Plodding Isles partners with Polygon Studios

We’re thrilled to announce an exciting new partnership with @PolygonStudios & @0xPolygonToday!

As a leader in NFTs, NFT gaming and Metaverse applications, we’re excited to shape the future of blockchain gaming with their support.

We’d love to share some information below about the Polygon network, authored by the Polygon Team:

Polygon is the leading platform for Ethereum scaling and infrastructure development. Its growing suite of products offers developers easy access to all major scaling and infrastructure solutions: L2 solutions (ZK Rollups and Optimistic Rollups), sidechains, hybrid solutions, stand-alone and enterprise chains, data availability solutions, and more. Polygon’s scaling solutions have seen widespread adoption with 7000+ applications hosted, 1B+ total transactions processed, ~100M+ unique user addresses, and $5B+ in assets secured.

What is Polygon?
Polygon is the first well-structured, easy-to-use platform for Ethereum scaling and infrastructure development. Its core component is Polygon SDK, a modular, flexible framework that supports building and connecting two major types of solutions:

1. Secured chains (aka Layer 2 chains): Scaling solutions that rely on Ethereum for security instead of establishing their own validator pool. Polygon will support other major Layer 2 solutions such as Optimistic Rollups, zkRollups, Validium, etc, thus basically becoming a one-of-a-kind “Layer 2 aggregator”.

Secured chains are a good fit for (1) applications that require the highest level of security and (2) startups, i.e. young projects and communities (unable to establish a sufficiently decentralized and secure validator pool.

Polygon has acquired Hermez, a decentralized zero-knowledge rollup that greatly scales and reduces the cost of payments and transfers on the Ethereum network, with a focus on supporting community-driven projects through its original Proof-of-Donation mechanism. The Polygon Hermez team will focus on developing an advanced version of its zkRollup for payments, as well as delivering a zkEVM: a fully compatible zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine.

2. Stand-alone chains (aka Sidechains): Sovereign Ethereum sidechains, normally are fully in charge of their own security, i.e. with their own validator pool. Stand-alone chains offer the highest level of independence and flexibility, with the tradeoff of a normally lower level of decentralization and security.

These chains’ architecture can be adjusted so they at least partially inherit security from Ethereum. One good example of such architecture is the aforementioned Matic POS Chain which uses Ethereum for validator staking and periodical finality checkpoints.

Stand-alone chains are often a good fit for (1) enterprises, (2) projects that do not require the highest level of security, and (3) established projects with strong communities (capable of running a sufficiently decentralized and secure validator pool).

Additionally, Polygon SDK will support and offer a number of auxiliary solutions and products which will extend Polygon functionalities, improve the developer experience and introduce support for specific use cases. Examples of such solutions and products include:

• Inter-chain messaging protocols and modules;
• Data availability services;
• Shared security services;
• Adaptors for external blockchain networks;
• App-specific modules;
• Enterprise modules and products;
• Premium products and solutions.

Polygon effectively transforms Ethereum into a full-fledged multi-chain system (aka Internet of Blockchains). This multi-chain system is akin to other ones such as Polkadot, Cosmos, Avalanche, etc, but with at least three major upsides:

1. It is able to fully benefit from Ethereum’s network effects. This is because it is built as an integral part of the Ethereum ecosystem, while the aforementioned projects are competing ecosystems built from scratch.
2. It is inherently more secure. Polygon uses Ethereum, the most secure and battle-tested programmable blockchain in the world, as the economic hub and source of security. In contrast, the competing projects use recently launched and less expressive chains for this purpose.
3. It is more open and powerful, primarily in terms of the architecture types it can support. This is because (1) Polygon is built on Ethereum, so it can trivially incorporate basically any scaling or infrastructure solution from the Ethereum ecosystem, and (2) we fully adopt Ethereum’s ethos of open innovation and we designed Polygon with it as one of the main design goals.

An important and little-known fact to note here is that Ethereum is already the biggest multi-chain system in the world. Its ecosystem organically developed and grew and it currently encompasses:

• 50+ EVM networks (source);
• Hundreds of enterprise chains;
• Dozens of Layer 2 implementations.