Polygon tries to solidify its position as the go-to solution for Ethereum projects. Recently, traffic on Polygon surpassed that of Ethereum, mostly based on app activity and DeFi. Polygon also redirects a part of its unlocked supply for a developer grant program.
Polygon has the advantage of an early start, as it has been drawing games, DeFi, and other projects that first launched on Ethereum. In the past, Polygon has shown its capacity to carry large-scale NFT mints or on-chain traffic for real-time games.
Read: Polygon Price Prediction 2024-2030: Is MATIC Going Past $10 Soon?
In the past weeks, Polygon again surpassed Ethereum’s Layer 1, which is now used less often for final settlement. Polygon also carries a larger share of USDT tokens, boosting DeFi usage with lower fees.
The past weeks also saw Polygon increase its user count while fees decreased. The increased usage coincides with a return to DeFi and growth in lending protocols, some of which use Polygon as their base blockchain. As some traffic was redirected to the leading L2 solutions, Ethereum’s daily active users decreased to under 250K daily active wallets.
The Polygon user count has also grown organically, without significant spikes because of campaign events. Polygon activity is not a novelty, as the platform has existed for multiple bull and bear markets. A return of users also signals health for several types of apps represented on the blockchain.
Polygon usage is still not entirely free, and some protocols are very competitive. Top smart contracts and DeFi apps may require more than 7 MATIC in fees, but usually, fees hover around 1 MATIC.
Most of the apps on Polygon are long-lived and include versions of Uniswap and native swap services. Games like PlanetIX and Sunflower Land continue to drive traffic. Some projects, like Matr1x and IntellaX, even dropped their versions on other networks.
The current Polygon network is worth more than $900M, still far from the boom of DeFi in 2021. Growth also comes from Polygon ZK EVM, a new scaling solution that already hosts versions of the most used DEX and DeFi protocols.
Also read: Polygon vs Arbitrum, Which Is Better Between the Most Talked-About Layer 2 Scaling Solutions?
Both Polygon protocols also draw in stablecoin inflows. The Polygon main bridge is worth over $63.7M and is one of the most widely used cross-chain facilities. The bridge also sees a relatively small daily turnover, as most assets sent to Polygon are rarely brought back on the main chain.
Polygon Labs is also expanding solutions to host trending blockchain use cases. One of the recent growth sectors is DePin, which has created a new infrastructure for decentralized activities. Polygon also aims for more cross-chain projects by building the open-source Agglayer, a tool for direct cross-chain activities.
Polygon is also targeting Rust developers to deploy new use cases.
They also focus on DeFi, while NFT trading has slowed down. Polygon has also grown in contract deployers and smart contracts built onto the new platform in the past two months. Besides external developers, Polygon shows regular code commits from nine core developers.
Polygon expands grant program for developers
The Polygon platform will now use some of its unlocked tokens in a developer grant program.
The program will serve as a gradual release schedule for new MATIC, part of which may not be traded, but is needed to subsidize gas. MATIC tokens are fully unlocked, but the Polygon Foundation and the ecosystem funds hold more than 2B tokens for future distribution.
MATIC tokens are a staple and have been adopted for DeFi and gaming. Polygon also created 500K distinct addresses and added another 100K wallets during the bull market in 2024. Despite its size, Polygon aspires to be more than a solution for scaling Ethereum.
MATIC tokens are still a top 20 asset based on market cap, with a relatively stable price of $0.62. In the past years, MATIC behaved more conservatively, serving as a utility token.
Cryptopolitan reporting by Hristina Vasileva
