Polygon has evolved beyond just Ethereum scaling—it's now laying infrastructure for global payment systems and tokenized financial markets. The layer-2 powerhouse has made $250M in strategic acquisitions while pushing toward 100K transactions per second on its roadmap. Meanwhile, POL has entered deflationary territory, signaling a shift in tokenomics. So what's next? These moves suggest we're entering a new phase for the Polygon ecosystem. The question isn't whether the project is innovating—it's whether this push into payments and institutional finance can solidify its position as Web3's backbone infrastructure.