Polygon (POL)

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Polygon is an umbrella project of multiple different types of sidechains and L2s

Polygon
Total supply10,000,000,000 MATIC
Websitehttps://matic.network/

Basics

  • Based in: Bangalore, India and British Virgin Islands
  • Started in: 2017
  • Mainnet release: In steps (12-5-2020), with the first step on 17-5-2020.
  • After its rebrand into Polygon, it wants to be a multichain, instead of purely Ethereum linked (9-2-2021). Is called a sidechain, but could be seen as its own Layer 1, since it has its own consensus and native token.

"Matic Network describes itself as is a Layer 2 scaling solution that uses sidechains for off-chain computation while ensuring asset security using the Plasma framework and a decentralized network of Proof-of-Stake (PoS) validators. Matic aims to be the de-facto platform on which developers will deploy and run decentralized applications in a secure and decentralized manner.

Matic Network claims to have worked on implementations of Plasma MVP (Minimum Viable Plasma), WalletConnect protocol, and the Ethereum event notification engine - Dagger. Matic intends to provide Matic wallet, payment APIs and SDKs, products and other solutions that will allow developers to design, implement, and migrate DApps built on platforms like Ethereum. Matic plans to support other blockchains in the future to offer interoperability alongside scalability to existing public blockchains."

"Decentraland and Makerdao are among the partners Matic can count, while on the dapp side it’s got a handful of applications up and running. Matic Network uses an adapted version of Plasma, a scaling technology originally conceived for Ethereum. It enables fast and cheap transactions, which attain finality once confirmed on the mainchain."

"Matic’s incentivised staking testnet, CS-2001, is now live! Stage 1a of Counter Stake is now underway, with the purpose of preparing for the basic network rollout. Beginning with 20 active validators, we will add more as the stage progresses."

History

  • Originally was called Matic Network, but rebranded into Polygon (9-2-2021). Changed the token from MATIC to POL 2 years later.
  • From this report (22-3-2023):

"Stage 1 — Q4 2020-Q2 2021 — DEXs, lend/yield, 1inch, and Polygon-native prediction platform Polymarket:

Quickswap, Curve, Sushi were among the first DEXs to be launched on Polygon and are currently in the top 10 according to TVL.

Polymarket is a decentralized gambling platform built on Polygon. Polymarket allows users to bet on the outcomes of highly-debated topics and earn rewards if their predictions are correct. Although Polymarket was fined $1.4 million by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and ordered to cease non-compliant trading in the US, it still maintains its pre-shutdown TVL.

1inch launched on Polygon in May 2021. At first, only the aggregation protocol was available, whilst liquidity and governance protocols were added later. At the initial stages, aggregation was available for Curve, SushiSwap, QuickSwap, Aave V2, and Cometh.

Stage 2 — late 2021 — more yield tools, bridges, Uniswap, reserve currency:

Beefy Finance is a Multi-Chain Yield Optimizer that enables users to yield farm, provide liquidity, and trade assets.

Uniswap V3. Uniswap expanded to Polygon in November 2021.

Stargate is a DeFi-focused liquidity bridge.

Klima DAO. The KLIMA token is a reserve currency aimed to solve critical problems for carbon markets: illiquidity, opacity, and inefficiency.

Stage 3–2022 — derivatives:

Gains Network and SynFutures. Gains Network and SynFutures are decentralized derivatives trading platforms built on Polygon."

Audits & Exploits

"A potential cause for alarm is the hard cap (in its current state) of 100 validating nodes. No more slots are open. This stops further decentralisation (from an admittedly small selection of nodes). Polygon has TWO separate node implementations (Bor and Erigon) — something that it should be credited for. However, the cost of getting a validator slot is extremely high (by our count $130K) and there is no proper node count viewer like ethernodes.org — this reduces transparency. To view the full node count, you must run a node yourself.

Furthermore, their node implementation upgrade process seems poorly coordinated. There is no formal PIP infrastructure (aside from one interesting yet ancient proposal). Most updates to software are merely instructional. It’s unclear how improvements are pushed to the production version of the node software — a possible single point of failure. Some commits in the latest release are from months prior whereas others are from the day of release. We couldn’t see discussion for these anywhere.

While there’s proof of massive testing (their repository contains over 300,000 lines of code) with a high code coverage percentage, there’s room for a public audit. We’ve been made aware of a public audit from 2020 on Bor, but we can’t award points for private audits.

All this amounts to a relatively secure network thanks to significant (yet incomplete) steps in the direction of greater distribution which in turn is supported by some good technical risk infrastructure."

Bugs/Exploits

  • 0xngmi noticed Polygon zkEVM had been down for ~10hrs with nobody mentioning it (24-3-2024). It faced an issue with its sequencer due to an L1 reorg. Got back up after "the Emergency Council for Polygon zkEVM Mainnet Beta activated the emergency state to allow the Polygon zkEVM Core Team to apply a necessary fix to the system, allowing L1 settlement of Polygon zkEVM Mainnet Beta to resume." (25-3-2024).
  • Polygon Labs has noted that a significant number of validators are experiencing issues with missing checkpoints (11-2023). The team has been conducting testing and exploration to pinpoint the exact issue, but as of now, a definitive cause has not been identified.
  • Another Polygon zkEVM vulnerability disclosed (fixed), insufficient validation of division remainders (15-7-2023).
  • Polygon patched a critical vulnerability in zkEVM which breaks L2 migration thanks to a responsible disclosure by iczc (31-5-2023). It could DoS sequencer & prover
  • Had a massive reorganization of 157 blocks (25-2-2023). Really deep reorgs are not great, that "a couple of nodes" could warrant more research. Why a reorg of that magnitude happened as well. Especially with a chain with ~13 validators that can push through privately discussed changes together easily and have done so in the past (last two hard forks). This event follows a 120 block reorg in December.
  • From Week in Ethereum (26-2-2022):

"Polygon PoS consensus bypass vulnerability, required open validator spot with high capital costs, $75k bounty paid."

  • 90% of MATIC could have been stolen (30-12-2021), from Unchained:

"The issue arose from a “critical network vulnerability” found within the genesis block of Polygon. According to Immunefi, the vulnerability left 9,276,584,332 MATIC available to steal – which is a truly astounding number when considering MATIC’s supply cap is 10,000,000.

