Polygon joins Bank of England digital pound testing group
DeFi & Yields ·
Polygon Labs has been selected for phase two of the Bank of England's Digital Pound Lab, joining NOBO Finance and Dun & Bradstreet to test components of an Open Money Stack.
The selection places Polygon alongside two other named participants in a program run by the Bank of England to examine how stablecoins and digital money infrastructure might interoperate, according to an announcement shared by Polygon. The work is described as focused on stablecoin interoperability and cross-border trade financing, positioning the lab as a testing ground for how different money-related systems could plug into each other rather than a launch of a retail digital pound itself.
For Polygon, the inclusion extends a pattern of engagement with payments and stablecoin infrastructure beyond its core role as an Ethereum scaling network. The network's native token, $POL, functions as the gas, staking, and governance asset that underpins activity on Polygon, including stablecoin transfers such as USDC that move across the chain. A Digital Pound Lab role does not change POL's on-chain function, but it signals interest from a central bank in evaluating Polygon-adjacent infrastructure for interoperability testing.
The corroborating detail names NOBO Finance and Dun & Bradstreet as the other two participants selected for this phase, with the group's mandate centered on stablecoin interoperability and cross-border trade financing use cases. Two distinct sources describe the same lineup and focus area, though neither specifies a timeline for when testing begins or concludes, nor what technical standards the Open Money Stack will require of participants.
The move sits within a broader stretch of Polygon ecosystem activity referenced in the wider coverage, including the rollout of ERC-7715 permissions in MetaMask, the introduction of sPOL for staking rewards, and reported early talks around a $100M raise for stablecoin payments expansion. None of that activity is confirmed to be directly tied to the Bank of England lab work, and the material does not specify what deliverables Polygon, NOBO Finance, or Dun & Bradstreet owe the Bank of England, or whether findings from the lab will inform any future digital pound design decisions. Those details remain to be disclosed as the phase-two work proceeds.