Launching Support for Polygon

4 min readOct 20, 2022

California, USA — BitGo is pleased to announce that we now offer Polygon’s native MATIC coin in hot wallets and Qualified Custody. In addition to secure custody, MATIC holders now have the ability to stake their ERC-20 MATIC tokens through BitGo and earn rewards.

What is Polygon?

Polygon is a scaling solution for Ethereum that offers lower fees and faster transactions than the main chain. Polygon is fully EVM-compatible and has operated according to a Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism since its mainnet went live in May 2020 — more than two years before Ethereum’s transition to PoS. Validators stake MATIC — the network’s native token — and receive rewards paid out in the same currency.

While Ethereum processes about 30 transactions per second (TPS), Polygon is capable of up to 7,000 TPS. Polygon’s speed and low fees — approximately $0.01 per transaction — have seen it gain widespread adoption. It is currently the fifth largest chain by total value locked (TVL), a DeFi-specific metric which counts the value of all tokens secured in DeFi applications.

Polygon was the chain of choice for Starbucks’ recently-announced Web3 experience, named Starbucks Odyssey. The network has committed to carbon neutrality by the end of 2022, making it an attractive choice for investors and organizations concerned with the environmental impact of blockchain technology. Stripe Connect — a payment platform for individuals, freelancers, and small businesses in 120 countries — is likewise built using USDC on Polygon.

Furthermore, nearly 17,000 delegators are participating in Polygon, with over $500 million worth of rewards distributed so far.

In addition to Polygon mainnet, the Polygon team is working on four different implementations of zero-knowledge proof technology: Polygon zkEVM, Polygon Nightfall, Polygon Miden, and Polygon Zero. Polygon Nightfall, which is currently in beta release, combines both optimistic and zero-knowledge rollups to offer even greater scalability without compromising on security.

Polygon Studios is a subsidiary of Polygon that focuses on making the network the home of all NFT, gaming, and Metaverse projects. In February 2022, Ryan Wyatt, former head of gaming at YouTube, joined Polygon Studios as CEO.

“Part of our goal here at BitGo is to help institutions and platforms access the power of Web3, said Chen Fang, COO at BitGo. ‘By launching MATIC — both the Polygon sidechain and the ERC-20 — we’re providing our 1,500+ clients with a way to do exactly that through the safety of our qualified custody, hot wallets, and staking.”

“Polygon is extremely pleased that MATIC is now supported by BitGo, with custody options and staking made available to its institutional client base. Staking is extremely popular already amongst MATIC holders and we have no doubt that support from a leading custody provider like BitGo will only add to this,” said Sandeep Nailwal, Co-founder of Polygon Technology.

Staking Your MATIC

MATIC staking takes place on the Ethereum chain using the MATIC ERC-20 tokens.

In order to stake MATIC, go to your ETH BitGo wallet and deposit ERC20 MATIC. Once you have deposited your funds, simply click “Stake” and denote how much MATIC to stake and confirm.

Protecting Your MATIC

To protect these coins, we’re using a security standard called Threshold Signature Scheme (TSS). Our TSS solution combines the best features of multi-signature wallets with the best features of MPC.

BitGo’s TSS is a unique implementation that still distributes multiple key shares, yet offers more accountability than traditional MPC solutions. Moreover, unlike some MPC options, TSS is open source and has been peer-reviewed, further proving its effectiveness. TSS allows us to continue using purpose-built hardware security modules (HSMs), which are significantly more secure than other alternatives on the market.

Get Started

For existing BitGo clients, head to your wallet dashboard and create a new MATIC wallet. For new BitGo clients, sign up here.

About BitGo

BitGo is the leader in custody and security solutions. Founded in 2013, BitGo is the first digital asset company to focus exclusively on serving institutional clients. In 2018, it launched BitGo Trust Company, the first qualified custodian purpose-built for storing digital assets and established BitGo New York Trust in 2021. In 2022, BitGo launched institutional-grade DeFi, NFT and web3 services. BitGo also offers market leading trading, lending, and borrowing services and supports over 600 digital assets on its platform. BitGo provides the security and operational backbone for more than 1500 institutional clients in 50 countries, including many of the world’s top cryptocurrency exchanges and platforms. For more information, please visit www.bitgo.com

About Polygon

Polygon Technology is the leading blockchain developer, offering scalable, affordable, secure and sustainable blockchains for Web3. Its growing suite of products offers developers easy access to major scaling solutions including L2 (ZK Rollups and Optimistic Rollups), sidechains, hybrid, stand-alone and enterprise chains, and data availability. Polygon scaling solutions have seen widespread adoption with 53,000 decentralized applications hosted,1.94B+ total transactions processed, 164M+ unique user addresses, and $5B+ in assets secured. The network is home for some of the biggest Web3 projects such as Aave, Uniswap and OpenSea and well-known enterprises including Stripe and Adobe. Polygon is carbon neutral with the goal of leading the Web3 ecosystem in becoming carbon negative.

If you’re an Ethereum Developer, you’re already a Polygon developer! Leverage Polygon’s fast and secure txns for your dApp, get started here.