A post-mortem from Polygon explains that the bug was fixed in a “silent patch” just two days after a white hat hacker reported the possibility of an exploit to Immunefi. “Considering the nature of this upgrade, it had to be executed without attracting too much attention,” wrote the Polygon team in an attempt to explain why it upgraded the network without announcing much information. Once the code to patch the bug was written, the validator and code community upgraded 80% of the Polygon network in under 24 hours to initiate the fix (without knowing much because of the “silent patch” decision).

The white hat hackers (a second white hat noticed the vulnerability shortly after the first) were paid a total of $3.46 million for their help – a small amount compared to the billions at stake (MATIC has a market cap of over $10 billion). That being said, before the bug could be fixed, one hacker was able to get away with 801,601 MATIC, of which the Polygon Foundation will bear the cost."

  • After getting more active accounts than even Ethereum, Polygon's founder recommends (5-10-2021) higher minimum gas prices due to a flood of spamming txs (probably causing the activity spike).
  • From BlockThreat (25-8-2021):

"Polygon patched a DoS vulnerability in its StakeManagerProxy and StakeManager contracts after it was responsibly disclosed by Ashiq Amien."

Governance

Admin Key

  • Seems to want to move "Polygon 2.0" under 3 governance pillars, all with admin keys (21-7-2023). The first of which is the Polygon Protocol Council which can (19-10-2023) "upgrade timelock-limited upgrades to Polygon system smart contracts, i.e. components of Polygon protocols implemented as smart contracts on Ethereum". It includes the following members:

@jbaylina (Polygon zkEVM), @zachxbt, @ViktorBunin (Coinbase Cloud), @liz315, @jdetychey (ETHCC), @nanexcool, @sassal0x, @zmanian, @ethzed, @l2beat, @gauntlet_xyz, @Mudit__Gupta, and @drakefjustin.

  • From a commissioned Messari report (29-4-2023), in which it highlights that zkEVM got launched with admin keys:

"Polygon Labs put in place several security measures for the Polygon zkEVM protocol to ensure user safety during the beta phase. In Stage I, there will be a Security Council that can swiftly upgrade the protocol."

  • When Polygon pushed a hard fork through in a very short time, discussions arose over its decentralization. Answers from the team were not very clear nor conclusive (17-12-2021).
  • From their Transparency Report (15-5-2021):

"Polygon uses three different multisigs, each for a different purpose.

  1. MS1: PoS/Plasma contract upgrades
  2. MS2: Custom "Child ERC20" contract upgrades
  3. MS3: Mapping of "Child ERC20" contracts

The first two require 5 out of 8 signers. The signers are Polygon cofounders and people* from reputable Polygon/Ethereum projects:

  1. CurveFinance
  1. QuickswapDEX
  2. MUSTCometh
  3. 0xHorizonGames

*identities protected

As the contracts secured by multisigs become battle-tested, we will be exploring introducing the following optimizations/changes:

  1. Moving from multisigs to governance-controlled proxies
  2. Introducing timelocks
  3. (Eventually) Completely removing multisigs/upgradability."

PIPs

  • From a commissioned Messari report (29-4-2023):

"Polygon Labs released details regarding the updated Polygon Improvement Proposal (PIP) framework. Community-driven PIPs describe standards and design specifications for the Polygon network, including core protocol specifications, client APIs, and contract standards. After all feedback is taken into account, the final step lays the groundwork for the developer team to start prioritizing and implementing the PIP."

This hints towards the dev team having the final say.

DAO

"Polygon Governance 2.0 introduces three main governance pillars for the Polygon ecosystem. Protocol Governance, System Smart Contract Governance, and Community Treasury Governance. Each pillar of governance will have its own unique governance framework, aiming to create scalable and efficient governance mechanisms.

  1. Protocol Governance: Facilitated by the Polygon Improvement Proposal (PIP) framework, providing a platform for proposing upgrades to Polygon protocols.
  2. System Smart Contracts Governance: Addresses upgrades of protocol components implemented as smart contracts. The Ecosystem Council, governed by the community, will be responsible for these upgrades.
  3. Community Treasury Governance: Establishes a self-sustainable ecosystem fund, the Community Treasury, to support public goods and ecosystem projects. The governance process involves two phases, starting with an independent Community Treasury Board and evolving into community-driven decision-making."

Treasury

"The team announced regular POL emissions as a means to finance a community treasury, the purpose of which is to encourage protocol development, promote protocol research, distribute ecosystem grants, and foster adoption incentives. “The community treasury should be governed by the Polygon community, via an agreed upon governance process,” the blog post elaborates."

  • On twitter some started speculating (21-2-2023) around Polygon's spending habbits.

"Matic raised $450 million in cash just about one year ago so they were burning $200m a year prior to layoffs. They just publicly said they have $250m left."

To which was answered:

"We raised 450mn in a VC-funded round, we don't need to sell treasury tokens into the market. Out of that $450mn, $100 is dedicated to our Ecosystem Fund."

It seems like they spent $100M in 2022.

"On Jan. 1, 2021, the Polygon treasury had a massive war chest of 4.6 billion MATIC. On Aug. 13, 2021, Polygon announced a strategic focus on ZK-based scaling solutions and $1 billion in treasury funding for this effort. The allocated funds were used for:

  1. Acquiring ZK-projects and teams
  2. Building ZK-based solutions
  3. Hiring talent
  4. Research funding

Use of the treasury is centrally controlled by Polygon Technologies, and the majority of expenditures to date have been related to the ZK-scaling efforts.

The same day the strategic focus on ZK-scaling was announced, Polygon announced the first major treasury expenditure with the acquisition of the ZK-rollup Hermez Network (now Polygon zkEVM) for 250 million MATIC (approximately $250 million). On Dec. 9, 2021, Polygon announced its second acquisition in Mir Protocol (now Polygon Zero) for $100 million and 190 million MATIC. At the end of Q3, the Polygon treasury had 2.4 billion MATIC (down 48% from the 4.6 billion)."

Token

Launch

  • Started out as MATIC on the Matic Chain, but introduced POL on 13-7-2023 as an overarching token for all its Polygon chains. POL went live end of 10-2023.

