About

Polygon is a suite of Ethereum-based scaling solutions designed to enhance the performance of the Ethereum blockchain by moving computation and data storage off-chain into low-fee, high-speed environments. It has evolved from a single chain into a diverse network of blockchains, driven by the need for interoperability among blockchains.

The MATIC token, initially deployed as an ERC-20 token on Ethereum, has been used within the Polygon ecosystem for network fees, staking, and governance. It has been bridged to various EVM-compatible networks and is expected to be phased out in favor of the POL token as part of the Polygon 2.0 upgrade.

History

Polygon was initially launched as “Matic Network” in 2017. It was co-founded by Jaynti Kanani, Sandeep Nailwal, Anurag Arjun, and Mihailo Bjelic to address blockchain scaling and usability issues. Some blockchains, like Ethereum, face higher latency and transaction costs. Layer-2 scaling solutions or external sidechain networks can act as load balances for networks that cannot inherently scale as user activity increases.

Matic Network (now Polygon PoS) launched its mainnet and core contracts on Ethereum in May 2020. At launch, all validators on the PoS chain were managed by the Matic Foundation, one of the entities behind the network's development and adoption. The foundation gradually relinquished its control by onboarding third-party validators throughout 2020 and began shutting down its nodes in February 2021.

Matic Network rebranded to Polygon in February 2021 to offer developers a suite of scaling solutions beyond its existing PoS chain. Since the pivot, Polygon acquired the ZK-rollup solution Hermez (Polygon Hermez) and the ZK-rollup solution Mir Protocol (Polygon Zero). Additionally, Polygon has worked on other initiatives, such as Polygon Miden and Polygon Nightfall, in an attempt to bring more privacy to Ethereum transactions. Based on a commercially reasonable search, only Polygon Miden is still in development (public testnet). The other initiatives have been discontinued, combined with others, or spun off as separate, independent projects.

Notable milestones in the project’s development include:

• June 22, 2022 - The project team launched Polygon ID, allowing users to prove specific aspects of identity without revealing personal information. On Feb. 1, 2024, Polygon CEO Marc Borion announced that Polygon ID would be developed separately going forward by a 33-person team that was being spun out in the following months.
• October 2022 - Polygon announced that Polygon Supernets, built with the Edge SDK and enabling quicker deployment of subchains like Avalanche’s subnets, would leverage Axelar for cross-chain asset transfers. Supernets has been rebranded to the Polygon Chain Development Kit (CDK) and is live.
• March 2023 - Polygon launched the Polygon zkEVM on its mainnet beta in March 2023. According to Polygon Co-Founder Mihailo Bjelic, the Polygon Hermez, Zero, and Miden project teams contributed to its development.
• June 2023 - Polygon Labs unveiled Polygon 2.0, a series of proposed upgrades to the Polygon ecosystem that aims to unify all Polygon protocols and blockchains using Zero-Knowledge (ZK) technology. As a part of the Polygon 2.0 roadmap, the project team plans on upgrading the Polygon PoS network to a zkEVM Validium network that shares security with Ethereum. Although, based on a commercially reasonable search, the upgrade has not yet been implemented.
• September 2023 - “Phase 0” of Polygon 2.0 began, with the following Polygon Improvement Proposals (PIPs) being released: PIP-17, PIP-18, and PIP-19. These PIPs collectively outline the initial steps of Polygon 2.0.
• October 2023 - The POL token went live on Ethereum Mainnet. As per the blog post announcing the token’s mainnet launch, “this token upgrade does not change active systems on either the Polygon PoS or Polygon zkEVM networks.” While implementation for PIP-17, PIP-18, and PIP-19 was estimated to begin in Q4 2023, a commercially reasonable search found that none of the proposed changes are live.
• January 2024 - Polygon Labs unveiled the “Aggregation Layer” (AggLayer) as part of Polygon 2.0. AggLayer is a decentralized protocol designed for "near-instant atomic cross-chain transactions" and for “unifying liquidity across the Polygon ecosystem.” As of May 2024, the first components, including a unified bridge to Ethereum and a bridgeAndCall() library of Solidity contracts, are live on the mainnet. Additionally, Polygon zkEVM is the only chain connected to this protocol. A commercially reasonable search found no further updates published regarding the AggLayer.
• February 2024 - Polygon Labs announced the release of a Type 1 upgrade for the zkEVM, enabling any existing Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) chain to become a ZK (Zero-knowledge) Layer-2 chain and integrate with the AggLayer. The Type 1 prover is open-source, dual-licensed under MIT and Apache 2.0, and its code is available on GitHub.