Polygon (MATIC): Ethereum's right-hand man

Author: Bitcoin Realm; Compiler: Vernacular Blockchain

Are you curious why MATIC coin can rise rapidly and become the most popular cryptocurrency recently? What is a Polygon and how does it relate to MATIC? How do Polygons work? Let's dive in to find out more about it.

What is Polygon (MATIC)? Polygon, formerly known as Matic Network, is a scaling solution platform designed to connect and build Ethereum-compatible blockchain networks.

What problem does Polygon solve, is it a helper or a killer for Ethereum? Polygon is like adding a hard drive to Ethereum, providing a scalability solution to ease congestion on the Ethereum blockchain.

**You may be wondering why Ethereum is congested and needs to scale. ** With the rapid development of the cryptocurrency industry and the continuous emergence of various new projects, the number of users in the DeFi field has repeatedly hit new highs. At present, about 70% of DeFi projects are running on Ethereum, and there are more than one million DeFi and Ethereum wallet users worldwide, which has brought unprecedented pressure to Ethereum.

At present, there is only one chain in Ethereum, and all projects need to run on this chain equally, which consumes a lot of resources and causes congestion. The highest TPS (transactions per second) of Ethereum is only 15 transactions per second, which is not enough to meet the growing needs of users, causing the Ethereum blockchain to become extremely congested.

For example, CryptoKitties, which was popular at the time, once accounted for 25% of the entire Ethereum transaction volume because of its high user traffic, causing Ethereum to collapse.

Transactions get stuck on the chain, so in order to get faster transactions, gas fees start to increase, because miners will definitely prioritize transactions with higher gas fees. Therefore, everyone began to increase the gas fee to increase the transaction speed, which made the gas fee of Ethereum more and more expensive.

In addition, The DAO was hacked in 2016, and hackers stole about 3.7 million ether coins (ETH). In the end, Ethereum had to use a hard fork to recover the losses, which had a huge impact at the time.

After experiencing these problems, it is not difficult to see that Ethereum currently has several major problems:

**-Low transaction throughput: **The TPS of Ethereum currently only has a maximum of 15 transactions per second, which is far from meeting user needs.

**-Poor user experience: **At present, there is only one chain in Ethereum, and all projects run on this chain, causing huge congestion and increased gas costs.

- No autonomy: All projects depend on a unified network.

To address these issues, a number of teams have begun exploring solutions, hoping to develop Ethereum-compatible blockchains that alleviate scalability issues while still being able to use Ethereum's ecosystem. This includes polygons.

Polygon aims to add value around the Ethereum blockchain, with the goal of helping Ethereum grow and strengthen its ecosystem, not replace it.

1. The development history of Polygon

In 2017, Jaynti Kanani, Sandeep Nailwal, and Anurag Arjun, three cryptocurrency enthusiasts from India, recognized the scalability problem of Ethereum and established Matic Network to help solve this problem.

Matic Network is a layer 2 scaling solution that leverages sidechains for off-chain computation for scalability, while utilizing the Plasma framework and decentralized Proof-of-Stake (PoS) validators for asset security.

The network includes:

-Plasma chain: A sub-chain based on the Layer2 expansion solution, which is responsible for processing token transactions and providing a secure and instant transaction experience.

-POS Chain: A decentralized PoS validator to ensure asset security.

On April 21, 2019, Matic Network launched on Binance Launchpad and raised $5.6 million following the launch of its token MATIC.

Due to Ethereum’s transaction congestion and high gas fees, users are desperately looking for a solution, and Matic is well-positioned to meet this need. After two and a half years of hard work, the Matic network was officially launched and quickly gained attention in mid-2020.

As the market evolved, the team recognized the limitations of scaling with Plasma chains, as it could not solve all of Ethereum's scalability issues. Existing scalability solutions on the market can only solve some of Ethereum’s problems, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. In order to continue to help Ethereum solve various problems, the team realized that all these solutions must be integrated into a framework and connected to each other to achieve cross-chain interoperability.

**Therefore, in 2021, the Matic Network was renamed to Polygon to build a common framework for all scaling solutions to be easily Ethereum-compatible, interconnected, and cross-chain interoperable. The goal is to create a polygon-like multi-chain network around Ethereum. **

Polygon's vision has shifted from "Internet of Blockchains" to "Internet of Ethereum Compatible Chains", aiming to provide scalability and aggregation solutions around the Ethereum ecosystem. Not only does this help with high transaction costs and congestion on Ethereum, but it also keeps users on the platform.