Token allocation

"We propose a yearly emission rate of 1% of the POL supply for [staking rewards]. The emission rate would not be possible to change for the initial 10 years, and after that period the community can decide to decrease it in an arbitrary way via the governance framework. The emission rate can never be increased beyond 1%.

To provide ongoing support for further development and growth of the Polygon ecosystem, we propose to introduce the Community Treasury, a community-governed ecosystem fund, described in § 7. We propose a yearly emission rate of 1% of the POL supply for this purpose. Just like the emission for validator rewards, this emission rate can be decreased after 10 years via a governance framework, and it can never be increased beyond 1%."

"The team behind the protocol has allocated $40 million in rewards for lenders and borrowers, the bulk of which is made up of 1% of the total MATIC supply. Users will be able to earn rewards by depositing and borrowing assets on Aave’s Polygon market."

  1. Private Sale tokens comprise 3.80% of the total supply
  2. Launchpad sale tokens comprise 19% of total supply.
  3. Team tokens comprise 16% of the total supply.
  4. Advisors tokens comprise 4% of the total supply.
  5. Network Operations tokens comprise 12% of the total supply [staking].
  6. Foundation tokens comprise 21.86% of the total supply.
  7. Ecosystem tokens comprise 23.33% of the total supply.

Inflation

  • According to a Messari report (Q3-2023) it has 2.1% inflation at that time.

Utility

"POL has the capability to validate numerous blockchains, according to a blog post by Polygon Labs on POL’s tokenomics. “To attract more validators, some Polygon chains can choose to introduce additional rewards,” the post explains. “These rewards can be in any token, including but not limited to POL, stablecoins or native tokens of those Polygon chains.” Should it receive approval, POL’s supply is poised to match MATIC’s 10 billion, and users can exchange MATIC for POL at a 1:1 ratio."

"The network’s token, MATIC, is used in a similar way to Ethereum to pay gas fees for transactions."

Token Details

Burns

"MATIC follows the EIP-1559 upgrade, which includes a mechanism that burns a portion of every network transaction fee paid in native MATIC. The "base fee," a fluctuating portion of the gas fee, is burned, while the remaining fee is distributed to the block's proposing validator as a "priority fee" or tip. To date, a total of 16 million MATIC has been burned through this mechanism."

Coin Distribution

  • From Blockbytes (16-2-2023):

"The Chinese MLM Ponzi scheme, popularly known as ‘Avatar,’ has turned out to be the fifth biggest holder of MATIC."

Tech (PoS chain)

Transaction Details

How It Works

"The architecture of Polygon 2.0 is a key element in realizing its vision. It is organized into four protocol layers, each serving a specific purpose:

  1. Staking Layer - Leverages Polygon's native token to provide staking services to participating chains. The Staking Layer is implemented on Ethereum via two contracts: the Validator Manager and the Chain Manager.
  2. Interop Layer - Facilitates cross-chain messaging within the Polygon ecosystem. It enables secure shared access to native Ethereum assets and near-instant and atomic cross-chain transactions.
  3. Execution Layer - Handles block production and transaction sequencing.
  4. Proving Layer - Incorporates a highly performant ZK proving protocol for generating and verifying proofs across Polygon chains."

"The Polygon PoS chain is broadly divided into three layers: Ethereum, Bor, and Heimdall. The Ethereum layer houses the staking contracts, which give the PoS chain greater levels of security. The Bor layer aggregates transactions into blocks and handles similar duties to the Ethereum Beacon Chain. The Heimdall layer sends periodic checkpoints from Bor to the Ethereum Mainnet for finality. Anyone who wishes to become a validator on Polygon must run both Bor and Heimdall nodes and stake their MATIC in the MATIC staking contracts on Ethereum.

Today, there is a limit of 100 active validators at a time. While the validator set can theoretically scale to greater decentralization, it has a maximum of 100 to maintain the quick block times. New validators can join the active set when a currently active validator unbonds. Polygon allocated 12% of the total supply (1.2 billion MATIC) toward staking rewards, with over 600,000 MATIC paid out thus far. Polygon Improvement Proposal 4 (PIP-4) proposes to increase the maximum validator set to 105. If the proposal passes, it will be an early step to decentralization."

"Unlike several other chains, Polygon was architected with EVM compatibility in mind. This has made it very easy for so many top DeFi project to port their services onto Polygon. In fact, Polygon is architected as four layers which can easily interact amongst themselves.

Of the four layers, only the Polygon Networks and Execution layers are mandatory. Polygon Networks are sovereign blockchain networks that serve a specific community. Polygon networks are independent, but can send messages to other Polygon networks using the Polygon Protocol.

The Polygon Networks are collectively governed by the Execution layer, which interprets and executes all transactions passed to it from the Polygon Networks layer. The Execution layer itself consists of two sublayers, an Execution Environment that serves as a plug-and-play virtual machine running eWASM, and a smart contracts layer that handles execution logic in EVM.

The Ethereum and Security layers are optional, but useful for interoperability and validation. The security layer can be used by any Polygon network to verify its chain integrity for a fee. The Ethereum layer allows any Polygon network to lean into Ethereum’s smart contracts, to provide functionality like checkpointing, staking, and messaging."

"Polygon is a suite of Ethereum scalability solutions, it's not a single solution. Currently we offer Polygon Plasma and Polygon PoS commit chain, and in the future we will offer other major scalability architectures (e.g. zkRollups and Optimistic Rollups).

Plasma fully relies on Ethereum security and it is, to the best of my knowledge, the only decentralized L2 solution (it has a decentralized operator set). Polygon PoS has it own permissionless validator set, and it uses Ethereum for validator staking/slashing and checkpointing.

[Polygon PoS] is not really a sidechain and it's actually *fully decentralized*. It has an open validator set + huge number of delegators. Anyone can participate in securing the network, with any amount.

There are many more differences compared to other chains that you mentioned. For example, our two-way bridge to Ethereum is run by the whole PoS validator set, i.e. it is secured by the whole amount staked in our system ($600M+). Usually bridges are run by a few PoA authorities."

