Get to Know the Chain — Polygon
Even if there are several contenders to the ‘throne’, Ethereum continues to stay well ahead of its rivals. Despite its much-publicized scalability issues, it’s going to take a while until some of the potential Ethereum-killers will make their claim.
Still, all this talk about taking down the proverbial Goliath of a Web3 platform wouldn’t gain prominence if Ethereum didn’t have serious issues. Issues with scalability, in particular.
A Short Note about Layer 1 and Layer 2 Scaling
With the rapid expansion of DeFi, the number of transactions that take place on the Ethereum platform since 2020 has skyrocketed.
To the point where the platform struggled to keep up with all the ‘action’. Which, simply put, means catering to more users and the transactions that have to be processed. This has resulted in transaction congestion and a substantial increase in transaction fees. Unfortunately, in comparison to legacy transaction processing systems, the throughput on the Ethereum platform pales in comparison.
While it isn’t possible to let things remain as is, two broad classes of solutions labelled Layer 1 and Layer 2 scaling solutions are considered the right way to solve the Blockchain Trilemma, as phrased by Vitalik Buterin himself.
Now, while the Merge which was completed on September 15, 2022, what remains when it comes to these Ethereum upgrades is the sharding process. By definition, sharding partitions up a database horizontally into parts that, in the case of Ethereum, will be managed by layer 2 rollups to further increase scalability.
Speaking of layer 2 rollups for Ethereum, Polygon is now a major player, thanks to its zkEVM scaling solution. Let’s find out more about this platform and how it contributes to improving Ethereum’s issue with scalability.
Your First Look at the Polygon Platform
As the website states, Polygon was founded in 2017 by Jaynti Kanani, Sandeep Nailwal and Anurag Arjun which went fully operational in 2020. Based in Mumbai, India, Polygon has garnered over $450 million in funding ever since its inception, with Mark Cuban and Balaji Srinivasa being prominent backers. Formerly known as MATIC, its rebranding to Polygon took place in 2021 while also being widely acknowledged as Ethereum’s Internet of Blockchains.
Speaking of which, the Polygon network was built to deal with Ethereum’s scalability issues by processing transactions on an Ethereum-compatible blockchain while returning the batch of transactions to Ethereum once the processing is complete.
In fact, due to its adoption of the proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism, Polygon can process up to 65,000 transactions per second along with entire blocks in 2.1 seconds. This is why Polygon considers itself to be a scaling solution for Ethereum. A solid one at that too since the numbers rarely lie.
However, Polygon’s utility doesn’t just stop there. Deploying existing blockchains and building custom blockchains can be carried out apart from enabling existing blockchain networks to become compatible with Ethereum. Lastly, Polygon helps other blockchains communicate with Ethereum.
One major benefit includes a reduction in gas fees that has to be paid for Ethereum transactions as gas fees associated with Polygon are very low. In addition, the processing of transactions has rapidly increased which prevents network congestion while being competitive with legacy systems such as Visa and Mastercard.
As for the direction that Polygon intends to take, with the launch of Polygon zkEVM in July 2022, a serious effort to make Ethereum scaling a reality is underway. While this scaling solution has only made its TestNet available so far, the incredible benefits of such a solution will change things for both developers and users, thanks to higher throughput, lower gas fees and best of all, continued Ethereum compatibility.
What the Polygon (MATIC) Platform offers Validators and Developers
So, what can you do with the Polygon platform?
Much like Ethereum, you can further the cause of decentralized technology by serving as either a developer or a validator. While the first role will write smart contracts and build DApps on Polygon, the second will create blocks of transactions based on the PoS consensus protocol that Polygon has adopted.
Now, the MATIC token has been used since the platform’s inception to govern, secure and pay for transaction fees. Much like Ethereum 2.0, validators will have to stake their MATIC in order to validate network transactions.
This will prevent them from using the tokens for any other purpose. However, unlike Ether, investors are not known to transact all that much using the MATIC token. In other words, the native token is generally used on the Polygon network itself.
As for Web3 developers, there are a number of solutions at their disposal. In particular, scaling solutions such as Polygon PoS, Supernet, Avail, Zero, Miden, zkEVM and Nightfall. Polygon ID and Edge serve as a privacy solution and a framework to build an EVM-compatible network. Some of these solutions are new or in development with the exception of the Polygon PoS that is live.
What sets Polygon apart from other Layer 2 Solutions
Of course, Polygon isn’t the only Layer 2 solution. There are several others vying to provide that proverbial ‘silver bullet’ when it comes to Layer 2 scaling solutions.
So, how do each of these solutions measure up to Polygon’s offerings?
For starters, some of the other popular solutions include those offered by Arbitrum and Optimism. Here is a nifty table in a Pixel Plex article that differentiates between each of these Layer 2 Solutions:
So, what do you think of Polygon as a Layer 2 solution? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.
Also, If you are interested in a career in Web3 development, please join our Discord server below to understand what the Lumos Metaverse has to offer.
Bonus Material: A Heads-Up on the BUIDL for Web3 Hack 2022 — Polygon Hackathon Tracks
With the BUIDL for Web3 Hack 2022 finale set for the second week of November 2022, Polygon has offered a US$ 20,000 reward for budding developers to build applications using its technologies across three separate tracks: DeFi, NFT and Gaming/Metaverse.
📌 Register here 👇👇👇
As a first step, you should familiarize yourself with each of these niches in Web3, if only to understand the problems that require resolution. Yes, we’re talking about solutions — the Polygon way. Speaking of which, the RPG game Knightlands, the LFC Heroes Club NFT Collection by Liverpool F.C and the uncollateralized lending institution Clearpool are use cases that have made the Polygon platform their home.
