POLYGON
A.k.a Matic
One can not talk about the cryptocurrency industry without mentioning Ethereum. Ethereum created the foundation upon which decentralized applications are developed. It introduced smart contracts with an unlimited number of use cases but Ethereum is not perfect, It brought solutions to history-long technological problems and at the same time created other problems. These problems are crucial because they pose setbacks for the mass adoption of web3 technology. The problems mainly being;
Low Throughput
Meaning — Network throughput refers to the rate of successful message delivery over a communication channel, such as Ethernet or packet radio, in a communication network. The data that these messages contain may be delivered over physical or logical links, or through network nodes.
Not User Friendly
When we say mass adoption we mean the whole world including the petty traders, cleaners, athletes etc basically everyone! and bear it in mind that only a fraction of these people would understand the technicalities of Ethereum therefore it is paramount that users can easily interact with the underlying technology and its Dapps.
Extremely expensive
Well, it’s quite obvious no one wants this.
The side chain with a Cape
In 2017, 3 digital nomads Sandeep Nailwal, Jaynti Kanani, and Anurag Arjun set out to solve all these problems and more, guess what.. they did.
Polygon is a layer 2 scaling platform that leverages on Ethereums security & decentralization while also creating high throughput, low transaction fees and a user-friendly UX experience. Since it is Ethereum compatible Developers can easily move their Ethereum dapps onto the polygon network without any hassle, taking advantage of the network’s better features. There are over 3k+ dapps on the polygon network and that number increases almost every day. Polygon is not the only Ethereum-compatible (Ethereum Virtual Machine EVM) network, there are other popular ones including Binance, Fantom, Avalanche etc.
The polygon side chain uses the proof of stake consensus model different from Ethereum’s present proof of work consensus. Proof of stake is way more faster and can handle more transactions per second. However, let us not limit Polygon to just an Ethereum side chain.
What Exactly is Polygon?
Polygon is a multi-chain network with suites of developer tools and support for other layer 2 scaling solutions like Sharding, Zk rollups, Optimistic rollups etc for the main objective of effectively scaling the main Ethereum chain network to millions of users. It’s difficult for new developers to build and test apps on the Ethereum network due to outrageous gas fees. Polygon gas fees are not even up to a penny, making it easy and cheap for new devs to jump in and try out new innovative dapps that they could come up with. When a technology demands world adoption it must first supply a community of skilled & creative developers. Blockchain technology is still in its early stages so developers are very important, especially at this phase.
How does it Work?
Polygon bundles a proof of stake mechanism alongside layer 2 scaling solutions to collectively create a commit chain to the main Ethereum chain. A commit chain functions as a transaction network that operates close to the main chain. This is how polygon achieves up to 65,000 transactions/second whereby the polygon commit chain groups up clusters of transactions and processes them all together before sending them back to the main chain. So Ethereum does not have to process all those blocks and clusters of transactions because polygon already did that for it and then provides data for Ethereum to understand all that happened.
Here is how the Matic Network will function:
- A user deposits a cryptographic asset in the Matic contract on the mainchain (currently implemented with Ethereum blockchain only).
- Once deposited, tokens get confirmed on the main chain, tokens will appear on the Matic Chain using Matic Deposit bridge (technical details explained in a dedicated section below).
- The user can now transfer tokens to anyone they want almost instantly (Matic Chain has faster blocks — approximately 1 second or less) for almost negligible fees.
- Whenever the user wishes to, they can withdraw tokens to the main Ethereum chain by establishing proof of remaining tokens on Root contract (contract deployed on Ethereum chain).
Through this mechanism, The Matic Network achieves high transcation speed with a high degree of decentralization and finality on Mainchain. In the first version which has Ethereum only as the base chain, Ethereum root contract enforces solvency and finality through header block(checkpoints) very efficiently.
POLYGON’S ARCHITECHTURE
The Ethereum layer is made up of different Ethereum-based smart contracts. These contracts are in-charge of Staking, Transaction approval and interaction of Ethereum and Polygon’s numerous side chains. This is how Polygon manages to keep in touch with Ethereum or provide Ethereum with data from time to time.
The Security Layer works alongside Ethereum to provide validator services which give chains an additional layer of security.
The Polygon Network Layer is an ecosystem of blockchain networks developed on polygon. Every blockchain network has its own community where they conduct consensus mechanisms and blocks are produced.
Execution Layer
Also known as Polygons Ethereum Virtual Machine(EVM). The execution layer’s main function is to execute smart contracts on the actual Polygon blockchain. Its compatibility with EVM gives it a smooth user experience for developers using the Ethereum main chain.
Polygon native token is Matic.
If someone notices a fraudulent transaction, the rollup will execute a fraud-proof and run the transaction’s computation, using the available state data. This means you may have longer wait times for transaction confirmation than a ZK-rollup because the transaction could get challenging.
Thanks for reading. Follow me on twitter @Danny_navigator. I have bunch of web3 & crypto related threads and posts… Oh and also my online handbook ‘The Navigator’ linked on my bio. Cheers!
