Polygon has already hosted among the most notable institutional blockchain deployments thus far.
In November 2022, JP Morgan executed a stay cross-currency DeFi transaction on Polygon PoS, marking one of many first main bank-led blockchain trades involving actual monetary establishments.
Franklin Templeton later expanded its first US on-chain mutual fund to Polygon, whereas Hamilton Lane used Polygon-based tokenization to cut back the minimal funding in personal credit score from lots of of hundreds of {dollars} to only $10,000.
On the buyer facet, Nike and Reddit launched large-scale blockchain initiatives on the community, though each packages have since been discontinued. This text examines what these establishments constructed on Polygon, how the underlying expertise labored, and the place every undertaking stands as of June 2026.
What Makes Polygon Enticing to Massive Establishments?
Polygon is a Layer 2 scaling community constructed on prime of Ethereum. It processes transactions quicker and at considerably decrease price than Ethereum mainnet, whereas inheriting Ethereum’s underlying safety. For establishments, this resolves a sensible drawback: they will function throughout the Ethereum ecosystem, use its developer tooling, and entry its liquidity with out paying the gasoline charges that make mainnet use costly at scale.
For example, JP Morgan’s blockchain division group needed Ethereum infrastructure and easily wanted cheaper transaction prices.
Past the PoS chain, Polygon affords a zero-knowledge EVM (zkEVM) and a Chain Improvement Package (CDK). The CDK, launched in 2023, lets organizations construct their very own customized Layer 2 chains with particular entry guidelines and transaction parameters, whereas staying linked to the broader Polygon ecosystem by way of the AggLayer. The AggLayer is an aggregation layer that went stay in early 2024 and unifies liquidity throughout Polygon-based chains so they don’t function in isolation from one another.
JP Morgan and Undertaking Guardian: How a Financial institution Ran a Reside DeFi Commerce on a Public Chain
On November 2, 2022, JP Morgan executed what it described as its first stay commerce on a public blockchain utilizing DeFi, tokenized deposits, and verifiable credentials. The transaction happened on Polygon’s PoS mainnet as a part of Undertaking Guardian, a pilot initiative run by the Financial Authority of Singapore (MAS).
The contributors had been JP Morgan (now working its blockchain division below the identify Kinexys), Singapore’s DBS Financial institution, and Japan’s SBI Digital Asset Holdings. Collectively they:
- Issued tokenized deposits representing Singapore {Dollars} (by JP Morgan) and Japanese Yen (by SBI Digital Asset Holdings)
- Executed a stay cross-currency FX transaction utilizing these tokenized deposits
- Performed a simulated commerce of tokenized Singapore and Japanese authorities bonds
- Used a modified model of Aave Arc, a permissioned liquidity protocol constructed particularly for institutional contributors
Aave Arc is the institutional variant of the Aave DeFi protocol. It restricts pool entry to verified counterparties solely, that means all contributors should move know-your-customer (KYC) checks earlier than they will work together with any liquidity pool.
JP Morgan layered on prime of this by constructing on-chain verification utilizing W3C Verifiable Credentials (VCs). This allowed every establishment to show its compliance standing instantly on-chain, so any DeFi protocol it accessed might confirm identification with out requiring a separate KYC examine at each interface.
Tyrone Lobban, then head of JP Morgan’s Blockchain Launch and Onyx Digital Belongings, mentioned Polygon was chosen particularly as a result of it provided Ethereum compatibility at a value that made on-chain identification verification economically viable at scale. Stani Kulechov, founding father of Aave, known as it the primary real-world use case for institutional-grade DeFi protocols ever executed on a public blockchain.
Undertaking Guardian famous it might discover different blockchain networks in future phases. The Polygon pilot, nonetheless, stays essentially the most cited instance of a regulated financial institution finishing a stay DeFi transaction on a public chain below actual compliance controls.
What Did Nike Really Construct on Polygon, and What Is Its Standing Now?
