Polygon to Delegate $189M Worth of MATIC to Bitfinex for Staking

Cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex said it will receive $189 million worth of Polygon's MATIC tokens to sponsor enhanced staking rewards for users.

According to a blog post, Bitfinex will receive 90 million MATIC for the new staking program. Polygon is a "layer 2" scaling tool for the Ethereum blockchain, designed to speed up and reduce the cost of transactions.

At press time, MATIC was trading at around $2.07, down 1.1% over the past 24 hours. The token's price has slid 13% in the last seven days.

Crypto staking is a process used to verify transactions on a blockchain and secure the network. In Polygon's case, users delegate MATIC to validators who run nodes and in exchange receive rewards akin to interest payments.

In the new program with Bitfinex, users could receive up to 41% in annualized staking rewards by participating in the new MATIC program – but that is only "available for a limited time," according to the post.

Bitfinex also warned that the estimated percentage was based on certain market assumptions and that "this hypothetical is only an illustration and not a prediction or guarantee."

Binance's staking rewards for MATIC are about 12%, according to the website stakingrewards.com, considerably lower than the rate Bitfinex is offering.