Matic to Polygon, not just a simple name change

There are many projects in the currency circle, and many of them have changed their names later. For example, the well-known leading lending project on the Ethereum chain, Aave, was originally called Lend. Another example is the Facebook Zuckerberg-led Libra, which was once highly expected by everyone. The coin Libra has also been renamed Diem and so on.

Recently, Matic, the second-layer expansion scheme on the Ethereum chain, has also changed its name to Polygon. After the name change, the token Matic has risen by more than 60 points! After I heard the news, the black question mark immediately appeared in my mind? what? It’s too random to change the name, isn’t it? Are you kidding me? What is the reason, let’s explore together.

Matic, Horseshoe, also known as the “Ethereum” in India, is an old-fashioned Layer 2 expansion project. The team is from mysterious India. It has met with you more than ten times with the face of Binance’s sixth LaunchPad project. Some are supported and incubated by Coinbase and Binance.

Under the current DeFi boom, Ethereum is undoubtedly the most dazzling star project under this boom, and it is also the veritable king of public chains. Many people say that the only public chains in the currency circle are ETH and other public chains, and it is not unreasonable. Ethereum’s smart contracts have built the foundation for its strong ecological development, DeFi has further empowered its ecological landing, and the price of ETH has also risen.

However, with the skyrocketing price of ETH, the performance drawbacks of ether have also been highlighted: expensive gas fees, slow speed, inflexible and customizable smart contracts. Especially the problem of smart contracts, in the short term, will make Ethereum lose more retail investors. In the long run, the ecological development of Dapps in Ethereum is limited, and more development may be transferred to BSC, Heco, Bridge Smart Contract Development Services Polkadot cross-chain, etc. , to seize the Ethereum market and weaken the status of Ethereum.

Speaking of Matic, the Matic team was founded with one goal: to drive the mass adoption of Ethereum. In fact, the Plasma adopted by Matic has also solved the expansion problem of Ethereum to a certain extent, and improved the performance of Ethereum in terms of operation speed and gas cost. At present, Layer2 expansion and different cross-chain solutions are also emerging. Plasma does not have an overwhelming advantage. If Matic continues to follow its own path, it may be a little farther away from its own goal, which is why Matic changed its name.

The Matic Network team made some reflections based on the current expansion track and other public chain developments, and considered these three points:

1. The projects of the Ethereum expansion track have different requirements for expansion solutions. One solution cannot solve all needs. Multiple solutions are not a life-and-death situation, but should coexist for mutual benefit and serve the Ethereum ecosystem together;

2. The expansion plan on Ethereum is mature, but cannot be widely adopted due to the complicated deployment process and poor interoperability;

3. The cross-chain compatible solution can provide better performance than Ethereum, but it cannot share the security of the Ethereum network, and it lacks network effects and synergies.

Based on these factors, Matic Network strengthened its structure, upgraded Matic Network to Polygon (polygon), and renamed the project to Polygon. The token Matic will continue to use the previous name, and will not generate new tokens or change its name. , continue to play a role in the Matic ecosystem.

So, what is the difference between Polygon and Matic Network?

Polygon plans to become a Layer 2 solution aggregator on Ethereum, to achieve the construction performance that the Ethereum network itself cannot achieve, and to make up for the important link that is currently missing in the Ethereum ecosystem.

Polygon will retain all the performance of Matic Network, solutions such as Matic Plasma Chains and Matic PoS Chain will continue to exist, will continue to develop and become an important part of the Polygon ecosystem.

Polygon is the first well-structured and easy-to-use Ethereum extension and infrastructure development platform. Its core component is the Polygon SDK. The purpose is to build a modular, general, and flexible scaling framework for Ethereum. Currently, Cross chain bridge development it supports building and connecting two Mainstream expansion paths:

1. Secured chains (ie, second-layer chains): This solution relies on Ethereum itself, which is currently the most secure public chain. This solution relies on Ethereum and does not need to establish its own verification mechanism. In addition to supporting the high-performance MATIC Plasma Chains, it will also support expansion projects including Optimistic Rollups, ZKRollups, Validium, etc. This move will also make Polygon a true layer aggregator. This scheme is suitable for application project institutions with extremely high security level requirements, such as start-up companies, because this scheme is more suitable for the inability to establish a sufficiently decentralized and secure validator mechanism.

2. Stand-alone chains (ie side chains): Side chains are chains that are independent of Ethereum, have their own validator pools, can be independently responsible for their own security, and provide better independence and flexibility. Under this path, Polygon has built the Ethereum sidechain MATIC PoS Chain, which supports the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and can also share the security of the Ethereum network. This type of solution is usually suitable for validator pools that can run sufficiently decentralized and secure, such as strong community projects.

In addition, Polygon SDK will also support and provide a large number of auxiliary solutions and products to better realize the scalability of Polygon. For example: chain-to-chain messaging protocols and modules, data availability services, shared security services, adapters for external blockchain networks, App-specific modules, enterprise modules, and product quality products and solutions, etc.

Another very popular project this year is Polkadot. The Polkadot ecosystem is also a topic of discussion for a long time. The parachain slot will be opened soon, and a large number of projects will be ready to access. The current number of Polkadot applications is close to 400+. Performance has gradually become the biggest competitor of Ethereum, and the market value of DOT has jumped to 6th in the world.

Now that Ethereum has the assistance solution provided by Polygon, it can make up for the performance shortcomings of the Ethereum network and further consolidate the status of Ethereum. In other words: Polkadot is a competitor of Ethereum, and Polygon is Polkadot on Ethereum. It is also the most powerful competitor of Polkadot!

The data also shows the strength of Polygon to a certain extent. At present, the Dapps project built on Polygon has achieved good results. More than 80 Dapps have been built on the chain, which can realize various practical functions such as trading and mining. For example, the liquidity mining of Router Protocol will be launched in Polygon, and users can conduct cross-chain liquidity mining between Polygon and Ethereum; the Open Finance (OpFi) protocol based on the Polygon network will launch its native token ORO on Uniswap; based on Polygon The ecological Polymarket can be used to purchase USDC directly with credit cards. At present, more than 200,000 unique addresses have been generated and more than 7 million transactions have been processed. We have reason to be excited about the future of Polygon!

We know that the goal of ETH2.0 is to improve performance, switching from PoW mechanism to PoS mechanism, this process will last for several years, and this period is undoubtedly an excellent opportunity for Polkadot, and now Polygon has stood up to cross-chain Layer2 aggregator. The gesture appeared in front of everyone, solved the dilemma of Ethereum, determined to become “Polkadot on Ethereum”, and also demonstrated its strength ecologically.

After reading this, you should be able to understand that the change of Matic Network’s name to Polygon is not a momentary fever, but a move to fine-tune the strategy with the same general direction. Obviously, Polygon is more suitable for the current direction.

Of course, bigger goals also mean bigger challenges. From Layer 2 solution provider to Layer 2 aggregator, Build a cross chain bridge the development difficulty of Polygon has also increased exponentially. We can only wait and see how it works!