"The PoS chain is what people refer to as a “sidechain” to Ethereum because it has its own permissionless validator set (100+ who are staking MATIC) which means it doesn’t use Ethereum’s security (aka Ethereum’s PoW). The PoS chain goes beyond a standard sidechain and actually relies on and commits itself to Ethereum (what some people may call a “commit-chain”). It relies on Ethereum because all of the validator/staking logic for the PoS chain lives as a smart contract on Ethereum. This means that if the Ethereum network went offline, the Polygon PoS chain would also go offline. Secondly, the PoS chain actually commits/checkpoints itself to Ethereum every so often. This has 2 benefits: it provides Ethereum-based finality to the PoS chain & it can help the chain recover in case of catastrophic event. This also means that Polygon is paying Ethereum to use its blockspace (in ETH) & paying for it to secure the contracts & checkpointing."

Fees

Upgrades

"As part of the Polygon 2.0 upgrade, it is proposed for the Polygon Proof-of-Stake (PoS) chain to transition into a zkEVM validium. This change enables Polygon PoS to enhance its security, performance, and compatibility within the Polygon 2.0 ecosystem. With zkEVM validium, transaction data is made available off-chain, resulting in lower fees compared to traditional rollups, while maintaining robust security guarantees. The proposed timeline for the upgrade is as follows:

  1. June 2023 - July 2023: Pre-PIP discussion and consensus
  2. October 2023 - November 2023: PIP publishing, discussion, and consensus
  3. November 2023 - January 2024: PIP implementation and testing
  4. February 2024 - March 2024: Upgrade, i.e., PIP activation on mainnet"

"Polygon’s leadership advocated using a hard fork to reduce the sprint length of on-chain transactions—a move that would both lower transaction times and reduce the frequency of chain reorganizations, or “reorgs”—messy and occasionally risky events where multiple validators disagree about the network’s transaction history.

Polygon’s leadership also proposed using the opportunity of a fork to double the blockchain’s “BaseFeeChangeDenominator,” an adjustment intended to reduce volatile spikes in gas fees that have previously plagued the network.

The proposal by Polygon’s Governance Team provoked a heated debate among the network’s community, with some pressing for further details about the necessity of suggested changes, and others chiding Polygon’s leadership for not prioritizing other, more needed adjustments that wouldn’t require a move as severe as a hard fork.

Only the network’s 100 validators—those who run Polygon’s nodes—were invited to participate in a poll determining whether the network should undergo a hard fork exactly as proposed, or not. In all, just 15 validators cast their votes. 13 of them signed on to Polygon’s plan. Polygon told Decrypt late Tuesday that 99 of 100 validators updated their clients, putting the hard fork into effect."

  • When Polygon pushed a hard fork through in a very short time, discussions arose over its decentralization. Answers from the team were not very clear nor conclusive (17-12-2021).
  • From their Mainnet announcement (3-6-2020):

"Currently, we have started the network with a set of 7 Matic Foundation nodes. DApp partner nodes will be joining this set in the coming week."

Staking 

"At present, the number of active validators is limited to 100. New validators can become active when a current active validator unbinds, however the cost of becoming an active validator has risen continually over the year. By the end of 2022, the minimum required stake for an active validator was 625,000 MATIC ($475,000), a 386% YoY increase from the previous year's 129,000 MATIC. Polygon Improvement Proposal 4  proposes to increase the maximum validator set to 105."

  • From their blog (19-5-2020):

"MATIC holders will be able to delegate their tokens to Matic Foundation nodes in the initial phases."

Validator stats

"It has 100 validators, with many more queuing. These nodes are in many different locations around the world, promoting network security."

LSTs

"At the end of Q2, Polygon experienced an increase in liquid staked MATIC, reaching 221 million MATIC, which represents 37% QoQ growth. This growth can be attributed to Lido's integration of five new node operators in early May. Lido stands as the leading liquid staking protocol on Polygon, with 138 million liquid staked MATIC, accounting for 62% of the total. Stader follows with 77 million liquid staked MATIC, constituting 35% of the total. Liquid staking on Polygon represents a fraction of the total staked MATIC (5.8%)."

Liquidity Mining

Scaling

"Polygon will have additional support for such layer two solutions as Optimistic Rollups, zkRollups, and Validium."

  • As of 12-2021, Polygon has aquired different zk-tech projects, like Hermes and Mir to add to their stack.

Supernets

  • "Axelar is partnering with @0xPolygon to deliver secure cross-chain communication to #PolygonSupernets." (26-10-2022)
  • Is building Supernets. To see how they differ from Avalanche's Subnets, check TheTIE's comparison here (15-7-2022).

Different Implementations

Interoperability

  • From Messari (12-2023):

"Polygon Labs has announced the introduction of Polygon Portal, a unified user interface aimed at streamlining the bridging and management of digital assets within the Polygon ecosystem. The platform caters to a diverse user base, offering a single-page access point for native apps, tools, and documentation resources for developers, and staking features for validators. With a focus on user convenience, Polygon Portal facilitates tasks such as bridging assets, managing token lists, purchasing MATIC or ETH for gas through the Refuel Gas feature, utilizing developer tools, and easily swapping assets with third-party decentralized exchanges. Notably, the platform enhances the popular Swap for Gas solution on Polygon PoS with the introduction of the Refuel Gas feature, powered by 0x API."

"The Polygon 2.0 upgrade seeks to make it easier to create new Polygon chains, it will also feature a shared bridge to improve interoperability between those chains and eliminate the need for wrapped tokens. The way that’ll work on Polygon 2.0, native Ethereum tokens will be deposited into a single contract on Ethereum mainnet. When a user wants to use their tokens across different Polygon chains, the corresponding assets will be mapped to the tokens deposited on Ethereum. “The coordination layer allows us to optimistically confirm cross-chain transactions in a way that’s safe and nearly instant,” said Polygon co-founder Brendan Farmer."

  • From Block Bytes (2-3-2023):

"Customizable rollup provider Eclipse is launching a Polygon/Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) scaling solution, allowing applications to be compatible with Polygon. The SVM will be powered by Eclipse and can run smart contracts and tooling compatible with Solana.

Through the launch, decentralized applications (dApps) built for the Solana blockchain can migrate or become multichain through the Polygon SVM, which can open the doors for both communities using and building on different blockchains."

  • "Axelar is partnering with @0xPolygon to deliver secure cross-chain communication to #PolygonSupernets." (26-10-2022)
  • From EthHub (10-12-2021):

"Polygon and Wanchain are launching a decentralized L2 to L2 cross-chain bridge that connects Arbitrum and Polygon’s PoS chain."

