net_listening

net_listening returns a boolean indicating whether a Polygon PoS node is actively listening for incoming peer-to-peer connections. A true result means the Bor client's P2P stack is open and able to gossip blocks and transactions with the rest of the Polygon network that settles MATIC fees. It is the simplest liveness probe in the net namespace. Call it against the Polygon mainnet endpoint at https://polygon.therpc.io/YOUR_API_KEY (chain ID 137, 0x89) as a quick confirmation that the node behind your requests is online.

Use cases

• Use as a basic health check in monitoring scripts that watch your Polygon RPC endpoint and alert when the node stops listening.
• Verify connectivity before running automated operations against Polygon — such as a batch of MATIC transfers or contract reads — so you fail fast on an unreachable node.

Parameters

This method takes no parameters. Pass an empty array [].

Response

Example request

1curl https://polygon.therpc.io/YOUR_API_KEY \
2  -X POST \
3  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
4  -d '{
5    "jsonrpc": "2.0",
6    "method": "net_listening",
7    "params": [],
8    "id": 1
9  }'

Try it live in the Polygon playground.

Errors & troubleshooting

Common pitfalls

• true only means the node is listening for connections, not that it actually has peers or is in sync with the Polygon head. Pair it with net_peerCount to confirm real connectivity, and eth_syncing to confirm the node is current.
• Managed RPC providers front many backend Polygon nodes behind one endpoint, so this method typically returns a constant true and reflects the gateway rather than the precise state of any single underlying node.

Supported networks

• Mainnet — Chain ID: 137
• Amoy — Chain ID: 80002

See also

• net_peerCount
• net_version

1curl https://polygon.therpc.io/YOUR_API_KEY \
2  -X POST \
3  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
4  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"net_listening","params":[]}'