What Is Polygon? Beginners Guide to MATIC

Imagine two pizzas with the same taste and the same quality, but one is cheaper and arrives on time while the other takes time. Which would you prefer? Many would prefer the pizza that is cheap and on time while it has the same features as the expensive pizza. That’s Polygon.

Polygon is not a pizza, but a blockchain technology that claims to act as an add-on layer to Ethereum.

The Birth of Polygon

The roots of the Polygon go back to India. Polygon, formerly known as Matic Network, was created by the three founders Jayanti Kanani, Sandeep Nailwal, and Anurag Arjun in 2017.

Remarkably, Matic Network was started by creating a decentralized network across the world. MATIC believed that improving the Ethereum network would be one way to open the world to revolutionary blockchain technology.

Polygon realized that though Ethereum has many revolutionary features, it lacked scalability. In order to solve this problem, Polygon’s founders believed that it was time to improve the speed and reduce the cost and the complexities which were not there in Ethereum.

Hence, to summarize, Polygon was built to provide developers and projects scaling solutions while taking advantage of the security and network effects features that exist in Ethereum.

Here’s the thing, Polygon was not formed to become a competitor of Ethereum but it was part of it. Matic claimed that they believed in Ethereum and their vision of reaching mass adoption. Even during the announcement, the team called themselves “Polygon, Ethereum Internet of Blockchain.”

Pros and Cons of Polygon

When one is planning to buy MATIC, they would like to know about the advantages and the disadvantages of MATIC.

Some of Polygon’s Strengths Include:

The consensus mechanism helps Polygon to maintain a fast transaction processing speed. According to Polygon, the transaction speed is 7,000 tx/s compared to Ethereum’s speed of 15 tx/s.

When it comes to scalability, Polygon is compatible with  ERC standards. Polygon is secured by validators and checkpoints submitted to Ethereum with minimal downtime over the course of 1.3B recorded transactions.

Since Polygon is compatible with Ethereum, one could easily transfer to and from Polygon and Ethereum. Polygon’s flexibility can create a wide variety of apps to build in its ecosystem and supports easy-to-use wallets on the web and mobile.

One of the key features of a Polygon is its cost. With Polygon’s proof-of-stake architecture, the cost per transaction is approximately 10,000x lower than the cost per transaction for Ethereum.

While There are Many Strengths in the Polygon Network, it Does Have Some Weaknesses:

For instance, Polygon is a layer 2 solution and is part of the Ethereum blockchain, and is not autonomous. So, when the Ethereum network crashes, then, Polygon too comes down with it.

Even though Polygon’s native token MATIC has many good features, it has limited uses only. Unlike the other cryptos, MATIC was built to govern, secure, and pay transaction fees in the Polygon network only and has not been used for everyday purchases.

Polygon’s Infrastructure

At the launch of Polygon, they claimed to be the first well-structured, easy-to-use platform for Ethereum scaling and infrastructure development. As described by the network, the core component of the network is Polygon SDK (software development kit), a modular, flexible framework that supports building and connecting two solutions which are the Secured Chains aka Layer 2 chains, and the Stand-alone Chains aka Sidechains.

Polygon’s Layer 2 chains are built for applications that require the highest security and for new projects and communities which cannot develop a decentralized and secure validator pool. Polygon’s Layer 2 chains support Plasma chains, Optimistic roll-ups, zkRollups, and many more chains.

Unlike Layer 2, Polygon’s Sidechains offer the “highest level of independence and flexibility”, but there’s a catch, it provides a lower level of decentralization and security. The Sidechain can be adjusted in order to inherit the security from Ethereum. Sidechains are usually good for enterprises, projects that do not require the highest level of security, and projects that have a strong community.

Polygon SDK can support and offer many solutions and products. As stated on Polygon’s website, Polygon SDK can offer Inter-chain messaging protocols and modules, data availability services, shared security services, adaptors for external blockchain networks, app-specific modules, and many more.

Polygon’s Future

The goals and objectives of Polygon still continue as they keep creating different projects. According to Polygon, they will announce the Polygon Miden, an upcoming STARK-based, EVM-compatible rollup, which will be done before the end of 2022.

In December 2022, Polygon will make RECUR, the official blockchain partner for primary minting.

Furthermore, Polygon has announced a $400 million deal with ZK tech developer startup MIR and the creation of Polygon Zero.

The zkEVM is the new solution that is coming up in Polygon. The ZK stands for “zero-knowledge” and EVM stands for “Ethereum Virtual Machine”. The zkEVM will help in making thousands of transactions at a single moment, at an even greater speed, and ensure the transaction does not lose its efficiency.

Another $200 million initiative will be given by Polygon to Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six to invest in projects at the intersection of social media and Web3.

Finally, Uniswap will be collaborating with to Polygon by the end of 2022, making all V3 contracts go live on the Polygon PoS mainnet.

What Happened to Polygon After The Merge?

Now, The Merge was one of the biggest events in the crypto world. The Merge happened on September 15 and completed Ethereum’s transition to proof-of-stake consensus, which reduces energy consumption by 99.95%.

Even after The Merge, Ethereum still continues to have the same gas fees. But, that is good news for Polygon, because everyone would require the layer scaling solution of Polygon with reduced gas fees and it will also help clear up the blockchain congestion.

MATIC’s Price History

According to CoinMarketCap, MATIC’s Initial Exchange Offering (IEO) was from April 18, 2019 to April 25, 2019, with 1.9 billion MATIC tokens for sale. MATIC’s Initial Coin Offering (ICO) was priced at  $0.002630 with a fundraising goal of $5 million.

Conclusion

To wrap up, MATIC is considered an ally of Ethereum, rather than a competitor. It was launched to connect and develop Ethereum-compatible projects and blockchains. One thing is for sure, Polygon is not created just for profits but it is built to help the community grow.  Some of Polygon’s projects that helped society[1] [2]  were the introduction of blockchain-powered police complaints, the collaboration with OCEEF to bring the deep sea mission to the metaverse, and supporting various platforms across the crypto world. One thing is for sure Polygon still continues to surprise the crypto community with its new initiatives.