Layer 2 tokens compared: Arbitrum, Polygon and Mantle

Arbitrum, Polygon and Mantle run three of the networks people use to pay less for Ethereum transactions. Their tokens were worth $3.5 billion together on 5 November, about 1.2% of ether’s market cap, by CoinGecko data. Each of these Layer 2 tokens trades between 85% and 93% below its record. The three tokens do different jobs on their networks, and holders of some get little from the traffic.

Three tokens, three jobs

• ARB gives votes in the Arbitrum DAO, and you pay fees on Arbitrum in ether;
• POL pays fees on Polygon Chain and secures it through staking;
• MNT pays fees on Mantle and gives votes in its governance.

Arbitrum: votes on the largest rollup

Ed Felten, a former Princeton professor, founded Offchain Labs with Steven Goldfeder and Harry Kalodner, and Arbitrum One went live in August 2021. Arbitrum is an optimistic rollup: it runs transactions away from Ethereum and posts the data back to it. On 23 March 2023 the team airdropped about 1.16 billion ARB to roughly 625,000 wallets that had used the network.

ARB has a fixed supply of 10 billion tokens, according to the Arbitrum DAO docs, and 6.9 billion circulate. The team and early investors still receive tokens from monthly unlocks. ARB peaked at $2.39 in January 2024 and trades at $0.157.

Polygon: from MATIC to POL

Jaynti Kanani, Sandeep Nailwal and Anurag Arjun started Matic Network in 2017 and renamed it Polygon in 2021. Polygon Chain began as a sidechain with its own validators: it posts checkpoints to Ethereum and keeps transaction data on its own chain, unlike a rollup. In September 2024 holders began swapping MATIC for POL at one to one.

POL pays gas and staking on Polygon Chain. The original plan added 2% new POL a year, half for validators and half for a community treasury, and a later community vote changed the validator part, Polygon’s docs say. About 10.6 billion POL circulate, above the 10 billion it started with. At $0.094 the token sits 93% below its March 2024 record of $1.29.

Mantle: the network backed by an exchange

Mantle grew out of BitDAO, which sold more than $230 million of BIT tokens in 2021, and the exchange Bybit pledged a cut of its futures volume to the DAO. In 2023 BIT holders folded the DAO into Mantle and swapped BIT for MNT one to one. The mainnet launched on 17 July 2023. In September 2025 Bybit added 21 MNT trading pairs, and MNT peaked at $2.86 on 8 October 2025. It trades at $0.44, 85% lower.

Why the tokens lag the networks

A rollup pays Ethereum to store its data and sells cheaper block space to you. On Arbitrum the fees arrive in ether, so an ARB holder gets votes over a treasury and no direct share of those fees. Supply keeps growing at the same time: ARB unlocks run until 2027, and POL has ongoing issuance.

What it means for you

To use these networks you need ether on Arbitrum, POL on Polygon and MNT on Mantle for fees. If you hold the tokens as an investment, check the unlock schedule and what each token gives you before you look at network activity. Our guides to Arbitrum and Polygon cover their history, and our overview of crypto sectors shows how small Layer 2 tokens are next to the rest of the market.

Prices as of 5 November 2026, from CoinGecko. This is not investment advice.