Hermez Network

Hermez 1.0 launched in March 2021 as a payments-focused zk-rollup. Its coordinators competed in an on-chain auction for ten-minute slots. The highest HEZ bid won the right to build batches and collect transaction fees, while a boot coordinator covered empty slots.

Archived documentation does not agree on how a winning bid was divided. The model page says 30% burned, 40% donated and 30% used as adoption incentives; the consensus page says 40% burn, 40% donation and 20% HGT. It also says governance could change those parameters, so neither split should be presented as an immutable token rule.

On August 13, 2021, Polygon announced that Hermez would join it. The plan committed up to 250 million MATIC, integrated 26 team members and priced HEZ at 3.5 MATIC. Polygon said MATIC would become the sole ecosystem token and assume HEZ’s former role.

That announcement described HEZ as eventually ceasing after an unspecified date. The ERC-20 did not disappear: balances, transfers and burns remain on Ethereum. The phrase marked retirement of ecosystem utility, not deletion of the token contract.

The deployed HezMaticMerge contract turns the promise into a narrow code path. It pulls HEZ from the user, burns it and sends (HEZ × 3500) / 1000 old MATIC. On April 25, 2026, a successful call burned 0.01 HEZ and paid 0.035 MATIC, proving the path still executed years later.

The conversion needs enough old MATIC in the contract. The September 5, 2026 snapshot showed about 1.382 million old MATIC, sufficient for roughly 394,980 HEZ at 3.5:1, against about 11.066 million HEZ outstanding. The owner’s MATIC withdrawal restriction ended on the deployment day in 2021; it was a waiting period before withdrawal became permitted, not a deadline after which withdrawal was forbidden. The owner can therefore remove the reserve. Conversion remains conditional on funding, not an unconditional promise to every holder.

Polygon launched the next token change on September 4, 2024. Old Ethereum MATIC can migrate 1:1 to POL through Polygon’s upgrade contract, while balances native to Polygon PoS changed automatically.

HEZ therefore does not convert directly to POL. A holder whose legacy swap executes receives old Ethereum MATIC and must use the separate Polygon migration path. HEZ itself conveys no claim to POL emissions, staking, Polygon zkEVM fees or governance.

The HEZ contract is simpler than the institution around it. Its constructor minted 100 million tokens once. Verified code has no owner, upgrade, pause, blacklist, freeze or external mint function; holders can transfer, approve, sign permits and burn their own units.

That fixed token code does not fix the migration reserve. The swap owner is a separate privileged address and its present legal controller was not verified. The old Hermez GitHub organization is archived, while Polygon continues the successor technology. HEZ remains a transferable legacy asset whose former job and present conversion capacity must be evaluated separately.