Crypto 101
July 7, 2022

Coin Profile: Polygon (MATIC)

Polygon has played a major role in the development of scalability solutions for the Ethereum Network. Launched originally as Matic Network in 2017 by four Ethereum developers, Polygon (MATIC) continues to be a primary Layer-2 player in the quest to scale Ethereum and solve its latency challenges, high transaction costs, and user experience issues.

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What is Polygon (MATIC)?

MATIC is the native token of Polygon, a Layer-2 Ethereum scaling platform focused on building and connecting multiple scaling solutions. Developers can use Polygon to build scalable decentralized applications (dApps) with low transaction costs and without having to sacrifice network security.

With scalable and instantaneous transactions a priority, each Polygon sidechain can theoretically achieve 2^16 transactions per block. The protocol has achieved up to 7,000 TPS on a single sidechain on an internal testnet.

Coin_Profile_MATIC_Polygon_Price_History-2
Polygon (MATIC) Price Evolution

The Polygon SDK provides a modular framework that supports infrastructure development focused on helping Ethereum scale. Examples of infrastructure supported by Polygon include:

  • Plasma is a framework of sidechains that communicate as little as possible with the main chain (Ethereum). Each Plasma “child” chain is a customizable smart contract.
  • Optimistic Rollups run parallel to the Ethereum chain and essentially “roll up” batches of transactions to the mainnet without heavy computation, saving on gas fees.
  • zkRollups (zero knowledge Rollups) increase blockchain efficiency and scalability because each transaction only contains minimal data, requiring less data storage.
  • Validium sidechains are a zero knowledge proof scaling solution using off-chain data availability and designed to increase throughput by processing transactions off the Ethereum main chain.

Developers may access Polygon’s open source, Ethereum-compatible tools in order to:

  • Deploy preset blockchain networks
  • Build custom networks
  • Enable interoperability with Ethereum and other blockchains networks
  • Utilize Polygon’s modular “security as a service” infrastructure

Project status:

  • Launched as Matic Network in 2017
  • Rebranded to Polygon in 2021

Team:
The highly transparent Polygon team has 10 co-founders ranging across the Polygon ecosystem. Most of them have engineering backgrounds and four of them (the original Matic Network founders) are former Ethereum developers. They also have an impressive lineup of advisors, including Mark Cuban.

Co-Founder and CEO, Jaunti Kanani, has a Bachelors of Engineering and was previously Senior Software Engineer for Persistent Systems and Data Scientist for Housing.com.

Making headlines:

  • Polygon announced its move to Web3 smartphone functionality with a collaboration with Nothing.
  • MATIC kicked off its first sustainability milestone as it moves toward carbon neutrality.
  • Reddit launched an NFT marketplace using Polygon’s Ethereum scaling solution.
  • Polygon raised $450 million with Sequoia as lead investor.

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Does it have staying power?

Competitiveness

  • Polygon has carved out its brand among leading blockchain platforms, being widely covered by both crypto and mainstream media.
  • As far as TVL, Polygon is competitive with major Layer-1 platforms. It currently has $4.63 billion in value locked and is in 4th place behind Ethereum ($53.1B), BSC ($7.41B), and Tron ($5.29), according to DefiLlama.

Hiring?
Over 90 open positions are listed on the Polygon website.

Social traction
Polygon has a following across social media platforms of over $1.8 million. Their main Twitter account appears to have a high level of organic engagement. They also maintain a busy schedule of global conferences and hackathons.

Partnerships
Polygon is backed by a number of crypto’s biggest investors:

  • Mark Cuban Companies
  • Binance Labs
  • Coinbase Ventures
  • AU21 Capital
  • Alameda Research

Ever been hacked?
801,601 MATIC tokens (then worth $1.6 million) were lost to a hacker in early December 2021. A group of whitehat hackers found a vulnerability in the Polygon PoS genesis contract on December 3, 2021 and reported it to Immunefi, Polygon’s bug bounty provider. A fix was introduced, validators and node communities were notified, and core developers were able to upgrade 80% of the network within 24 hours without halting the network.

$MATIC Tokenomics

MATIC is Polygon’s native token and has carved out a long-term spot in the top 50 coins by market cap, often gracing the top 20 list. The token is a governance token, a staking token for validators who help run and secure the network, and also as the ecosystem’s currency, used in transactions as gas fees.