2. What are the innovations of Matic Network after changing its name to Polygon?

Matic is just a single scaling solution that cannot solve all scaling problems of Ethereum, while Polygon is a Layer2 aggregator that allows all scaling solutions to easily and seamlessly integrate with Ethereum while also supporting more functions.

Polygon is a modular and flexible framework that supports building and connecting two main types of solutions:

1) Independent chain

Independent chains rely on their own security, have their own validating nodes, and can have their own consensus models such as Proof of Stake (PoS) and Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS).

Independent chains are independent blockchains that do not use the consensus mechanism of Ethereum, so they can provide the highest level of independence and flexibility, but sacrifice some security. In use, a balance between flexibility and security is required. balance.

The architecture of these chains can be flexibly adjusted to inherit some of the security of Ethereum. The Matic PoS chain leverages this architecture, using Ethereum for validator staking and periodic checkpoint finalization.

Standalone chains are often a good fit for:

-enterprise

• Items that do not require the highest level of security

• Projects with a strong community (able to build a sufficiently decentralized and secure pool of validators)

2) Security Chain

Securechain relies on the security of Ethereum rather than building its own pool of validators.

In addition to the currently supported Plasma chains, Polygon will also support other major Layer 2 solutions such as Optimistic Rollups, zkRollups, Validium, etc., becoming a unique "Layer 2 Aggregator".

Safety chains are ideal for:

• Apps that require the highest level of security

• Startups, i.e. young projects and communities (unable to build sufficiently decentralized and secure validator pools)

-Using independent chains and secure chains, Polygon is compatible with almost all Ethereum scaling solutions, just like Ethereum's Internet, Ethereum can easily access Polygon's existing scaling solutions.

3. How does Polygon work?

For developers, the deployment of stand-alone chains and security chains is very simple, providing developers with more flexible solutions to meet the needs of different users and benefiting from Polygon's infrastructure.

Polygon's infrastructure consists of four parts:

-Ethereum layer

• security layer

-Polygon network layer

-execution layer

1) Ethereum layer

Polygon utilizes the Ethereum layer as the base layer of its architecture, consisting of a set of smart contracts on the Ethereum network. By utilizing Ethereum as its final checkpoint, Polygon inherits top-level security similar to Ethereum, but with less flexibility.

The Ethereum layer is an optional component responsible for:

• validator

• Pledge node

-Dispute Resolution

• Information transfer and settlement between Polygon and Ethereum

2) Security layer

Polygon employs a security layer to provide "authentication-as-a-service" capabilities. This layer allows Polygon validators to act as an on-chain consensus mechanism. Developers can leverage various security solutions to verify transactions, such as leveraging PoS sidechains or fraud proofs to secure transactions.

Currently, PoS sidechains are the preferred security solution. The PoS sidechain employs a group of about 100 validators to secure the blockchain (with a certain validation fee) and manage the validators. Additionally, this layer can also rely on Ethereum miners (final validators) to achieve consensus.

The security layer is a second optional architectural layer that provides greater flexibility than the Ethereum layer and significantly increases transaction throughput while solving congestion problems. But its security may be slightly lower.

Not all projects require the highest level of security. For example, game projects prioritize user experience, settlement speed is crucial to them, and are often willing to sacrifice some security.

3) Polygon network layer

The Polygon network layer is a network of independent blockchains responsible for transaction completion, block production and consensus within their respective chains.

These chains can be independent chains or security chains. The block producers of these chains group their respective transactions, and based on a security solution, the network layer publishes Merkle roots as first-level checkpoints.

4) Execution layer

Finally, there is the execution layer. The execution layer interprets and executes transactions determined by the Polygon network layer. This layer consists of two components:

**-Execution environment: **Implemented by a virtual machine similar to the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which can track the state of the blockchain.

**-Execution logic: ** Implement specific state transitions for specific Polygon blockchains. This logic is used to define the transition to the next blockchain state, where Ethereum can be viewed as an "infinite state machine" (as opposed to a finite state machine or FSM, which is a mathematical computational model that represents a finite number of states , transitions and actions).

However, of all these layers, the security layer is the key value proposition for developers because it enables the true flexibility of the Polygon framework. Developers can choose the security solution that suits their project and can switch solutions as needed. The purpose is to provide developers with a toolkit to customize their blockchain projects.