The Rise of Polygon

Hello friends, it’s your friendly, neighborhood Cryptogawd back again.

So, I know last time I told you about my love for Bitcoin. Even though BTC is the most important coin to me, it doesn’t mean, I’m not watching other coins develop a nice ecosystem right before my eyes. There are many coins like this, but today we will discuss Polygon.

Polygon (MATIC) started originally as a L2 (Layer 2) Blockchain for ETH. They launched in October 2017, but their network went live a couple years later. They originally started out as “Matic” but then rebranded as Polygon, but their symbol is still MATIC. Yeah, I know that’s definitely not confusing haha.

L2 Solution

Anyways, the reason that this L2 (Level 2) and many others are needed is because of ETH’s exorbitantly high Gas fees. For the uninitiated, ETH gas fees are what’s needed for every transaction. We’re talking anywhere from a couple dollars to a couple thousand dollars worth of gas fees, depending on the amount of transactions and the traffic for that day.

Enter, Polygon, an ambitious coin and L2 blockchain with the wherewithal to take on the gas fees of ETH and reduce them to mere fractions of the L1 fees.

Blockchain gaming

Polygon is one of the leading players in the Web3 space. One of the main reasons is their blockchain gaming selection. They really took off a couple years ago with the release of the hit NFT horse racing game called “Zedrun”.

Zedrun is basically a digital horsetrack. You can buy NFT horses from the marketplace and race them against others for a profit. Races are scheduled throughout the day. Combining the popularity of NFTs, horses, and blockchain gaming, Zedrun became their first home run.

Afterwards, they have come with a whole slew of new games that have been successful for them. With their growing influence in the blockchain gaming and play 2 earn space, Polygon started becoming a major player.

So major, in fact, that Disney signed them to their “Accelerator program” to help bring their products to the blockchain in the near future.

Steady growth

This is an exciting development considering how fast they have grown since their introduction in 2019. Plus, they have many other high profile partnership like Starbucks, and the list goes on.

One thing is for sure. Alot of players in the industry see them as one of the bright lights in a sometimes shady space full of rugpulls and insolvency. Needless to say, they are continuing to build at a quite impressive rate.

Devs are L33T

It seems like they have a new announcement almost every other day.

One such major event was when they recently released their own ZK (Zero Knowledge) rollup. They have dubbed their offering “Polygon zkEVM”.

Basically, what this means is that this L2 protocol will “roll up” large batches of transactions and then provide them to the ethereum network with one ZK validity proof.

This essentially means that instead of many transactions that must be processed, it gets all processed in one large batch. Lower fees, better throughput and lower latency are a few of the benefits this protocol offers.

Future is bright

Obviously, that’s a big deal. But, that’s not the only factor driving Polygon’s hype growth. It also has to do with the fact that we now know the recent merge of Ethereum did not, and will not, lower gas fees, as previously thought.

This revelation has driven Polygon to wider adoption from an increasing number of projects in the L2 space. I would be so bold as to say that Polygon is the number one L2 solution at this point.

They are also working heavily on their own blockchain with many upcoming developments. It seems like they are the blockchain with the best dev team around.

The best is yet to come with Polygon as they continue to rack up partnerships with the biggest companies in various industries. I personally can’t wait to see what they have next up their digital sleeves.

Well, that’s all for today. I’ll be personally watching Polygon and continue to do marvel at what they do best: always improving.

Well, its been fun friends. Hope your new year is off to a good start!

Til next time, CRYPTOGAWD, OUT!

(Disclaimer: Please keep in mind, this is simply my opinion and none of this is financial advice. You should always consult w your financial advisor and DYOR before making any investments, especially in the highly risky and volatile crypto markets.)