Nike launched .Swoosh in November 2022 as its devoted Web3 platform, constructed on Polygon. The platform allowed customers to purchase, gather, and commerce digital Nike merchandise, together with digital sneakers and attire meant to be used as avatar wearables in Web3 video games and digital environments.
The primary main product drop was “Our Pressure 1” (OF1), a Polygon-minted $NFT based mostly on the Air Pressure 1 silhouette. Nike provided two editions, the “Traditional Remix” and the “New Wave,” with choose early entry granted by way of airdropped posters to .Swoosh members.
The platform additionally included a royalty-sharing mannequin the place customers who created Nike-branded digital merchandise might earn a proportion of gross sales, successfully changing into co-creators with a monetary stake within the platform’s output.
By October 2022, earlier than .Swoosh had even totally launched publicly, Nike had generated $185 million in cumulative $NFT income throughout all its tasks, ten instances greater than the subsequent 9 prime manufacturers mixed, based on Dune Analytics information. The choice to construct on Polygon slightly than Ethereum mainnet was sensible: decrease minting prices made the platform viable for a broad client base slightly than a distinct segment of high-spending crypto collectors.
What Occurred to Nike’s Web3 Program?
Nike’s Web3 experiment didn’t survive a change in management and a chronic cooling of the $NFT market. Right here is the total timeline of its wind-down:
- In 2024, Nike paused new $NFT assortment launches and mentioned it might redirect .Swoosh towards gaming partnerships and in-game wearables
- In December 2024, Nike’s $NFT studio RTFKT formally introduced it might stop all operations by January 2025
- RTFKT was quietly offered to an undisclosed purchaser in December 2025
- The .Swoosh web site was retired on Might 5, 2026, with customers directed to switch their digital collectibles to exterior wallets
- In April 2025, a bunch of RTFKT $NFT holders filed a class-action lawsuit in Brooklyn federal courtroom, looking for $5 million in damages and alleging the NFTs had been unregistered securities offered with out SEC registration
Present CEO Elliot Hill, who changed John Donahoe in late 2024, has redirected Nike’s technique again towards core sport and wholesale retail. The .Swoosh identify continues to look in reference to gaming partnerships, however the $NFT infrastructure on Polygon is now not operational.
Nike’s Polygon deployment is finest understood as a traditionally vital client $NFT experiment that generated actual income and actual consumer engagement at scale, earlier than market situations and company technique shifted.
Franklin Templeton: The First US Mutual Fund on a Public Blockchain
How Did FOBXX Use Polygon?
Franklin Templeton’s Franklin OnChain U.S. Authorities Cash Fund (FOBXX) stays one of many largest tokenized treasury merchandise available in the market. The fund is represented onchain by way of the BENJI token, with every token similar to a share of the fund. FOBXX invests at the very least 99.5% of its belongings in U.S. authorities securities, money, and totally collateralized repurchase agreements.
Franklin Templeton expanded BENJI past its authentic Stellar deployment to a number of blockchain networks, together with Polygon. The fund continues to make use of public blockchains as an official system of report for possession and transaction processing, making it one of many earliest examples of a regulated funding product working onchain.
As of April 2026, FOBXX reported roughly $825 million in fund belongings, whereas the BENJI tokenized product represented greater than $1 billion in onchain asset worth throughout supported networks. The fund’s 7 day efficient yield stood at roughly 3.58%.
The Polygon deployment stays energetic in 2026 and continues to function one among Franklin Templeton’s main EVM suitable distribution channels. The initiative is broadly considered as a sensible instance of blockchain getting used for fund administration, settlement, transferability, and possession recordkeeping slightly than as a standalone advertising and marketing experiment.