Total supply
10 billion (capped)

Token distribution
Private sale 3.8%
IEO (Binance) 19%
Team: 16%
Advisors: 4%
Operations: 12%
Foundation: 21.86%
Ecosystem: 23.33%

Vesting

  • IEO tokens were unlocked after the sale ended.
  • ½ of private sale tokens unlocked at listing, ½ vested after 6 months.
  • Team tokens were locked for 1 year with 3.2% released quarterly through 2022.

Funding

  • $457.1 million:
  • February 2022: Venture round $450 million (lead investors Sequoia)
  • May 2021: Seed round (Mark Cuban, details undisclosed)
  • November 2019: Seed round $450k (lead investor Coinbase Ventures)
  • April 2019: IEO $5.6 million

Token utility
MATIC has 3 main utilities:

  1. Transaction (gas) fees
  2. Staking to participate as network validators and earn staking rewards for validating blocks of transactions
  3. Governance voting

Decentralized?
According to a [Certik Audit](https://www.certik.com/projects/matic, Polygon has 510,233 token holders but 50% are held by 3 holders. There are currently 100 active validators and 135 million unique addresses.

Burning?
According to the Polygon burn webpage, 2,708,277 MATIC have been burned since EIP-1559 was voted in by governance and went live in January of 2022. For every transaction on the Polygon network, the base fee is locked into a burn contract (while the validator receives a priority fee). Once 25,000 or more MATIC have accumulated in the burn contract, users are able to initiate the burn process.

Code Audit
Both CertiK and Nomic Labs have conducted security audits on MATIC smart contracts.

Team Transparency
The team is highly transparant. The Polygon website also includes a transparency page with its smart contracts and private and public sale wallets.

Bug bounty
Polygon's bounty program led to a quick fix, minimal losses, and no downed network time during their one hack in 2021.

Next up for Polygon

Roadmap information past Q2 2022 was not publicly available. But the team hosts a podcast with frequent updates:

Continue your DYOR…

Website
Smart Contracts
$MATIC on Coingecko
Documentation
Github
Twitter
Discord

What is Polygon (MATIC)?

MATIC is the native token of Polygon, a Layer-2 Ethereum scaling platform focused on building and connecting multiple scaling solutions. Developers can use Polygon to build scalable decentralized applications (dApps) with low transaction costs and without having to sacrifice network security.

With scalable and instantaneous transactions a priority, each Polygon sidechain can theoretically achieve 2^16 transactions per block. The protocol has achieved up to 7,000 TPS on a single sidechain on an internal testnet.

Coin_Profile_MATIC_Polygon_Price_History-2
Polygon (MATIC) Price Evolution

The Polygon SDK provides a modular framework that supports infrastructure development focused on helping Ethereum scale. Examples of infrastructure supported by Polygon include:

  • Plasma is a framework of sidechains that communicate as little as possible with the main chain (Ethereum). Each Plasma “child” chain is a customizable smart contract.
  • Optimistic Rollups run parallel to the Ethereum chain and essentially “roll up” batches of transactions to the mainnet without heavy computation, saving on gas fees.
  • zkRollups (zero knowledge Rollups) increase blockchain efficiency and scalability because each transaction only contains minimal data, requiring less data storage.
  • Validium sidechains are a zero knowledge proof scaling solution using off-chain data availability and designed to increase throughput by processing transactions off the Ethereum main chain.

Developers may access Polygon’s open source, Ethereum-compatible tools in order to:

  • Deploy preset blockchain networks
  • Build custom networks
  • Enable interoperability with Ethereum and other blockchains networks
  • Utilize Polygon’s modular “security as a service” infrastructure

Project status:

  • Launched as Matic Network in 2017
  • Rebranded to Polygon in 2021

Team:
The highly transparent Polygon team has 10 co-founders ranging across the Polygon ecosystem. Most of them have engineering backgrounds and four of them (the original Matic Network founders) are former Ethereum developers. They also have an impressive lineup of advisors, including Mark Cuban.

Co-Founder and CEO, Jaunti Kanani, has a Bachelors of Engineering and was previously Senior Software Engineer for Persistent Systems and Data Scientist for Housing.com.