  • From their docs (7-3-2021):

"Matic brings you a trustless two-way transaction channel between Matic and Ethereum by introducing the cross-chain bridge with Plasma and PoS security. With this users can transfer tokens across matic without incurring third-party risks and market liquidity limitations. Matic uses a dual-consensus architecture (Plasma + Proof-of-Stake (PoS) platform) to optimise for speed and decentralisation. We consciously architected the system to support arbitrary state transitions on our sidechains, which are EVM-enabled."

Matic seems to have 2 bridges, PoS (which they recommend) and Plasma.

"The PoS (Proof-of-Stake) token bridge is now live on the Matic mainnet for deposits and withdrawals from Ethereum to Matic and vice versa. DApps can now use the robust validator-run token bridge to move ERC20, ERC721 and ERC1155 tokens from Ethereum to Matic and from Matic to Ethereum. Deposits from Ethereum to Matic take ~7-8 minutes to complete and withdrawals take ~30 minutes. This is a vast improvement from the previous deposit & withdrawal mechanism."

Other Details

Oracle Method

Privacy Method

Compliance

Their Projects

  • Matic PoS Chain and Matic Plasma Chains. However, these seem both to be bridges to Ethereum.

Aggregation Layer (AggLayer)

In January 2024, Polygon Labs released information about the Aggregation Layer (AggLayer) which creates an aggregated blockchain network that unifies liquidity across the Polygon ecosystem and allows developers to connect any EVM L1 or ZK L2, which can easily be spun up using Polygon CDK.

Finity

"Finity -- a user-first interconnected system of design elements that allows teams to quickly prototype, launch and scale their products without compromising on aesthetics and usability. Finity offers tried-and-tested assets, elements, and templates with a focus on 3D design. Its visual library allows for elements to be used individually or with each other, in perfect harmony."

Polygon Avail

  • From a commissioned Messari report (29-4-2023):

"In March, Polygon Labs announced that it would be spinning off Avail, its data availability layer. This move aims to focus more on ZK-scaling efforts. It will also align more closely with the Ethereum roadmap, specifically supporting the upcoming EIP-4844 and other data availability updates.

As a result of this spinoff, Avail Co-founder Anurag Arjun will be leaving Polygon Labs to focus exclusively on Avail. Avail is protocol-agnostic and plans to work with any execution environment designed to scale blockchains, including sovereign chains, validiums, and optimistic chains. The public testnet is currently live, and further announcements about moving to the public mainnet are expected soon."

"Celestia and Polygon Avail (and probably others that we’re not yet aware of) are new blockchains that have been specially designed to solve the data availability problem, in what is called ‘modular blockchain’ architecture. These blockchains don't verify transactions, but simply check that each block was added by consensus and that new blocks are available to the network."

"Polygon Avail is a general purpose, scalable data availability layer for standalone chains, sidechains, and modular chains. A rollup using Avail for data availability can completely circumvent the need for a monolithic L1, making it sovereign. Avail can act as a validium for Ethereum, taking data off-chain and providing data availability for chains on other networks. Avail is hyper-efficient because it uses random sampling to determine data availability, a process that Celestia and Ethereum 2.0 intend to implement."

"Currently, almost every blockchain performs following three functions:

  1. Data availability: It refers to reaching a consensus on transaction orders and ensuring that transactions are available for verification.
  2. Execution: This function runs transactions and determines state changes.
  3. Settlement: This function ensures final verification and arbitration.

With Polygon Avail, Polygon wants to enable separate chains to handle each function. Currently, Layer 2’s reduce the costs of transactions and enhance the speed of execution by moving the execution layer off-chain. However, they still store the data on the primary blockchain. With Polygon Avail, the users can store this data on Polygon Avail, post proof to primary blockchain like Ethereum and eliminate 80-95% of their costs. Moreover, the benefit of outsourcing the data availability function and supporting the needs of hundreds of blockchains at once is a massive thing. Therefore, as the Polygon Avail testnet unveils, we will closely monitor how it helps support blockchain's scalability and matures with time."

"Avail is a general-purpose, scalable data availability-focused blockchain targeted for standalone chains, sidechains & off-chain scaling solutions."

Polygon ID

“Using Polygon ID, developers can allow their users to perform KYC verification in a decentralized manner,” the team said. “This innovative system utilizes ZK Proofs to create a digital identity that confirms access rights without necessarily disclosing personal information to a third party.” The decentralized identity service will roll out to an estimated 4M users via Polygon ID’s launch partners, including Collab.Land — a community-management system, The Sandbox — a metaverse game, Fractal — an identity solution, and Kaleido — a web3 infrastructure firm.

"Polygon ID is a decentralized, self-sovereign identity solution allowing fully private and verifiable on-chain verification using ZK-cryptography. Polygon ID addresses know-your-customer requirements, while simultaneously allowing users to retain total privacy. Theoretically, on-chain identification systems like Polygon ID can be used ubiquitously across crypto. However, specific use cases include a decentralized credit score, DAO voting rights, and exclusive gaming guild access.

In June, Polygon announced the integration of Polygon ID with Polygon Village. The integration allows Polygon to begin testing Polygon ID and the Polygon Village to start testing novel governance frameworks. The Polygon ID ecosystem plans to include two new products. Polygon ID Platform is a public platform developers and organizations can use to define and manage the trust lifecycle of their applications and other requirements. Polygon ID connect is a public service platform to integrate access across the native app and applications. Following the crackdown on Tornado Cash, on-chain identification and KYC have re-entered the spotlight."

Polygon Miden

  • From their blog (17-7-2023):

"Polygon Miden continues to make progress toward a public testnet, expected in Q4 of this year."

Miden claims to 'only' create 'native assets':

"On Polygon Miden, specialized accounts—called faucets—can issue assets. However, anyone can create these accounts. Faucets can either issue fungible or non-fungible assets. The customizable code in those accounts defines the asset's properties, e.g., who can issue and when and what the maximum supply is. This way, it works similarly to the Ethereum ERC20 model.

