Crypto of the Week: Polygon

By Fergus Halliday

June 11 2021
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While the rest of the cryptocurrency market has struggled over the past month, one token in particular has run against the trend and instead thrived.

Polygon’s MATIC token is our crypto of the week: Here’s everything you need to know about it.

What is Polygon (MATIC)?

Previously known as the Matic Network and launched in 2017, Polygon is a blockchain-based solution designed to address the challenges of scaling the ethereum network.

The short version here is that, as the popularity of ethereum has grown, the amount of transactions and activity on the ethereum blockchain has accelerated to a point where it risks becoming bogged down and inefficient.

As put by Coforge, “The popularity of the network has resulted in a large number of transactions being executed on Ethereum public blockchain network, and these transactions have started testing scalability limits of the network.”

Polygon looks to solve this problem by moving ethereum transactions onto a secondary blockchain (sometimes called a sidechain), resolving them and then transferring them back onto the main ethereum blockchain to be finalised.

While its current implementation is tied to the ethereum network, the team behind Polygon are hoping to position it within the industry as the go-to platform for launching interoperable blockchains in the future.

According to the website, “with Polygon, any project can easily spin up a dedicated blockchain network which combines the best features of standalone blockchains (sovereignty, scalability and flexibility) and ethereum (security, interoperability and developer experience)”.

Who made the Polygon (MATIC) token?

The Polygon team is a fairly close-knit affair, made up of approximately 12 people.

The CEO of the project, Jaynti Kanani, was previously a data scientist with Housing.com

Investors in Polygon include Binance, Coinbase, MiH Capital and ZBS Capital.

What is the MATIC token used for?

The MATIC token has several uses within the Polygon blockchain ecosystem.

The main one is that it can be used to pay network fees accrued whenever the network is used to transfer data. At a high level, this works fairly similarly to how ether is used to pay gas fees on the ethereum network.

The MATIC token is also used for governance purposes, giving holders a vote on Polygon Improvement Proposals and can be staked to take advantage of the network’s proof-of-stake system.

How much is the Polygon (MATIC) token worth?

As of 10 June 2021, MATIC is priced at US$1.48 per unit.

Tallied up at that price, MATIC has a market cap of approximately US$9.26 billion.

For comparison, bitcoin (BTC) currently has a market cap of US$953 billion, while ether (ETH) sits in second place at US$463 billion.

Where can you buy the Polygon (MATIC) token?

The Polygon (MATIC) token can be purchased using major cryptocurrency exchanges such as:

Binance
Coinbase
Huobi Global
FTX
KuCoin
Gemini
Gate.io
Kraken
Uniswap

About the author

Fergus Halliday

Fergus is a journalist for Momentum Media's nestegg and Smart Property Investment. He likes to write about money, markets, how innovation is changing the financial landscape and how younger consumers can achieve their goals in unpredictable times.

About the author

Fergus Halliday

Fergus is a journalist for Momentum Media's nestegg and Smart Property Investment. He likes to write about money, markets, how innovation is changing the financial landscape and how younger consumers can achieve their goals in unpredictable times.

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