Making headlines:

  • Polygon announced its move to Web3 smartphone functionality with a collaboration with Nothing.
  • MATIC kicked off its first sustainability milestone as it moves toward carbon neutrality.
  • Reddit launched an NFT marketplace using Polygon’s Ethereum scaling solution.
  • Polygon raised $450 million with Sequoia as lead investor.

Sign up to the Crypto Weekly newsletter to get our weekly Coin Profile!

Does it have staying power?

Competitiveness

  • Polygon has carved out its brand among leading blockchain platforms, being widely covered by both crypto and mainstream media.
  • As far as TVL, Polygon is competitive with major Layer-1 platforms. It currently has $4.63 billion in value locked and is in 4th place behind Ethereum ($53.1B), BSC ($7.41B), and Tron ($5.29), according to DefiLlama.

Hiring?
Over 90 open positions are listed on the Polygon website.

Social traction
Polygon has a following across social media platforms of over $1.8 million. Their main Twitter account appears to have a high level of organic engagement. They also maintain a busy schedule of global conferences and hackathons.

Partnerships
Polygon is backed by a number of crypto’s biggest investors:

  • Mark Cuban Companies
  • Binance Labs
  • Coinbase Ventures
  • AU21 Capital
  • Alameda Research

Ever been hacked?
801,601 MATIC tokens (then worth $1.6 million) were lost to a hacker in early December 2021. A group of whitehat hackers found a vulnerability in the Polygon PoS genesis contract on December 3, 2021 and reported it to Immunefi, Polygon’s bug bounty provider. A fix was introduced, validators and node communities were notified, and core developers were able to upgrade 80% of the network within 24 hours without halting the network.

$MATIC Tokenomics

MATIC is Polygon’s native token and has carved out a long-term spot in the top 50 coins by market cap, often gracing the top 20 list. The token is a governance token, a staking token for validators who help run and secure the network, and also as the ecosystem’s currency, used in transactions as gas fees.

Total supply
10 billion (capped)

Token distribution
Private sale 3.8%
IEO (Binance) 19%
Team: 16%
Advisors: 4%
Operations: 12%
Foundation: 21.86%
Ecosystem: 23.33%

Vesting

  • IEO tokens were unlocked after the sale ended.
  • ½ of private sale tokens unlocked at listing, ½ vested after 6 months.
  • Team tokens were locked for 1 year with 3.2% released quarterly through 2022.

Funding

  • $457.1 million:
  • February 2022: Venture round $450 million (lead investors Sequoia)
  • May 2021: Seed round (Mark Cuban, details undisclosed)
  • November 2019: Seed round $450k (lead investor Coinbase Ventures)
  • April 2019: IEO $5.6 million

Token utility
MATIC has 3 main utilities:

  1. Transaction (gas) fees
  2. Staking to participate as network validators and earn staking rewards for validating blocks of transactions
  3. Governance voting

Decentralized?
According to a [Certik Audit](https://www.certik.com/projects/matic, Polygon has 510,233 token holders but 50% are held by 3 holders. There are currently 100 active validators and 135 million unique addresses.

Burning?
According to the Polygon burn webpage, 2,708,277 MATIC have been burned since EIP-1559 was voted in by governance and went live in January of 2022. For every transaction on the Polygon network, the base fee is locked into a burn contract (while the validator receives a priority fee). Once 25,000 or more MATIC have accumulated in the burn contract, users are able to initiate the burn process.

Code Audit
Both CertiK and Nomic Labs have conducted security audits on MATIC smart contracts.

Team Transparency
The team is highly transparant. The Polygon website also includes a transparency page with its smart contracts and private and public sale wallets.

Bug bounty
Polygon's bounty program led to a quick fix, minimal losses, and no downed network time during their one hack in 2021.

Next up for Polygon

Roadmap information past Q2 2022 was not publicly available. But the team hosts a podcast with frequent updates:

Continue your DYOR…

Website
Smart Contracts
$MATIC on Coingecko
Documentation
Github
Twitter
Discord

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Disclaimer: The content of this article is for general market education and commentary and is not intended to serve as financial, investment, or any other type of advice.

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