 0x0000000000000000000000000000000000001010) was switched to POL. Balances carried over one-to-one, with no action needed from users holding tokens on the PoS chain. POL became the gas token and the staking token, and explorers updated their labels.
That's why a Polygon MATIC explorer search today lands you on an explorer that says POL everywhere. Nothing is broken. PolygonScan's "POL balance" for an old wallet is exactly what used to be its MATIC balance.
Searching old MATIC transactions
Every pre-2024 transaction is still on-chain and searchable. A few tips from our tests:
- Search by hash as usual. A 2021 transfer opens on PolygonScan, Blockscout and OKLink just like a new one. The value and fee now display with the POL symbol, but the amounts are the historical amounts.
- USD values are recalculated. Some explorers show the dollar value at today's POL price, others at the historical price. For tax records or disputes, note the date and look up the historical rate separately.
- Old tutorials use old names. Guides that mention "MATIC for gas" or the
polygon-rpc.comendpoint are out of date. That RPC now returns an authentication error. - Wrapped MATIC became WPOL. The wrapped native token at
0x0d500B1d8E8eF31E21C99d1Db9A6444d3ADf1270is now labelled WPOL in most explorers.
Polygon PoS upgrades: Heimdall v2, Bhilai and Rio
The PoS chain changed more between mid-2025 and late 2025 than in the previous three years. These upgrades affect what you see in a Polygon PoS explorer: faster confirmation, bigger blocks and new transaction types.
MATIC → POL migration begins. POL becomes gas and staking token on PoS.
Bhilai hard fork: higher gas limit, 1,000+ TPS target, EIP-7702-style account features.
Heimdall v2 goes live on CometBFT and Cosmos SDK v0.50. Finality drops to about 5 seconds.
Rio upgrade: Validator-Elected Block Producer (VEBloP) and witness-based stateless validation, aiming at ~5,000 TPS and reorg-free blocks.
For users, Heimdall v2 is the upgrade that matters most. Before July 2025, finality took one to one and a half minutes, and exchanges often waited for hundreds of blocks before crediting deposits. Now a transaction is final within seconds.
Bhilai raised capacity and brought account-abstraction features, so you'll increasingly see transactions sent by one address on behalf of another. Rio changed block production: an elected producer builds blocks, and other nodes can verify them with witnesses instead of holding full state. The practical result is that reorgs, which used to make explorers briefly show a transaction and then "lose" it, are essentially gone. You'll see very large blocks too: on 25 September 2026 we observed blocks with a 160 million gas limit. Official details are in the Polygon PoS documentation.
Which explorers cover Polygon PoS?
Every major explorer covers Polygon PoS mainnet, but they're built for different jobs. We tested the same USDC transfer on each in September 2026.
| Explorer | Strength | API |
|---|---|---|
| PolygonScan | Most complete, contract tools | Etherscan V2, key needed |
| Blockscout | Open source, decoded data | Free, no key for light use |
| OKLink | Multi-chain labels | Key required |
| 3xpl | Fast, minimal | Yes |
| Our live explorer | Receipts, QR, sharing | Uses Blockscout + RPC |
There's no single official Polygon PoS explorer. Polygon's documentation lists several ecosystem explorers, and PolygonScan is the de facto default that MetaMask uses. For our scores and the reasons behind them, see the ranking of the best Polygon explorers. The in-depth reviews of PolygonScan and Blockscout cover their PoS features in detail.
Reading PoS-specific data: checkpoints, state sync and system contracts
Most of what you see on a Polygon explorer looks like Ethereum. A few things are unique to the PoS chain, and they confuse people when they first show up.
Checkpoints
Every so often, Heimdall validators agree on a range of Bor blocks and submit a checkpoint to Ethereum. A checkpoint is what makes a withdrawal from Polygon to Ethereum possible: your burn transaction on Polygon must be included in a checkpoint before you can exit on Ethereum. That's why withdrawals take 30 to 60 minutes or more, while deposits take about seven to eight minutes. Our bridge explorer guide explains how to track both directions.
State sync
State sync is how messages from Ethereum reach Polygon, most visibly bridge deposits. When you deposit via the PoS bridge, an event on Ethereum is picked up by Heimdall and delivered to Bor, where tokens are minted to your address. On Polygon, these deposits appear as incoming transfers that seem to come from nowhere: no normal sender paid gas for them. That's expected. Some explorers list state-sync transactions separately rather than in the regular transaction list.
System contracts
A handful of contracts live at low, round addresses and are part of the protocol itself. The one you'll meet most is 0x0000000000000000000000000000000000001010, the native POL token contract. It appears in token transfer logs whenever POL moves, and some explorers show a POL "transfer" event from it alongside the normal value field. Other system contracts at nearby addresses handle the validator set and state-sync receiving. You never need to interact with them directly.
If you still need POL for gas or USDC for a payment on Polygon PoS, buy it on a regulated exchange that holds licences in several jurisdictions and supports direct withdrawals to Polygon. Pick the Polygon PoS network, not Ethereum, when you confirm.
Common Polygon PoS explorer questions we get
"My tokens arrived on Ethereum instead of Polygon." Your address is the same on both chains, so a withdrawal sent on the wrong network lands on the same address on Ethereum. Search the hash on Etherscan. Our guide to checking a transaction shows how to tell which chain you're on.
"The explorer shows a transaction I didn't make." Usually a spam token airdrop or a zero-value "address poisoning" transfer designed to get you to copy a lookalike address. Ignore it and never copy addresses from your history without checking every character.
"Is 'Matic Mainnet' in my wallet still correct?" If the chain ID is 137 and the RPC works, yes. The name is cosmetic. We recommend renaming it to Polygon PoS and setting the currency symbol to POL so balances display correctly.