The Polygon platform is built on the Ethereum blockchain and was initially introduced as Matic Network in 2017. Its primary purpose is to connect and foster the growth of Ethereum-compatible projects and blockchains. Polygon originated in India, yet it continues to attract investors from all around the world to its platform. As per the reports, in 2019, Polygon completed two rounds of startup funding in 2019 raising over $450,000.
With their highly skilled development team, Polygon has firmly established itself as one of the most promising Ethereum scalability projects. The team's experience continues to be the major factor in Polygon's expansion.
As per the reports, in March, two out of the three original co-founders, Jaynti Kanani and Anurag Arjun, left the company. Following a restructuring of leadership, Marc Boiron, who was the chief legal officer, assumed the role of the new CEO. However, on Oct 4, 2023 Kanani on X announced that he will be focusing on new adventures and contributing to Polygon from the sidelines. He also mentioned that he is more confident in Polygon's bright future and passionate community.
To this Sandeep Nailwal, Polygon’s other co-founder tweeted “Let's keep pushing Polygon ahead together, inside or outside of Polygonlabs, it doesn’t matter.”
Earlier, Layer-1 blockchain solutions have long grappled with scalability issues due to the substantial energy, time, and resources required to process transactions. Polygon has experienced substantial advancements in 2023.
The Polygon ecosystem originally consisted of a Polygon proof-of-stake network. On March 27, the Polygon team launched a second network that is Polygon zkEVM and then in June 2023, it announced plans to integrate these two networks into a new ecosystem called “Polygon 2.0.”
Polygon 2.0 has detailed plans for constructing a scaling ecosystem consisting of four protocol layers: staking, interop, execution, and proving. All these layers play a role in creating an interconnected ecosystem of chains that enable fast value transfer and information sharing. These core layers all combine to make the Polygon 2.0 as the “Value Layer”.
The move to Polygon 2.0 signifies a major milestone for the Polygon network. Polygon 2.0 introduced the Zero Knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM) to address these scalability concerns, making Ethereum transactions faster, more secure, and cost-effective. As a layer-2 solution operates independently from blockchain mainnets, Polygon offers a faster and more cost-effective alternative to crowded layer-1 platforms.
As per the blog post, Polygon 2.0 vision is that every Polygon chain should be a ZK L2, but it is important to note that currently Polygon PoS in its current state is secured by its own validators and not by ZK proofs.
The aim is to upgrade Polygon PoS to enable it to leverage bleeding edge ZK technology and fit into the Polygon 2.0 vision, ideally without changing anything for users or developers. Therefore, all applications will continue working and fees will stay just as low. The only difference will be higher security for users and seamless interoperability with every other chain in the Polygon 2.0 ecosystem.
On September 14, 2023 , Polygon from the official X account tweeted stating that the wait is over. Polygon 2.0 implementation kicks off now with the release of 3 Polygon Improvement Proposals (PIPs), and a roadmap for Phase 0.
Furthermore, it specified that these upgrades include the initiation of the native token MATIC to the POL upgrade, transforming the POL token to become the native (gas) token for the protocol's proof-of-stake (PoS) system, positioning the new POL tokens to become the staking token for PoS and, ultimately, the launch of the staking layer, enabling validators to secure a myriad of chains in the Polygon 2.0 ecosystem.
However, as per the Polygon blog post, they specified that this upgrade will not change any of the contracts on Polygon PoS and the native token’s properties will remain unchanged. Also, all contracts on Polygon PoS will function as currently designed.
Sandeep Nailwal mentioned in an interview that Polygon's progress went from having 7,000 decentralized apps being developed on its network and 7-8 product lines in 2022, to 60,000-70,000 decentralized applications on its network and four major product line segments at present.
Polygon's journey from Matic Network to Polygon 2.0 represents a significant evolution in the blockchain ecosystem. But will the change in the leadership impact the project? At the press time, MATIC is trading at $0.529 and is down by 34.43% in 1 year.
Also Read: What is Cardano and how is it different from Bitcoin?
