Polygon

Established in 2017, Polygon (also known as Matic Network) is a protocol and a framework for building and connecting Ethereum-compatible blockchain networks. The company was founded by Jaynti Kanani, Sandeep Nailwal, Anurag Arjun, and Mihailo Bjelic. The India-based platform is an open-source project built by a worldwide decentralized team of contributors. The framework combines Ethereum and sovereign blockchains into a multi-chain system. This multi-chain system is akin to other ones like Polkadot, Cosmos, Avalanche etc., alongside Ethereum’s ecosystem.

Polygon's core component is Polygon SDK, a modular framework that supports the development of multiple types of applications. Polygon is a platform that enables layer 2 (L2) Ethereum scaling and blockchain-based infrastructure development. Its suite of products offers developers access to all major scaling and infrastructure solutions, including L2 solutions such as ZK-rollups and optimistic rollups (ORs), sidechains, hybrid solutions, standalone and enterprise chains, data availability solutions, and more. The statistics of Polygon's solutions are the following:

• Adopted in over 7000 hosted applications
• Total transactions processed amount to over 1 billion
• 2.67 million monthly active users (as of February 2022)
• Approximately 130 million unique user addresses
• The total amount of assets secured amounts to 5 billion USD

Polygon networks offers a variety of features:

• ETH compatibility—Established tech stack, tools, languages, standards, and enterprise adoption

• Scalability—Dedicated blockchains, scalable consensus algorithms, and custom Wasm execution environments

• Security—Modular security as a service (SECaaS) facilitated either by Ethereum or by professional validators

• Sovereignty—Dedicated throughput and resources, fully customizable tech stack, and sovereign governance

• Interoperability—Native support for arbitrary message passing (such as tokens or contract calls) and bridges to external systems

• User experience—Comparable to Web2, zero-gas price transactions, and instant (deterministic) transaction finality

• Developer experience—Equivalent to Ethereum, no protocol level knowledge, token deposits, fees or permissions required

• Modularity—Customizability, extensibility, upgradeability, and community collaboration

MATIC tokens are released on a monthly basis. As of March, 2022 MATIC had a circulating supply of 4,877,830,774 MATIC tokens and a maximum supply of 10,000,000,000 MATIC tokens. At its initial private sale in 2017, 3.8 percent of MATIC’s max supply was issued. In the company's April 2019 launchpad sale, an additional 19 percent of the total supply had been sold. With the price at $0.00263 per token, $5 million was generated. Polygon's original release schedule planned to release all tokens by December 2022. The remaining MATIC tokens are distributed as follows:

• Team tokens: 16 percent of the total supply.
• Advisors tokens: 4 percent of the total supply.
• Network Operations tokens: 12 percent of the total supply.
• Foundation tokens: 21.86 percent of the total supply.
• Ecosystem tokens: 23.33 percent of the total supply.

Advantages of Polygon include the following:

• Ability to process transactions quickly: By using a consensus mechanism that completes the transaction confirmation process in a single block, Polygon can maintain fast transaction processing speeds. Polygon's average block processing time is 2.1 seconds.
• Transaction fees are consistently low: Polygon keeps its usage fees low, with a typical transaction fee of around $0.01.

Polygon's disadvantages are the following:

• Not an autonomous blockchain: Polygon is a Layer 2 solution that works atop the Ethereum platform. If the Ethereum platform experiences serious disruptions or ceases to exist, then Polygon would likely lose its value.
• Limited use cases for MATIC: The MATIC token is designed to govern and secure the Polygon platform and pay transaction fees. Unlike some digital currencies, MATIC is not generally used for everyday purchases.