UPDATE FEBRUARY 15th 2023

Polygon Sets March Date for zkEVM Mainnet Beta to Go Live

Details about the zkEVM beta network will be released over the next few weeks. The launch is set for March 27.

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Polygon, an Ethereum scaling project, picked March 27 as the date for its zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM) beta main network to go live.

In a blog post, Polygon did not specify what the beta network will include but shared that the team will be releasing more details leading up to the March date in the coming weeks, and that security of the network will be of highest priority.

Zero-knowledge (ZK) technology is seen by many as a major improvement for blockchains and cryptography, aimed at increasing the speed of transactions and reducing their cost.

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ZkEVMs are a type of zero-knowldege (ZK) rollup, a scaling solution that processes transactions faster on a layer 2, then sends the transaction data back to the mainnet blockchain – in this case Ethereum. ZK rollups use “proofs” to show that a transaction was not spoofed with by only sharing a snippet of information about that transaction.

In October, Polygon went live with its zkEVM testnet, which deploys the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) for its ZK rollup, allowing Ethereum developers to move over their smart contracts from the main blockchain without having to reprogram them in a different language.

Since the testnet went live, over 75,000 ZK proofs have been generated and 5,000 smart contracts have been deployed, according to the blog post.

In an interview last week, co-founder of Polygon Mihailo Bjelic told CoinDesk the blockchain is also exploring ways in which it could bring ZK-technology to its main chain, the Polygon POS chain.

“Polygon zkEVM Mainnet is set to be the first fully EVM equivalent ZK rollup to reach mainnet, this represents a huge step towards scaling Ethereum and bringing Web3 to the masses,” Sandeep Nailwal, a co-founder of Polygon, said in an email to CoinDesk. “The countdown is on.”

The price of Polygon’s native MATIC token is up 56% this year.

Update October 10, 2022

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Article Originally appeared on Outlook

Just when you thought the unprecedented flow of easy money through the markets had stopped, here comes yet another startup parading its decacorn valuation.

We speak of Polygon, an Indian blockchain startup, which raised $450m in the latest funding round led by heavyweights like Sequoia, SoftBank and Tiger Global. This is in addition to a growing list of marquee investors in the platform which also includes Mark Cuban and Balaji Srinivasan.

Many have likened this to a “Flipkart moment” for India’s blockchain ecosystem. This means that Polygon is expected to do to the Indian blockchain industry what Flipkart did to the Indian e-commerce industry – take it by storm!

Today, we explain to you the business of Polygon and why it has suddenly become the talk of the crypto town.

Table of Contents

The Ether Killer/Saviour

In geometry, a polygon is a two-dimensional figure with a finite number of sides. In the world of cryptocurrency, however, Polygon is a “Layer 2” network built on the Ethereum blockchain.

Let’s break this down. Ethereum, as we all know, needs no introduction as it is the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency. In fact, if purists are to be believed, it is likely to take over Bitcoin soon (here’s why).

But like many new and emerging drifts, Etherum also faces quite a few growing pains. For years now, slow speeds and high transaction fees (aka gas fees) have plagued the network which is not only home to Ether – a token with $350bn in market cap – but also a host for several other blockchain applications (NFT, Metaverse, DeFi, Web3, DAO, DApp, supply chain projects etc.).

This is where Polygon enters. It was founded in 2019 as a “scaling solution”, which is another way of saying that it was created to improve Ethereum’s efficiency and output. It essentially works on the Ethereum blockchain to unclog the platform in a smart and cost-effective way.

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Come, Again?

Think of it as the bitly equivalent for URLs. Polygon’s Layer 2 technology (also called “rollup”) plucks out transactions from Ethereum, compresses them and posts them back on to the original chain for a fraction of time and cost. To put it in numbers, a transaction that may cost traders $50 and take 14 secs to confirm directly on Ethereum costs less than a cent and happens instantaneously on Polygon. As it so happens, Polygon is the only active Layer 2 network currently.

Sounds like a prize, when you think of it. And you’re right, it is. In fact, the rollup function isn’t the only thing Polygon does. Here are some of its other tricks/use cases…

Sidechains on Top of Sidechains

Polygon allows developers to build their own blockchains. It is sort of a secondary network that helps build tertiary networks which run as sidechains parallel to both the primary chain (Ethereum) and the secondary chain (Polygon).

The Blockchain Bridge

If you are working on a Polygon chain then you can make payments and transactions between projects which are built on Polygon as well as on Etheruem proper.

