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What is Polygon (MATIC)? Everything you need to know about MATIC Coin

Ethereum is the largest blockchain, but it still faces severe scaling problems. Layer 2 is one of the solutions to this issue. Among many layer 2 projects, Polygon is one of the most notable ones. In this article, let’s find out what Polygon is and how it can solve the scaling problem of Ethereum.

nhungtran

Published Mar 14 2021

Updated Oct 26 2023

5 min read

What is Polygon?

Polygon is known as Ethereum's Internet of Blockchains. It acts as a framework for connecting Ethereum-compatible chains. Polygon solves the scalability problem of Ethereum when the cost and time for each transaction on Ethereum are incredibly high.

We may also hear about the “Internet of Blockchain” concept from other chains such as Polkadot, Cosmos, and Avalanche. But unlike these Layer-1 chains, Polygon is the side-chain of Ethereum, so Polygon fully benefits from the network effect of Ethereum.

Polygon Website: **https://polygon.technology**

How does Polygon work?

Architecture

The architecture of Polygon contains 4 layers: Ethereum layer, security layer, Polygon networks layer, and Execution layer.

Ethereum layer: Polygon can maximize the network’s security by utilizing the Ethereum layer, one of the market’s most secured blockchains. This layer plays a critical role in executing the fundamental tasks such as finality/checkpointing, staking, dispute resolving, and message relaying.

Security layer: To further strengthen the network’s security, Polygon architecture includes a security layer. This layer is responsible for managing validators and checking the validity of any Polygon chain.

Polygon networks layer: This is a group of all sovereign blockchains in the Polygon network. Each of them serves its own community and has functions in transaction collation, local consensus, and block production.

Execution layer: As the name suggests, this layer is responsible for executing all transactions agreed upon by the previous layers.

Thanks to this architecture, Polygon has some outstanding features:

Security: highest security ensured by the Ethereum network.
Scalability: thanks to scalable consensus algorithms.
Developer Experience: Polygon uses the same language as Ethereum, so developers are not required to learn a new language.

Polygon Chains

Polygon supports 2 primary chains: Secured Chains and Stand-alone Chains.

Secured Chains: Are chains that use “security as a service” instead of having their own pool of validators. These chains have high levels of security but low levels of independence and flexibility. Two secured chains that have been live are Polygon PoS and zk Rollups, Optimistic Rollups, and Validum Chains are coming soon.

Stand-alone Chains: Are sovereign EVM chains that have their own validator pool. In contrast with Secured Chains, Stand-alone chains have high levels of independence and flexibility but low levels of security.

Polygon Ecosystem

Despite being defined as a scalability solution for Ethereum, Polygon also develops its own ecosystem. When the transaction fees on Ethereum were costly, Polygon appeared as a perfect place for users to have a better experience.

Being Ethereum-compatible, Polygon was able to grow at a tremendous rate. In terms of developers, building projects on Polygon is quite effortless as Polygon uses the same language as Ethereum. In terms of users, it takes them a short time to get used to products on Polygon as most of them are pretty similar to those on Ethereum.

The Polygon Ecosystem by **Coin98 Analytics**

Similar to Ethereum but with faster speed and lower transaction fees, Polygon had recorded a dramatic increase in TVL in the first half of 2021.

However, in the second half of 2021, many new layers 1 have emerged, still solving the scalability problems and even with many innovations: Terra, Solana, Avalanche,...

Meanwhile, innovation is what Polygon lacks as Polygon is an EVM-compatible chain so it is really easy for developers to copy models from Ethereum to Polygon. Therefore, despite a huge number of projects, many of them are just copies or similar to existing projects on Ethereum.

That explains why the TVL of Polygon in the second half of the year has reduced notably and has not seen any improvement yet.

What is MATIC coin?

MATIC is the native token of Polygon, playing a critical role in powering the network.

Detailed information about MATIC coin

MATIC Key Metrics

Token Name: Polygon.
Ticker: MATIC.
Blockchain: Ethereum.
Token Standard: ERC210.
Contract: 0x7d1afa7b718fb893db30a3abc0cfc608aacfebb0
Token Type: Utility.
Total Supply: 10,000,000,000 MATIC.
Circulating Supply: 6,872,890,164 MATIC.

MATIC Token Allocation

MATIC Token Sales

MATIC Release Schedule

MATIC Token Use Cases

MATIC coin has 2 primary use cases in the Polygon ecosystem:

Pay transaction fees.
Stake to secure the network.

How to get MATIC coin

You can earn more MATIC coin by participating in different activities on Polygon: liquidity farming, staking, lending,...

How to buy MATIC coin

You can buy MATIC coin from the following exchanges:

CEXs: Binance, Gate.io, Bitfinex,...
DEXs: Quickswap, DFYN, Uniswap,...

Besides that, you can also buy MATIC on Coin98 Exchange in the “Swap” section as you can see from the end of this article.

Learn more: How to use Coin98 Exchange

How to store MATIC coin on Coin98 Wallet

Step 1: At the main screen of Coin98 Wallet, click Receive.

Step 2: Search for MATIC token.

Step 3: Copy your MATIC wallet address and send MATIC tokens to this address.

Polygon Roadmap

The most notable milestone is that it has been rebranded from Matic Network to Polygon in 2021. In addition, Polygon has been integrating with Polytools to enhance the scalability of the network.

Team, Investors, and Partners

Team

The team behind Polygon are:

Jaynti Kanani (Co-Founder).
Sandeep Nailwal (Co-Founder).
Anurag Arjun (Co-Founder).
Mihailo Bjelic (Co-Founder).

Besides that, Polygon also has a board of advisors including:

Hudson Jameson.
Ryan Sean Adams.
Anthony Sassano.
Pete Kim.
John Lilic.

Investors

Polygon has been invested by many notable names such as Coinbase Ventures, Binance Labs, Block Capital, Validation Capital, ZBS Capital, MiH Ventures,...

Partners

Since its launch, Polygon (Matic) has established relationships with many partners such as: Elrond, Chainlink, The Graph,...

Is Polygon (MATIC) a good investment?

Polygon is a developed ecosystem with a number of protocols only after the 2 largest chains: Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain. However, in terms of TVL, the TVL of Polygon is now below other layers 1 blockchain with smaller number of protocols such as Avalanche, Terra, and Solana. This shows that projects built on Polygon no longer attract many users.

Besides competition with other layers 1 blockchain, Polygon also has to compete with many other scaling projects for Ethereum. In addition, Ethereum will soon be upgraded to Ethereum 2.0 with more scalability. Therefore, besides solving the scalability problem, Polygon should also have other innovations to outperform in such a competitive market.

The positive signal from Polygon is that the network has recently acquired 2 Ethereum scaling projects: Mir and Hermez, which shows the ambition of Polygon for further expansion and to gain more market share in such a competitive market.

Similar projects

Other layers 2 scaling solutions on Ethereum: Optimism, Loopring, Celer,...