Being backed by large funds worldwide and positively responded by Mark Cuban – one of the famous sharks from Shark Tank, Polygon is known as the more optimal edition in comparison to the Ethereum Network.

Polygon (formerly MATIC NETWORK), known as the “Internet of Ethereum Chains”, is a Layer-2 scaling solution for ultimate payment and lending, atomic swaps, and improved DApp and DEX performance.

Polygon as the Alternative to Ethereum

1.1 Features

Polygon is a Layer 2 that solves the scaling problems of Ethereum.

Imagine the blockchain as a train, each block as a carriage, and the transactions as passengers standing at the dock waiting to board the train. New passengers have to huddle together with all old passengers in the already crowded carriages, which weighs down the train and slows down the speed.

In the early time of the crypto industry, the number of transactions was still low, resulting in cheap fees and smooth transactions. When the boom of NFTs and other DeFi platforms on Ethereum leads to an increased number of users, many problems arise such as higher fees, slow transactions, etc.

Polygon emerges as the leading Layer 2 solution, which increases the capacity and moving speed of the Ethereum train. Below are Polygon’s proposals:

Scalability: Additional side chains take the responsibility of increasing the capacity of each block by 216,216 transactions per second. This means Polygon can cope with the influx of a much larger number of transactions compared to Ethereum.

High throughput: Users can achieve up to 7000 TPS on a single sidechain on the internal testnet. More chains will be added to scale horizontally.

User experience: Polygon maintains the smooth user experience and developer abstraction of the main chain through native mobile apps which provide optimized performance and take advantage of the latest technology, and SDK (Software Development Kit).

Security: An additional layer of validators regularly checks the validity of any Polygon chain to ensure the security of the whole network.

Public side chains: The nature of Polygon side chains is public, permissionless, and capable of supporting multiple protocols.

1.2 Investors and Sponsors

Polygon’s growing popularity is boosting investor confidence in the cryptocurrency sector. Polygon’s coverage on all social media platforms has increased by 636 percent (data by LunaCrush) in the last three months, thus creating a dominating presence and indicating that investors are more interested in the currency than they have ever been.

Polygon was funded by Coinbase Ventures back in 2018, showing its development potential. In addition, Polygon was also backed by big names such as Binance (Binance has already listed MATIC), Block Capital, Validation Capital, ZBS Capital, MiH Ventures, etc., who reaffirmed their vision of Polygon’s success.

Additionally, on May 25, billionaire investor Mark Cuban publicly expressed his support for this Indian Blockchain startup. He announced that he had invested in Polygon, which can be seen on the portfolio section of his company’s website. Cuban is well-known for his support for cryptocurrency: he is one of the biggest advocates of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other major blockchains. Cuban’s investment has effectively aided Polygon’s flawless growth and higher adoption.

There are several reasons behind the incredible rise of Polygon (MATIC). It includes growing interest around Polygon, the announcement of Google BigQuery, and billionaire Mark Cuban’s investment in the project.

1.3 Team and Advisors

Polygon was initially built by four Indian men – Jaynti Kanani (Blockchain engineer), Sandeep Nailwal (Coder), Anurag Arjun (businessman), and Mihailo Bjelic (tech developer). The startup is based in Mumbai.

Sandeep discovered the revolutionary potential of blockchain in 2017, and with the launch of Matic Network (now Polygon) with Jaynti Kanani and Anurag Arjun, he set his sights on resolving scalability concerns. In the service of pus, his primary responsibilities include superhead branding, marketing, community adoption, operations, and partnerships.

MATIC has captured a spot among the top 15 cryptocurrencies, but the founders have ambitious plans to make this coin the third-largest after Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Advisors

Pete Kim (Coinbase: Head of Engineering, Wallet)
Esteban Ordano (Decentraland: Founder & CTO)
Ari Meilich (Decentraland: Founder & CEO)

Polygon’s Real-World Uses

The network gives three main applications in the real world.

2.1 Payments

The Polygon platform is created to allow DApps, merchants, and users to speed up payments through the integration of specialized API and software development kit.

2.2 Lending

Polygon is developing a system that will allow lenders to check the credit ratings of the platform users by looking at their transaction history. This capability is implemented in collaboration with Dharma Protocol. Aave, the dominant lending protocol, has over $1 billion in liquidity locked up in its Polygon markets, which equals to over 8000 users.

2.3 Gaming

Polygon’s Layer-2 solution promises to improve the speed and performance of blockchain-based games. Developers and gamers will be able to design and play games more effectively thanks to the combination of Polygon’s scaling technology and the Ethereum network. Aavegotchi, Neon District, Zed Run, and Cometh, among other top gaming and NFT Dapps, have expanded to Polygon and successfully improved user experience.

Polygon Ecosystem

Polygon is active in some of the most exciting aspects of cryptocurrency, including DeFi (Decentralized Finance), DApp (Decentralized Application), DAO’s (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations), and NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens). It is more impressive when it turns itself into Gaming and Prediction.

Connecting your wallets to Polygon

Here is how you can connect your MetaMask wallet to the Polygon network. The process should be the same for other wallets as well.

Step 1

Open Metamask => Go to “Setting” => Click “Networks” => “Add Network”

Step 2

Fill in the boxes as follows:

Network Name: Matic Mainnet

New RPC URL: https://rpc-mainnet.matic.network

Chain ID: 137

Symbol: MATIC

Block Explorer URL: https://explorer.matic.network/

Step 3

Click “Add” and it’s done!

How to Add Funds to Polygon

After we get Polygon added to Metamask, follow these steps:

Step 1

Deposit $USDT

You can deposit $USDT from some exchanges such as MEXC or Gate.io which support Polygon (Matic Network). Remember to withdraw to the $USDT address supported by Matic.

***The contract address of $USDT (MATIC) to be added to your MetaMask wallet is 0xc2132d05d31c914a87c6611c10748aeb04b58e8f

Or

You can deposit $USDT supported by BSC and connect your wallet to this cross-chain AMM – Xpollinate to swap from BSC Network to Polygon Network or vice versa.

Step 2

You need some MATIC to pay the gas fees. Get 0.001 $MATIC to your wallet via https://macncheese.finance/matic-polygon-mainnet-faucet.php

You are now ready for connecting Polygon to any Polygon network DEXs such as quickswap.exchange, https://app.sushi.com, or cremepieswap.finance.

Final Thoughts

Currently, Layer 2 solutions are gaining interest and large cash flows. While the completion of Ethereum 2.0 is probably still a long time away, solutions like Polygon would be a perfect choice. We believe that Polygon will empower the DeFi wave and contribute greatly to the growth of the crypto industry.

Disclaimers: Writers’ opinions are solely their own and do not constitute any financial advice, investment advice, or trading advice.

BSC Army strongly recommends that you do your own research and seek professional advice from a financial advisor where appropriate.