Reddit’s Blockchain Avatars: Mass Adoption, Then a Full Exit
Reddit launched its Collectible Avatars program on Polygon in July 2022. The design was deliberate in its invisibility. Reddit by no means used the phrases “blockchain,” “$NFT,” or “crypto” in its preliminary communications. Customers had been merely invited to purchase or declare limited-edition digital avatars saved in a function known as Reddit Vault, which functioned as an in-app crypto pockets with out requiring customers to know what a pockets was.
Inside months, hundreds of thousands of customers had created Vaults and held Polygon-based NFTs with out realizing it. By mid-2023, distinctive holders surpassed ten million. By 2025, that quantity had climbed above fifteen million, making Reddit’s avatar program arguably essentially the most widespread Web3 client deployment by any mainstream platform. Over 33.5 million Collectible Avatars had been created in whole. Artists earned royalties, and secondary market buying and selling on Polygon briefly drove significant quantity.
How Did Reddit’s Program Finish?
Reddit’s blockchain ambitions unraveled in phases over two years:
- October 2023: Reddit shut down Group Factors, its token reward system operating on Arbitrum Nova, citing resourcing constraints and the regulatory setting
- August 5, 2024: Reddit discontinued Collectible Expressions, the animated remark options constructed on prime of the Polygon NFTs
- September 2025: Reddit introduced the top of its Avatar Creator Program
- November 11, 2025: The Avatar Retailer closed completely
- January 1, 2026: The deadline for customers to export their blockchain wallets handed
Reddit’s exit from Polygon was its second blockchain function to be discontinued. The Collectible Avatars program stands as a real case research in onboard a mass viewers to blockchain expertise with out technical friction, and equally as a case research in what occurs when company priorities shift and the underlying infrastructure is eliminated.
Hamilton Lane and the Tokenization of Personal Credit score
Hamilton Lane, one of many world’s largest personal markets funding companies with roughly $958 billion in belongings below administration and supervision, introduced its Senior Credit score Alternatives Fund (SCOPE) onchain by way of Securitize in 2023.
The launch used Polygon to tokenize entry to a non-public credit score technique that had beforehand required a $2 million minimal funding, lowering the entry level to $10,000 by way of a tokenized feeder fund. Buyers gained publicity to floating charge, senior secured loans throughout sectors comparable to healthcare, data expertise, and enterprise providers.
Tokenization permits possession pursuits within the fund to be represented as blockchain-based tokens slightly than conventional transfer-agent data. For traders, this created a extra accessible pathway into personal credit score, an asset class that has traditionally been restricted to establishments and ultra-high-net-worth traders.
The undertaking has since developed past its authentic Polygon deployment. In July 2025, Securitize upgraded the tokenized automobile, often known as sSCOPE, with native issuance on Ethereum and Optimism, day by day NAV pricing, immediate subscriptions, on-demand redemptions, and multichain interoperability powered by Wormhole. The growth was designed to make the fund extra suitable with rising onchain monetary infrastructure and decentralized finance functions.
Whereas Polygon served as the unique launch community, SCOPE has since develop into a multichain tokenized fund. Its continued growth is without doubt one of the clearest examples of how conventional asset managers are utilizing public blockchain infrastructure to broaden entry to non-public market investments
Is Polygon Nonetheless Related for Institutional Use in 2026?
The patron $NFT packages from Nike and Reddit have closed. The monetary infrastructure deployments from Franklin Templeton and Hamilton Lane stay energetic and increasing. That distinction is essentially the most correct solution to assess Polygon’s institutional relevance as of mid-2026.
Over 30 Fortune 500 firms had testnet or mainnet deployments on Polygon as of early 2025. Stripe launched international $USDC stablecoin funds throughout Ethereum, Base, and Polygon on December 12, 2025, enabling retailers in over 150 international locations to simply accept crypto with immediate USD settlement at a flat 1.5% payment.
In April 2026, Meta started paying choose creators in $USDC on Polygon and Solana through Stripe, in what Polygon Labs CEO Marc Boiron described as a program anticipated to broaden to greater than 160 international locations by year-end. These should not experiments. They’re stay cost flows operating on Polygon’s infrastructure immediately.
