Polygon: A Polymorphic Approach to Scaling Ethereum

The rising gas fees on Ethereum over the last year have launched an arms race for scalable, decentralized, and secure solutions to lower user costs. Users still crave DeFi yields and liquidity rewards; many newcomers just don’t want to pay the steep entry fee to play the casino on Ethereum. Newer and more efficient layer 1s like Binance Smart Chain (BSC) have stolen a march on Ethereum, but the flagship smart contract platform still has a devout following of DeFi users and developers that want to help make it more cost-efficient.

For protocols that want to take advantage of Ethereum’s unmatched developer community, the only answer to high gas fees is to push lower value transactions off the base layer, at least temporarily, and onto so-calledscaling solutions.

Polygon is one of these solutions, and it’s leading the charge for Ethereum’s vertical scaling strategy. Polygon is currently seeing the significant benefits of being the only Ethereum-aligned and EVM-compatible side chain that offers lower fees and faster transaction times. While other layer 2 solutions continue to be delayed, Polygon could take advantage of its first-mover advantage to build a solid and lasting ecosystem.

Many popular games and other low-value applications that can only survive in a low-fee environment have rapidly migrated to Polygon. The recent launch of veteran DeFi giants Aave, Sushiswap, and Curve has driven total value locked (TVL) on Polygon to over $4 billion, a 450% increase in one month.

Not content with its growing side chain business, Polygon rebranded itself recently in order to launch its new plan to offer users a software development kit (SDK) to build any layer 2 solution. If successful, it could play a central role in the burgeoning layer 2 universe.

The Matic Side Chain