The Matic Unplugged

Matic is Polygon’s native token and it’s the underlying resource behind the Polygon ecosystem. It is used for transacting and operating on its native network and has a maximum supply of 10 billion (67% already in circulation).

Fun Fact: The “Layer 2” functionality that Polygon is associated with is something of a misnomer because the function works on four layers – an Ethereum layer, a security layer, a Polygon network layer and an execution layer.

One thing that must be clear by now is that Polygon’s success depends on Ethereum on a fundamental level. Polygon is to Ethereum what Lightning Network is to Bitcoin. Both of them are protocols that sit on top of the primary blockchain and help in scaling their processes without replacing them.

So, the idea that Polygon is an “Ethereum Killer” is far from accurate. It is more likely an “Ethereum Saviour” because it helps cement its deficiencies. You’re Halfway There

Having said that, Ethereum has been on a path of reformation for a long time now. The fabled Ethereum 2.0, which is expected to fill up some of the existing shortcomings of the chain (especially the Proof-of-Stake or PoS consensus mechanism), has been in the offing for a while now. It is expected to be a slow but effective transition.

So, the question is, once Ethereum 2.0 takes effect as intended, will sidechains like Polygon be redundant?

And if so, what happens to all the investing swirl and the money that has been rushing into Polygon lately? Not another pump-and-dump gimmick, surely?!

The Internet of Blockchains

That’s what Polygon now calls itself. At the time of its creation, the idea was to create a multi-chain ecosystem of Ethereum-compatible blockchains. In a world that’s growing increasingly unsettled with the congestion and rising costs in the Ethereum network, Polygon’s astonishingly low fees and quick transaction times are gaining massive traction.

And its social media dominance is off the charts too (636% gain in just three months in 2021). Naturally, investors have been taking a more extensive interest in the company than ever before. The company has also been in news due to its engagement with various high-profile projects, be it the M-Setu collaboration with Infosys or integration with BigQuery, a Google Cloud dataset.

And then there is the resounding growth story of the founders – four non-IITians whose rise to become the first crypto billionaires of the country has charmed the non-elite flanks left and right.

This has contributed handsomely to rising VC interest in Polygon and the Indian crypto industry at large. The latest funding, therefore, is expected to be an inflection point for homegrown blockchain startups. Perhaps Polygon’s outperformance in the market is just the fillip the Indian crypto industry needs to rake in the big bucks. Re

Sounds charming, doesn’t it? A little too charming, maybe even?!

The Fault in our Sidechain

Despite Polygon’s strengths and the building enthusiasm about its utility, its price and valuation are hardly justified. This isn’t our assessment, it’s Nasdaq’s. Much like other altcoins, Matic (Polygon’s token) has defied the logic of investing which means one must be aware of its speculative surges.

Plus, the fact that Polygon has reached a $10bn valuation with no revenue to show is perplexing, to say the least. Sure, its features complement its valuation by adding paradigms like scalability, higher throughput, low gas fees, user-friendly operation, security, interoperability etc. to its resume. Its one-stop-all DeFi feature separates it from hundreds of other altcoins and blockchains out there by showing that application is a part of its core product strategy.

Note: To be fair, some of these features are contentious too, as seen in the case of Sunflower Farming where gas fees on Polygon were pushed as high as 70%.

So, how much of a contender is Polygon to be the next big crypto phenomenon with so many contentions looming? Will it succeed? Or, will it follow along the lines of its alt peers which ultimately flatline after initial meteoric surges?

Only time will tell, as will Sequoia, SoftBank and Tiger Global, as they come to collect what they have invested.

What Is Polygon?

Aricle orginally plublished at Coin Market Cap.

CoinMarketCap takes a deep dive into Polygon (MATIC) and how it works with Ethereum.

Ethereum is great — it’s the most popular hub for DeFi development activity and by far the most secure smart-contract capable blockchain in terms of miner and node activity. But it has a couple of serious limitations… it doesn’t play well with other blockchains and it suffers from serious congestions issues as a result of staggering user demand.

But Polygon, a framework for building Ethereum interoperable blockchains, might just have the solution.

What Is Polygon (MATIC)?

Polygon is an answer to some of the major challenges that face Ethereum today — such as high fees, poor user experience, and low transaction throughput.

The platform aims to create “Ethereum’s internet of blockchains” — that is, the multi-chain ecosystem of Ethereum-compatible blockchains. It looks to achieve this by providing a simple-to-use framework that allows developers to each launch their own custom Ethereum-compatible blockchain in a single click.

Polygon envisions a world in which distinct blockchains are able to freely and easily exchange value and information — doing away with the technological and ideological divides that separate most blockchains of today.