On the technical facet, Polygon applied a sequence of fast upgrades by way of early 2026. The Might 8, 2026 improve raised the block gasoline restrict to 140 million and diminished block time to 1.75 seconds, pushing the community’s most theoretical throughput to roughly 3,800 transactions per second. For context, precise stay TPS on the community runs between 97 and 537 relying on demand, per Chainspect information. The three,800 determine displays capability at peak load. These upgrades are a part of the Gigagas roadmap, introduced in June 2025, which targets 100,000 TPS as a longer-term infrastructure milestone. That focus on has not been reached but and stays in progress.
The AggLayer continues to deal with one among enterprise blockchain’s persistent challenges: liquidity fragmentation throughout remoted networks. By connecting Polygon-based chains, it permits belongings and transactions to movement throughout chains with out requiring establishments to manually bridge between them.
$POL, the token that changed MATIC by way of a 1:1 migration in September 2024, trades close to $0.09 as of June 2, 2026, with a market capitalization of roughly $975 million to $983 million throughout main exchanges. $POL features because the gasoline and staking token throughout the Polygon ecosystem. On-chain exercise recorded 1.4 billion transactions in 2025. The hole between that quantity and the token’s worth efficiency displays a market that has not but priced infrastructure-layer adoption in any constant method.
Conclusion
Polygon’s monitor report exhibits that institutional blockchain adoption is now not theoretical. Whereas consumer-focused $NFT initiatives from Nike and Reddit have largely come to an finish, monetary establishments proceed to broaden their use of blockchain infrastructure for funds, tokenized funds, personal credit score, and asset settlement.
From JP Morgan’s landmark DeFi transaction to Franklin Templeton’s onchain mutual fund and Hamilton Lane’s tokenized personal credit score technique, Polygon has served as a proving floor for real-world blockchain functions. Because the community continues to evolve by way of upgrades, tokenization, and enterprise-focused infrastructure, its long-term relevance will probably be decided much less by $NFT hype and extra by its potential to help regulated monetary exercise at scale.
- CryptoSlate – JPMorgan Executes First DeFi Transaction on Polygon, November 2022
- Aave Weblog – Kinexys by JP Morgan: Undertaking Guardian Pilot on Polygon
- Decrypt – Nike Launches .Swoosh Web3 Platform With Polygon NFTs
- Decrypt – Nike Is Retiring RTFKT, Its $NFT Subsidiary, December 2024
- Sole Retriever – Nike Retiring .Swoosh Web site, Might 2026
- BlockEden – Why 96% of Model $NFT Tasks Died, March 2026
- Polygon Labs Weblog – Franklin Templeton Cash Market Fund Launches on Polygon Blockchain
- CoinPaprika – Franklin Templeton FOBXX and Benji Defined, April 2026
- Securitize – Securitize Expands Entry to Hamilton Lane’s SCOPE Fund through Polygon, Might 2023
- CoinDesk – Securitize Takes Hamilton Lane SCOPE Fund Multichain, July 2025
- Decrypt – Reddit Sunsetting Collectible Expressions for Polygon NFTs, August 2024
- MEXC Information – Reddit Ends Avatar Creator Program, November 2025
- Stablecoin Insider – Stripe Launches World $USDC Stablecoin Funds on Ethereum, Base, and Polygon, December 2025
- Decrypt – Meta Launches $USDC Creator Payouts on Polygon through Stripe, April 2026
- CryptoTimes – Polygon Pushes Scalability Additional With 140M Fuel Improve, Might 2026
- Polygon Labs Weblog – Polygon’s Gigagas Roadmap to 100K TPS, June 2025
- CoinGecko – $POL Reside Value and Market Cap, June 2026
- Chainspect – Polygon Reside TPS, Block Time, and Community Metrics, June 2026
