Exchange Matic (MATIC)

Polygon is the first well-structured and easy-to-use scaling solution for the Ethereum network. It is a Layer-2 solution, that also promotes the infrastructure development of the blockchain. The main component of Polygon is its SDK framework that allows the creation of multiple types of applications on the Ethereum network with low fees and without the need to sacrifice security. 

The Polygon network uses sidechains that run alongside the Ethereum mainchain and provide much faster speed. Thus it provides solutions for the issues Ethereum faces right now, such as low throughput, poor user experience, and high gas fees. The vision of the project is to create “Ethereum’s Internet of blockchains” — an ecosystem of multiple compatible blockchains. According to the official page of Polygon, they see the future where distinct blockchains can easily exchange value and information. 

To achieve this the project allows developers to deploy the blockchains in a single click. The Polygon provides a wide range of modules that can be used to easily deploy and configure their own custom blockchain. It includes consensus and governance modules and also numerous execution environments. 

All the networks launched with those tools can benefit from the Matic Proof-of-Stake sidechain, which uses a network of validators to speed up the transaction speed and bring the fees to the minimum. The transactions get finalized on the Ethereum blockchain. 

Polygon is a Proof-of-Stake network. The users who don’t want to be validators are able to delegate their tokens to the validators and still get rewards. To achieve a higher degree of decentralization, Polygon also uses block producers on the block producers layer. They use checkpoints and fraud-proof mechanisms to give finality to the main chain. 

The project uses all the scaling solutions created for PoS, including optimistic roll-ups, ZK rollup chains, and stand-alone chains. Polygon combines the Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism and Plasma framework, proposed by the co-founder of Ethereum Vitalik Buterin. Thanks to all the tools and technologies, Polygon reaches the throughput of 65000 transactions per second on one sidechain. 

Due to the nature of the project Polygon doesn’t plan on updating its basic layer anytime soon. The only base chain it supports at the moment is Ethereum, but it also intends to extend the support to more, based on the suggestions from the community. 

The project launched in 2017 was previously known as Matic but was rebranded to Polygon when the goals of the project expanded and from the simple Layer-2 solution became the whole ecosystem for massive scaling of the set of sovereign collaborative blockchains. Its founders are Jayanti Canani, Sandeep Nailwail, and Anurag Arjun that used to be huge contributors to Ethereum.  

The number of applications supporting Polygon increases every day, for example, recently Instagram announced that it will launch the NFT collection on the Polygon blockchain. Thanks to the Plasma framework the Polygon can house an unlimited number of decentralized applications without drawbacks. 

MATIC is a native ERC-20 token of the Polygon that powers its ecosystem. Its name comes from the times before rebranding. The total supply of MATIC tokens is 10 billion and the coins are released on a monthly basis. As the assets are burnt as the base fees it becomes deflationary. According to the plan of the development team, 0,27% of the tokens are burnt each year (around 27 million). This will benefit the validators as they receive the validation rewards in MATIC. Also, the base fee gets increased after the filling up of each block. 

MATIC is used for payment services on Polygon as well as settlement currency within the Polygon ecosystem. The fees on the sidechains are also paid in MATIC.