A project, originally launched in 2017, which aims to securely connect blockchains as a sort of decentralised internet.
Mission
Formerly known as Matic Network, the sidechain solution rebranded to Polygon in February 2021. As a scaling framework for building Ethereum-compatible blockchains, it seeks to address the limitations of Ethereum, such as lack of community governance, speed and high gas fees.
This multi-chain ‘internet of blockchains’ is backed by Binance and Coinbase, and has the goal of stimulating the mass adoption of cryptocurrencies.
Use-cases
While Matic used a technology known as Plasma to process transactions and smart contracts before finalising them on the Ethereum main chain, the Polygon platform is designed to take care of the entire process, introducing an execution layer for smart contracts known as Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).
Polygon claims to facilitate 65,000 transactions per second on a single side chain – secured by proof-of-stake – with a block confirmation time of less than two seconds. It incorporates more than one scaling solution to keep transaction fees to a minimum and minimise barriers to entry.
New use-cases include interoperable decentralised applications (dApps).
Founders
Matic was co-founded by blockchain developers Jaynti Kanani and Sandeep Nailwal – the former of whom acts as CEO – along with business consultant Anurag Arjun.
They were originally big contributors to Ethereum, with former data scientist Kanani integral to the implementation of Web3, Plasma and the WalletConnect protocol.
Nailwal is a former CEO and CTO, of Scopeweaver and Welspun Group respectively, while Arjun has worked as a product manager at several technology companies.
Economics
MATIC, an ERC-20 token running on Ethereum, secures the network and ensures its governance by allowing users to vote on Polygon Improvement Proposals (PIPs). Transaction ‘gas’ fees on Polygon sidechains are also paid in MATIC.
The tokens are released on a monthly basis, with a maximum supply of 10 billion planned. 3.8% were issued at the start of the project, with another 19% released at launch in 2019. The rest are made up of 16% (of the total supply) for the team, 4% for advisors, 12% for network operations, around 22% foundation tokens and approximately 23% for the ecosystem.