The difference is that faucets do not track ownership. Instead, they produce notes in executing transactions to distribute the assets. As described in Polygon Miden’s transaction model, those notes carry the newly created assets to be consumed by other accounts. That way, one can mint a million NFTs locally in a single transaction and then send them out, as needed, in separate transactions in the future. If executed privately, the network would lose track of asset ownership from then on; one cannot query the asset account to get a balance.

On Polygon Miden, all assets are stored in the owner’s account itself or in a note. Accounts and notes have vaults to store them. Accounts may store an unlimited number of assets in a tiered sparse Merkle tree. Notes store assets in vectors of length 255. Storing assets directly in accounts provides several benefits, including parallelizable transactions, off-chain storage, and programmable transaction fees.

If an account is stored off-chain, then only its hash is known to the network; those accounts are considered private. That means no one knows which or how many assets one has, and no one can look it up.

By treating all assets as native, users can pay fees using any asset on Polygon Miden. At least, there is nothing in the design that prevents this, though it’s dependent on the Polygon Miden Operator to accept fees in any asset."

"Polygon Miden is a ZK-rollup with a focus on generalized programmability. Miden batches transactions off-chain similar to zkEVM and Zero; however, arbitrary smart contracts are difficult to roll up. To overcome this, Polygon Miden is being built around the Miden Virtual Machine. The virtual machine has been specifically optimized to support arbitrary logic written in Solidity and other languages.

While Miden supports Solidity, it is not fully EVM compatible in the way Polygon zkEVM aims to be. Miden uses STARKs instead of SNARKs for proofs, meaning there is no trusted setup required, it’s more scalable, and it’s quantum resistant. Miden is scheduled for testnet development in the near future."

"Polygon Miden is an advanced ZK Rollup. ZK Rollups are very promising, but currently, it's hard for them to support arbitrary logic and transactions, such as those happening on Ethereum. Polygon Miden will solve this challenge using its core component - Miden VM."

Polygon Nightfall

"On Sept. 14, 2021, EY and Polygon announced a partnership to develop Polygon Nightfall, an optimistic rollup with a focus on privacy for enterprises. Nightfall is a self-described “hybrid optimistic-zk rollup” because it uses fraud proofs (optimistic rollups) and validity proofs (ZK-rollups). Nightfall uses a validity proof to obfuscate the data and then a fraud proof to batch it to the mainnet. Similarly, Aztec is referred to as a “recursive zk-rollup” because it uses a validity proof to obfuscate the data and then another validity proof to batch it to the mainnet.

The process of batching transactions and sending them back to the mainnet on Nightfall is strictly set up as an optimistic rollup and only uses fraud proofs for verification. The ZK-rollup name and validity proofs are strictly for privacy and obfuscation of data. Nightfall is currently in mainnet beta."

"Polygon Nightfall (optimistic rollup with zero knowledge for privacy) unaudited beta live, aimed at enterprise."

Polygon SDK (fka Edge and Supernets)

"Polygon Edge is a customizable blockchain solution that enables you to build and launch dedicated blockchain networks tailored specifically to your needs.

  1. Supernets are dedicated to just one specific use case or protocol. This would entail how a dedicated Web 3 hosting would look like.
  2. Supernets are secured by Polygon’s MATIC which would work as a shared security layer in the form of a MATIC-staked validator marketplace.
  3. Supernets are connected with each other and Ethereum. Every Supernet is able to exchange value and messages with other Supernets and with the Ethereum mainnet.

Polygon has announced a $100 Million adoption fund that is immediately available."

Polygon Studios

  • Will aid the development of blockchain gaming and NFTs (19-7-2021).

Polygon Zero (fka Mir)

"Zero settles batched transactions on the mainnet with a validity proof like Polygon zkEVM. Except, Zero uses a novel recursive SNARK called Plonky2. Recursive proofs allow for horizontal scaling, and the Plonky2 proof system allows for the proofs to be small and fast. Plonky2 is a combination of PLONK and FRI proof systems and was created by the Zero team. In August, it was open-sourced and is scheduled for testnet in Q4 2022."

  • Mir was previously a standalone project but got aquired by Polygon (9-12-2021). It will be another ZK-Rollup side of Polygon. The deal was made for $400m. It got renamed into Polygon Zero.

Polygon zkEVM (fka Hermez)

  • The zkEVM has been launched to mainnet beta and will continue to be optimized with bug bounties and further audits (27-3-2023).
  • Scheduled to launch the 27th of March, 2023.
  • From L2beat (31-10-2022):

"Funds can be stolen if

  1. the cryptography is broken or implemented incorrectly,
  2. the operators trigger a false alarm during withdrawal (CRITICAL),
  3. a contract receives a malicious code upgrade. There is a 7 days delay on code upgrades,
  4. the source code of unverified contracts contains malicious code (CRITICAL).

Users can be censored if

  1. the operator refuses to include their transactions and users lack resources to propose blocks themselves.

Each update to the system state must be accompanied by a ZK Proof that ensures that the new state was derived by correctly applying a series of valid user transactions to the previous state. Once the proof is processed on the Ethereum blockchain the L2 block is instantly finalized. All the data that is used to construct the system state is published on chain in the form of cheap calldata. This ensures that it will always be available when needed.

There is no central operator. The system runs an auction in which anyone can bid to become the operator for a set number of blocks. The operator will be able to propose blocks and collect fees during this window. Hermez will also run a operator known as boot coordinator that will propose blocks in case no one bids in the auction. This operator can be removed by the governance. Because the block production is open to anyone if users experience censorship from the operator they can propose their own blocks which would include their transactions. When the user does a regular or forced withdraw and their funds exceed a certain threshold a timer activates. The operators can now trigger emergency mode and transfer the user's funds to the governance."

  • Vitalik goes into different zkEVMs here(4-8-2022), and says:

"Scroll's ZK-EVM project is building toward a Type 2 (fully EVM-equivalent) ZK-EVM, as is Polygon Hermez. That said, neither project is quite there yet; in particular, a lot of the more complicated precompiles have not yet been implemented. Scroll and Polygon are both Type 3 (almost EVM-equivalent) in their current forms, though they're expected to improve compatibility over time. Polygon has a unique design where they are ZK-verifying their own internal language called zkASM, and they interpret ZK-EVM code using the zkASM implementation. Despite this implementation detail, I would still call this a genuine Type 3 ZK-EVM; it can still verify EVM code, it just uses some different internal logic to do it."

