Polygon: paving the way for Ethereum scaling

However, once we started to build, Ethereum shortcomings became evident - high gas costs, slow transaction speeds and lack of scalability threatened to stall the web3 movement. This post will be the first one in the Scaling series - where we discuss opportunities presented by different Layer 2 solutions or gas optimised sidechains.

This time, the spotlight is on Polygon, formerly known as Matic Network.

Scaling solutions follow different approaches and Polygon is one of the players in the field: we have been recently writing about Elrond and xDAI, and we will cover rollups in the future. Today let's focus on what makes Polygon different. Let's dive in headfirst.

Polygon: The Layer 2 Aggregator

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 aggregating Secured Chains like Plasma, Optimistic Rollups, zkRollups, Validium etc and Standalone Chains like Matic POS, designed for flexibility and independence. Polygon’s Layer 2 Chains have seen widespread adoption with 90+ Dapps, ~7M txns and ~200K unique users.

Crypto and Daggers

Other than the main solution, Polygon also offers Dagger: a way to get updates (event streams) from Ethereum blockchain. Dagger is aimed mostly at developers of dApps, though with Zapier and IFTTT integrations can be used even by non-coders to set up, for instance, notifications or spreadsheets for new crypto transfers. You can find out more about Dagger over here.

Keeping up with the games?

What it boils down to, is the network effect - where will the big protocols move once it's their time. As most of the L2 solutions are still in their infancy, Polygon has a huge advantage here - they've been around for quite some time, already have a mainnet product and a growing number of followers. We see a number of gaming solutions moving their token to Polygon sidechain to improve transaction UX for the crypto-newbies.

Assets now available

We are thrilled to announce official partnership between Polygon and Ramp Network! We will continue to list more tokens on the Polygon side-chain, starting with $MATIC, $USDC and $DAI. We hope this integration will enable thousands of builders to onboard their users directly to a scalable platform.

Builders - do you want to build on Polygon? Check out the docs and schedule a call with our Partnerships Team below!