The project was originally known as Matic Network, but was later rebranded to Polygon as the scope of the project expanded. While Matic was a simple layer-2 scaling solution for Ethereum, Polygon is the infrastructure for a network of massively scaling, collaborative blockchains that retain their self-sovereignty.

Who is building Polygon?

It is currently being developed by a multi-disciplinary team led by the four co-founders — Jaynti Kanani, Sandeep Nailwal, Anurag Arjun, and Mihailo Bjelic. Kanani is Polygon’s CEO and is an experienced developer that has a penchant for scaling mechanisms, whereas the rest of the team brings a wealth of experience building, managing and growing tech firms.

How Does Polygon Work?

Polygon provides a wide variety of modules developers can use to easily deploy and configure their own custom blockchain. These include consensus and governance modules, as well as a variety of execution environments and virtual machine implementations.Blockchains launched in this way are configured to benefit from the Matic proof-of-stake (PoS) sidechain, which uses a network of validators to dramatically speed up transactions and cut fees down to a minimum — while finalizing everything on the Ethereum mainchain.

Polygon supports two types of chains: stand-alone chains and secured chains. Briefly, stand-alone chains are self-sovereign blockchains that are directly compatible with Ethereum, whereas secured chains simply bootstrap their security by leveraging a network of professional validators.

At first, all Polygon ecosystem stand-alone chains will be Matic PoS chains, but other side chains and enterprise chains will be supported with a later update.

The platform is designed to support a wide variety of different blockchain scaling mechanisms, including Matic Plasma, zk Rollups, Optimistic Rollups, and Validum Chains — all of which are designed to multiply the transaction throughput of associated blockchains without compromising on security or user experience.

As of writing, Polygon only supports the Matic Plasma scaling solution (an example of more viable plasma). This essentially works by offloading transactions from the Ethereum main chain onto Polygon’s Matic PoS chain, before finalizing everything on the mainchain. In the coming months and years, Polygon will add support for various alternate scaling solutions to provide developers with the freedom to choose the one that best fits their needs.Despite the rebrand, the native utility token of the Polygon network is still known as MATIC. This is largely used for paying gas fees and participating in governance, and can also be used throughout the rapidly expanding Polygon DeFi ecosystem.

Is Polygon (MATIC) a Good Investment?

Polygon dramatically expands on the vision and scope of the original Matic Network project by providing developers with a suite of tools they can use to create ultra-scaling and high-performance blockchains and decentralized applications (DApps).

It is unique in the market, in that it’s the only scalability solution that supports the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and enables connected chains to retain self-sovereign security, while also ensuring interoperability between both one another and the Ethereum mainchain.

Unlike some other platforms, chains in the Polygon ecosystem system are not forced to leverage its security as a service layer, but can still pass messages between one another thanks to arbitrary message passing capabilities. This ensures developers can build truly interoperable decentralized applications that can leverage the unique properties of multiple chains at scale.

Since building on Polygon is very similar to building on Ethereum, the platform is immediately accessible to the biggest blockchain development community in the world — who are now able to build highly scalable applications that can fully benefit from Ethereum’s network effects without giving anything up.

As we previously touched on, Polygon is also unusual in that it features support for a variety of different scaling mechanisms, which projects can implement at their discretion. This makes it well-positioned should any single scaling solution become dominant in future, or fail to deliver on its purpose.

What Is the Ethereum Scaling Problem?

If you’ve used the Ethereum network during peak times in recent months, then you may have noticed that the transaction fees can range from somewhat tolerable, to almost unbearable.In April 2021, these fees ranged from an average of $9 to over $30 per transaction — and at times far exceeded these figures. Moreover, the cost of smart contract transactions has reached staggering heights as of late, with the average Uniswap, Curve and Balancer transactions now coming in at well over $100 a pop.

There’s a couple of main reasons behind this. The first is the limited number of transactions that Ethereum network can process simultaneously — this is known as its transaction throughput. According to current estimations, the Ethereum network can only handle around 15 transactions per second (tps) at peak load — but demand for resources typically far outstrips this transaction rate.The second is that Ethereum needs to achieve global consensus before transactions are finalized. This can take quite some time due to propagation delays on its proof-of-work (PoW) network.

As a result, users have two options. They can either increase the amount of gas they pay (and hence their transaction fee) to ensure their transactions are prioritized by miners and get confirmed quickly, or they can set a low fee and wait until the network is less congestion — running the risk of it potentially running out of gas or taking a long time to finalize.