"Like its competitor Scroll, the Polygon rollup will be EVM-equivalent, enabling developers to near-seamlessly deploy their L1 contracts onto L2. The zkEVM will also utilize the Plonky2 prover system developed by Polygon Zero, another ZKR which was brought into the Polygon ecosystem following the $400M acquisition of Mir. Plonky2 enables proofs to be validated at incredibly fast rates, which decreases the time it takes for L2 transactions to reach finality."

  • According (20-7-2022) to the team, zkEVM is expected to be deployed on the public testnet later this summer, with the mainnet launch slated for early 2023.
  • Hermez was previously a standalone project but merged (or was bought) by Polygon (13-8-2021). It will be the ZK-Rollup and zkEVM side of Polygon.
  • From their blog (13-5-2022):

"Polygon Hermez 2.0, henceforth Hermez 2.0, is a decentralized Ethereum Layer 2 scalability solution utilising cryptographic zero-knowledge technology to provide validation and fast finality of off-chain transaction computations. Hermez 1.0, which has been live since March 2021, is decentralized, permissionless and scales up to 2000 transactions per second (tps). The Hermez 2.0 system is a zero-knowledge EVM (zkEVM) consisting of a few essential components; the Consensus Algorithm, the zkNode software, the zkProver, the LX-to-LY Bridge, the Sequencers and the Aggregators (who are the participants requisite in reaching network consensus), as well as active users of the Hermez 2.0 network who create transactions.

Like its earlier version, which uses Proof-of-Donation (PoD), Hermez 2.0 is designed to be decentralized. However, the old Proof-of-Donation gives way to a newer consensus algorithm called Proof of Efficiency.

Firstly, the PoD model with the complexity of its auction protocol, is vulnerable to attacks, especially at the bootstrapping phases. Also, since at any given point in time, the network is controlled by any permissionless participant, there is a risk for the network to suffer service level delays should such a third party turn malicious or experience operational issues.

Secondly, the auction protocol has proved to be not only complex for coordinators and validators but also costly. More so considering that not every competing validator gets rewarded but only the most effective.

Thirdly, the efficacy of selecting “the best” operator amounts to a winner-takes-all model, which turns out to be unfair to competitors with slightly less performance. Consequently, only a few select operators validate batches more often than others, defeating the very ideal of network decentralization.

The PoE smart contract imposes a few requirements on Sequencers and Aggregators.

Sequencers' Constraints;

  1. Anyone running the zkNode, which is the software necessary for running a Hermez 2.0 node, can be a Sequencer.
  2. Every Sequencer must pay a fee in $Matic in order to earn the right to create and propose batches.
  3. A Sequencer who proposes valid batches, which consist of valid transactions, is incentivised with fees paid by transaction-requestors, the users of the network.
  4. Specifically, a Sequencer collects L2 transactions from users, preprocesses them as a new L2 batch, then proposes the batch as a valid L2 transaction to the PoE smart contract.

Aggregators' Constraints;

  1. An Aggregator's task is to produce validity proofs for the L2 transactions proposed by Sequencers.
  2. In addition to running Hermez 2.0's zkNode software, Aggregators need to have specialised hardware for creating the zero-knowledge validity proofs. We herein call it the zkProver.
  3. The Aggregator who is the first to submit a validity proof for a given batch or batches, earns the Matic fees paid by the Sequencer(s) of the batch(es).
  4. The Aggregators need only indicate their intention to validate transactions and then run the race, to produce validity proofs, based on their own strategy."

Roadmap

  • Can be found here (3-6-2020). New one here(24-5-2021), but only goes until Q1 of 2021.
  • From their blog (10-6-2020):
  1. "Staking UI to be publicly available on testnet by 15th June and functional for our Staking Education Initiative. Participants will be able to experience live delegation to validator nodes on testnet. Register here to take part.
  2. Final staking & delegation to Foundation nodes on the Matic mainnet to go live on or before 29th June.
  3. Public deposits and withdrawals for end users using the Matic Web Wallet are also slated to go live shortly; the exact date will be provided by Friday, 12th June."

Revenue

  • From a commissioned Messari report (29-4-2023):

"Polygon's total network fees increased significantly. They spiked by 93% QoQ to $11.85 million, primarily due to the rise in the average transaction fee."

A year prior it has been ~10M, but during the year had gone down the 4-6M range. Update: 2-2024, got back up to $8.4M.

Usage

"Most of these DeFi projects operate across multiple chains and Polygon does not make up their largest TVL. There are very few Polygon-exclusive DeFi solutions."

"In general, network-wide activity increased during the third quarter with active addresses setting an all-time-high of 6 million, new addresses spiking 180% QoQ, total unique addresses surpassing 170 million, and total transactions surpassing 2 billion.

The different sectors yielded mixed results: DeFi was down QoQ, gaming was up significantly YoY, and NFTs set an all-time-high in active wallets.

Of the TVL on the Polygon Network, 70% ($1.1 billion) is concentrated in 10 applications. Aave, the largest of the group, accounts for 20% of the network-wide TVL. Overall, Polygon’s TVL has remained steady, despite the bear market and minimal liquidity mining incentives."

From Our Network (1-5-2021):

"Polygon has seen a meteoric rise in transaction volume, exceeding Ethereum’s transaction count by 18% on Tuesday. Its native DEX, Quickswap, accounted for 41,000 transactions that day, hitting over 20% of Uniswap’s transaction volume. There are only 400,000 unique addresses on Polygon, a far cry from 150 million on Ethereum or 61 million on BSC. Curiously, Polygon’s top 3 addresses sent 573,000 transactions this week, a large majority of which appear to be arbitrage trades. Interestingly, only 25% of all Polygon addresses ever sent transactions on Ethereum."

  • From Our Network (5-6-2021):

"As of writing this, the average user on Polygon's implementation of Aave does ~5 transactions on any given day. The combined gas cost for supporting over 4,000 users as of early June was under $15."

  • Polygon’s Bridge TVL has been on a slow decline and hovering around $2.5b since peaking at ~$4.6b (9-2021). Meanwhile TVL on Arbitrum and Avalanche went up substantially.

