In my last article, I put forward a framework for researching and evaluating blockchains. Before I go deeper and look at specific DApps and tokens running in an ecosystem, I want to apply the framework to a real world example. Below is my research and evaluation of the Polygon network.
What is it?
CoinMarketCap has a good writeup:
While Matic was a simple layer-2 scaling solution for Ethereum, Polygon is the infrastructure for a network of massively scaling, collaborative blockchains that retain their self-sovereignty.
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At first, all Polygon ecosystem stand-alone chains will be Matic PoS chains, but other side chains and enterprise chains will be supported with a later update.
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As of writing, Polygon only supports the Matic Plasma scaling solution (an example of more viable plasma). This essentially works by offloading transactions from the Ethereum main chain onto Polygon’s Matic PoS chain, before finalizing everything on the mainchain.
Where did the code come from?
The four co-founders have github and linkedIn profiles. A couple are sparse, but they all look like real people with history running back before the project started.
Who funded the project?
According to Crunchbase, Polygon has had 3 rounds of investment, starting with $450,000 in 2019. Two later rounds are undisclosed, with Mark Cuban listed as the most recent investor.
What is the consensus algorithm?
Finematics has a great explainer here.
In Polygon PoS Chain anyone can join the network and start validating the state of the blockchain.
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Since staking is actually done on the Ethereum smart contract, we don’t have to rely on validator honesty and instead inherit Ethereum chain security for this key part. Even if a majority of validators collude and start acting maliciously, the community can come together and redeploy the…
