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TL;DR
What is Polygon/Matic
Polygon, originally known as the Matic Network, started during the last bull market in crypto in 2017.
Most recently, the coin experienced a strong run last month, which has culminated in an all-time high of USD 1.86 in the past few days.
With the Ethereum network currently showing congested traffic and high gas fees, Polygon is seen as the solution by allowing the network to offer a PoS method even before Ethereum's planned future upgrades. As a result, many users are considering a purchase - both because of its fundamental strengths and the recent price hike.
When the idea for Matic was born at the end of 2017, Bitcoin (BTC) was on the rise as the mother of all cryptocurrencies and it became increasingly clear that the blockchain protocol Proof-of-Work, which was common up until then, was reaching its limits. With the capacity for only a few confirmed transactions per second, proof-of-work was no longer sufficient to meet the requirements of a cryptocurrency if it is to be used in games, as a means of payment, and similar scenarios, if possible in real-time. Also, the second most important cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization, Ethereum (ETH) could not solve this problem, new approaches were required. Matic wanted to close this gap and so the Indian Jaynti Kanani decided to quit his previous job as a data analyst at Housing.com.
Together with his friends Sandeep Nailwal and Anurag Arjun, Jaynti Kanani designed the concept for Matic in a white paper and went public with it in spring 2018. The approach: Matic should first be build as a sidechain for ETH and ERC-20 tokens and ensure speed with proof-of-stake as a protocol. Such ideas were no longer entirely new in 2018; Bitcoin, for example, was already busy working on the Lightning network. But the concentration on Ethereum and related altcoins created a certain public interest in Matic.
Behind the scenes, the project must have caught Binance's interest. The crypto exchange with a large customer base decided to include Matic in its program for IEOs (Initial Exchange Offering) for new cryptocurrencies. At the beginning of April 2019, BINANCE offered the general public its launchpad for IEOs Matic, 5 million US dollars should be raised in this first public sale. This succeeded effortlessly and investors were able to look forward to significant price gains after the listing of Matic on Binance.
At the same time, Matic has since found itself in the harsh reality in which cryptocurrencies compete for investors, user acceptance, and public attention. Under the motto "Secure, Scalable and Immediate Transactions", Matic was in the bottom quarter of the 100 most important cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.
With cooperation partners such as Decentraland from the gaming industry and Ripio Credit Network from the DeFi industry, Matic saw itself well-positioned for practical applications. Behind Matic is the company Matic Network (BVI) Ltd., which is to be transferred to a foundation. Through the pre-sales and IEO at Binance, almost 23 percent of all Matic came into circulation, further public sales are not planned. The number of available Matic is still growing through stake rewards and sales from the foundation account. The latter sales are intended to finance Matic's technological advancement, public relations, and legal affairs.
Technology behind Matic
Matic is technologically based on the proof-of-stake protocol and basically two blockchains. All transactions are documented in Matic on the actual blockchain called the mainchain. The sidechain is used to accelerate processes, for example for Dapps, and to interact with third-party blockchains, previously limited to Ethereum. The mainnet is based on Tendermint. The sidechain, also called Layer 2, uses plasma. This technologically complex solution enables Matic to confirm up to 10,000 transactions per second and to ensure that a single transaction is usually confirmed within one second. From our own point of view, this makes Matic the perfect network for games, for example, where the flow of the game must not be disturbed by annoying delays.
In the Matic network, a two-thirds majority is required to validate a transaction. The so-called stakers are entitled to vote. They also vote on who will work as the block producer. The voting process is continuous and is intended to reward those who actively participate in the network, i.e. who make computing capacity available.
The principle of two blockchains is expandable and Matic sees future tasks here. So far, one has been fixated on Ethereum, but the link to Bitcoin, for example, is also being sought in the medium term.
Closing Thoughts
Will Matic succeed in leaping out of the niche?
Matic brought profits to early investors and a community is growing around the project that is enthusiastic about the technology. With this, Matic has gained a certain amount of recognition. The test for Matic is - as is the case for many other, smaller cryptocurrencies - in proving the necessity.
Will Matic succeed in convincing Dapp developers and offering exclusive applications? Can Matic recruit users from administration or industry? Because only with a growing user base will Matic grow. I believe that we will see Matic grow. Matic is already being used so the use case part is out of the question, the gas fees are way cheaper than anything else (even compared to BSC) the only problems I see right now is making it more user-friendly to bridge the networks in a non-convoluted way but this shall get easier with time I think. Overall I am looking forward to their growth and the projects that we will see coming to Polygon.
Thanks for reading, cheers!