Projects that use or built on it

  • From Poly Pulse (7-2-2022):

"Recent statistics from Alchemy confirmed over 7000 dApps have already onboarded the Polygon Ecosystem."

"Before launching its mainnet on Jun. 3, 2020, Matic had already attracted more than 50 dApps, making it the most adopted layer 2 platform in the space. dApps on Matic encompass a variety of niches ranging from gaming to DeFi, with notable projects including Decentraland and whitelabel betting platform BetProtocol."

A list of projects built or deployed on Polygon can be seen here (3-5-2021).

Pros and Cons

Pros

  • Is EVM compatible, therefore it is easy for Ethereum projects to launch on Polygon.
  • Low tx fees.
  • Is considered 'ETH-aligned', this narrative has been working in their favour, compared to other EVM-chains or scaling options.
  • From Delphi Digital (8-9-2022):

"Polygon PoS filled a much needed gap by becoming the go-to sidechain for Ethereum. Polygon is quite fast, with block times averaging around the two second mark. That, combined with the very strong ecosystem, does satisfy our two main requirements to build a good DeFi experience.

These factors, hugely helped by the effectiveness of the Polygon team at business development and deployment of treasury, lead to it gaining significant market share while solidifying the legacy of EVM. In the EVM space, Polygon is second to BSC in terms of capturing Ethereum users and has a very rich DeFi and gaming/NFT ecosystem and $2B TVL."

Cons

"In the past, Polygon has been repeatedly experiencing deep reorgs resulting in bad UX. Furthermore, we notice that governance decisions in Polygon have at times been opaque and centralised. An example of this was the core team’s decision to increase gas prices by a drastic 30x which was seemingly presented without much involvement from the community.

Notably, becoming a validator on Polygon isn’t currently a permissionless process. Polygon’s intention is to have periodic auctions where anyone can replace existing validators by staking a higher amount. However the auctions haven’t been held since the max cap of 100 nodes was reached and currently the only way for anyone to become a validator is if one or more of existing validators to unstake. The last community proposal has addressed this issue by outlining a mechanism for the network to self-regulate; an important step in the network’s gradual decentralisation plan.

Last but not least, the safety of the ecosystem hinges on a small committee controlling billions of dollars through the canonical Ethereum<>Polygon PoS bridge."

Competition

"If Ethereum 2.0 will bring better scalability to the platform, does this mean that second-layer projects such as Matic Network will no longer be required? Sandeep Nailwal, chief operations officer of Matic, doesn’t believe that Ethereum 2.0 will nail the scalability challenge in the same way that Matic has, telling Cointelegraph: “Ethereum 2.0 doesn’t provide infinite scalability. The best-case scenario is 64 shards, with sharded chains similar to today’s Ethereum chain. Assuming a single chain improves with PoS up to 50 transactions per second, total throughput will still only offer 3200 tps.”

Nailwal believes that the simple fact of Ethereum supplying a higher throughput will drive even greater demand, creating a situation where Ethereum can never scale to the level required by its DApp activity, adding: “First layer blockchains are settlement platforms. They are not meant to support the ’business activity.’” With the craze for DeFi DApps pushing gas fees ever higher, those using second-layer platforms for features like governance votes can avoid the need to move to a competitor platform."

Team, Funding, Partnerships, etc.

Team

  • Matic Network Ltd. (British Virgin Islands).
  • Full team can be viewed here (25-5-2021).
  • Jaynti Kanani; CEO "an erstwhile Plasma contributor who started Matic with Sandeep Nailwal and Anurag Arjun in October 2017." Revealed he had left in 3-2023. Kanani was the second of 10 Polygon co-founders (and the third executive) to announce their departure this year.
  • From Coindesk (3-6-2020):

"Matic has since grown to a team of 25 full-time contributors working out of Bangalore, the “Silicon Valley” of India."

It announced it would be cutting its headcount by 20%, per a blog post (21-2-2023). Again cut its staff by 19% (1-2-2024).

Funding

"Polygon raised about $450 million through a private sale of its native MATIC token in a funding round led by Sequoia Capital India with participation from SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Galaxy Digital, Galaxy Interactive, Tiger Global, Republic Capital and prominent investors like Alan Howard (co-founder, Brevan Howard) and Kevin O’Leary (Mr. Wonderful from ABC's Shark Tank)."

  • Donated $1M to Gitcoin (11-2021).
  • Polygon is raising a $100M fund to support blockchain game developers and NFT creators, and tapping the chops of Atari.
  • AU21 Capital started a $21 million fund to invest in projects built on Polygon (2-6-2021).
  • Started its own $100M "DeFiforAll" fund (29-4-2021). "The funding, in MATIC tokens, will come from the network’s ecosystem fund and be deployed over the next two to three years."
  • Gave a 'significant grant' to Tidal Finance (27-4-2021).
  • Had an IEO on Binance.
  • Got seed money from Coinbase Ventures.

Partners

Regard all below partnerships with skepticism, it turned out Polygon paid millions to secure its "partnerships" (30-11-2023).

"Near Foundation and Polygon Labs announced (12-11-2023) that they would build “a zero-knowledge (ZK) prover for WASM blockchains.” For WASM chains using the zkWASM prover, settling transactions will be more efficient and cost-effective with maximum security guarantees. Through the zkWASM prover, the NEAR Protocol is brought closer to Ethereum which in turn makes it possible for WASM networks to access liquidity. Eventually, chains will also have access to shared liquidity in a single ecosystem of Cloud Development Kit (CDK)-deployed chains through “an in-development interoperability layer.”"

"Gitcoin and Matic announced that they have formed a long term staking partnership with Matic to collectively grow the scalability community of Web 3." Gitcoin is also part of the Ren Alliance.

“Matic architecture is [designed to enable a] … secure and efficient link between the Ethereum blockchain and Matic sidechains. That’s where MANTRA DAO’s … secure staking infrastructure steps in. The security of that Layer 1-Layer 2 link is managed by validators. Transactions are made on the sidechains and are recorded into blocks minted by selected validators. When a sufficient number of blocks is reached, these are checked by a selected validator that will record the trace and send it to the Ethereum blockchain.” 

"Polygon continued its aggressive business development strategy, announcing new partnerships with Acentrik, Disney Accelerator, Reddit, Robinhood, Starbucks, and Worldpay."

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