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2022/11/18 03:04

A Brief History of Polygon (MATIC)

The Ethereum blockchain is one of the most established crypto networks today. Its native token, Ether (ETH), is the world's second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. The blockchain is used to create crypto and decentralized applications or dApps. Through Ethereum, developers and users can write smart contracts. These agreements are written in code specific to the blockchain platform.

One limitation, though, is that it can't cope with the volume of activity on the network. It has a speed of 15 transactions per second, which is tediously slow. In contrast, some of its competitors can process 250 transactions per second. Processing on Ethereum can also be expensive because of the high gas fees. These factors hinder scalability, and it’s here that Polygon can make a difference.

How did Polygon start?
In 2017, Jaynti Kanani, a data scientist working at Housing.com, caught sight of a "weak link" in the Ethereum blockchain. At that time, the NFT project Cryptokitties was huge. Unfortunately, the overwhelming activity from the project congested the network. Processing times took so long, and the gas fees were exorbitant. These limited the volume and size of transactions. Additionally, these also led to security, efficiency, and usefulness issues.

Kanani got in touch with Sandeep Nailwal, a blockchain developer, and Anurag Arjun, a business consultant. The three joined forces and launched Matic in October 2017. The decentralized platform they designed sought to address the scalability problem of Ethereum.

Later on, its scope was expanded with more ambitious goals. At the same time, they maintained the original mission, which was scalability within the Ethereum platform. Thus, in February 2021, the platform underwent rebranding to reflect the new direction. They changed from Matic to Polygon and also decided to keep the Matic name for its native crypto token.

How does Polygon (MATIC) work?
You can think of the Polygon network as a four-layer stack of lego bricks. The first one at the bottom is the Ethereum layer. Next are the security layer, the Polygon networks layer, and the execution layer. It uses smart contracts to enable cross-chain transactions.

The connecting technology is the Polygon bridge, a two-way trustless channel (no third party involved) between Polygon (the child chain) and Ethereum (the root chain). The structure is set up so that the Polygon chains can operate independently off-chain without overworking the parent chain. This reduces time and cost.

There are two main types of Polygon bridges: the PoS Bridge and the Plasma Bridge.

#MATIC:One Of The Most Exciting Projects In Crypto

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