Scaling solutions tend to work by boosting the number of transactions that can fit into each block by handling some of the transaction logic off the Ethereum mainchain to reduce the size of each transaction, or by bundling a bunch of transfers into a single optimized transaction.

GameFi News: Tilting Point partners with Polygon Studios and LootRush raises $12M

Catch up on the latest funding and partnership news about GameFi and Web3 gaming. This week, Cointelegraph covers LootRush, Axie Infinity and Polygon Studios.2302Total views26Total sharesListen to article6:09

NEWS

SpongeBob and Warhammer mobile game scores Polygon partnership

Free-to-play mobile games publisher Tilting Point has entered a multi-year partnership with Polygon Studios to launch 10 Web3 games over the next two years. Polygon Studios and Tilting Point plan to help native Web3 game developers scale their games alongside free-to-play developer partners, as well as studios that want to bridge from Web2 to Web3 gaming.

The first three titles in the works are interstellar strategy game Astrokings from Korean developer AN games, which Tilting Point acquired earlier this year, virtual slot game The Walking Dead: Casino Slots, based on the AMC series, and Chess Universe, by Tilting Point’s partner developer Kings of Games.

Polygon Studios CEO Ryan Wyatt shared the company’s excitement about “championing user ownership and immersive gameplay.” Founded in 2012, Tilting Point’s most popular free-to-play games include Warhammer: Chaos & Conquest, Narcos: Cartel Wars and SpongeBob: Krusty Cook-Off.

T.E.A.M DAO raises $5 million Series A round

The Tokenized Esports Asset Management decentralized autonomous organization, or T.E.A.M. DAO, describes itself as the metaverse’s first Guild 3.0. The fantasy esports nonfungible token (NFT) league recently announced a $5 million Series A funding round co-led by Krust Universe and Animoca Brands. Other investors included Great South Gate, Shima Capital, Anti Fund, Algorand, GSR, NGC Ventures, Libra Ventures, Nexo Capital, EX Capital, CoinHako and Octava.

Krust Universe is an investment arm of South Korean tech giant Kakao. Animoca Brands also recently acquired two major video games publishers: Eden Games and Darewise Entertainment.

According to T.E.A.M, the new funding will be used to further develop its technology infrastructure, expand the team and grow its player base. Its designated Supreme Leader stated that the company is leading a gaming-culture defining ecosystem for “noobs, amateurs and midtier gamers.” He added that the upcoming TEAM token public sale will “[catapult] crypto adoption into everyone’s daily life.

Axie Infinity remains game with the highest market cap

According to the latest report by Crypto Head that assessed the top 50 play-to-earn (P2E) games on ChainPlay, Axie Infinity has a fully diluted market cap of $15.81 million. Cross Link came in a close second at $13 million and a third-placed Decentraland at $4.63 million. The average market cap value of all the crypto games studied is $1.25 million.

As for most Google-searched games in the past six months, Axie Infinity also takes the crown with over 29 million searches around the world. The second and third highest searched games, Bomb Crypto and Splinterlands, respectively, both had fewer than five million global searches.

Crypto Head also looked at crypto Twitter popularity and games with the most expensive tokens. Axie Infinity also garnered a place on those lists.

LootRush wants to take NFT gaming mainstream

LootRush, an NFT marketplace for crypto gamers, closed on Thursday a seed round of $12 million led by crypto firm Paradigm, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz. Other backers included Y Combinator, Brex founders and several angel investors, including the founders of Axie Infinity, Plaid, Wildlife Studios, Dapper Labs and The Chainsmokers.

According to the company,LootRush aims to become like Steam as a distributor of PC games, but for blockchain and NFT-based video games. It wants to eliminate barriers to entry for gamers to play Web3 games and is known for offering cost-effective NFTs. A blog post stated that “We will enable gamers to own NFTs and we help NFT owners find great players. Gamefi-news-tilting-point-partners-with-polygon-studios-and-lootrush-raises-12million.

Other GameFi News

STEPN is a Solana-based NFT mobile application that leverages GameFi elements such as move-to-earn to enable NFT sneaker holders to earn tokens as they walk. Made for fitness enthusiasts and those who want to get their daily steps in, this project is leading the move-to-earn movement and challenging users to cash in Green Satoshi Token (GST).

Japanese video game publisher Square Enix intends to divest its popular Tomb Raider franchise for $300 million and invest the proceeds into blockchain, artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing technologies. Cointelegraph previously revealed that Square Enix CEO Yosuke Matsuda’s plans to integrate NFTs into play-to-earn blockchain games.

What is Polygon? Why is it the New Buzz in the Crypto World? (Polygon News)