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Matic (Polygon) - Worth Buying?

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@revisesociology
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Matic is the token that powers the Polygon Ecosystem, billed as 'Ethereum's' Internet of Blockchains'.

You're most likely familiar with it as the token used to pay the incredibly cheap fees on Polygon's defi platforms such as Polycat finance, but is it worth buying and staking Matic itself?

The price has seen a 10 times increase since the beginning of this year, but seems to have levelled out, ranging at just above $1.

The question is - does it have any more real upside potential with all of competitors in this space, and given it's similarity to Polkadot, Atom and ETH 2.0 itself?

What are Polygon/ Matic?

Polygon aims to be Ethereum’s internet of blockchains, Ethereum's 'swiss army knife' if you like - it's main aim is to make it easier for developers to build dapps and even independent blockchains which can (optionally) leverage the underlying security of the Ethereum network.

It is very similar to Polkadot and Cosoms but the difference is anything built on Polygon can leverage the security, robustness and network effects of Ethereums’ base layer.

This means that if anything goes wrong with a project built on Polygon, it would be possible to reclaim funds by going back to the Ethereum layer, but given that leveraging this functionality is optional, I guess you should check to see any dapps built on polygon have this built in, if your concerned about this.

Polygon Architecture is divided into four layers:

  • The Ethereum layer - security and consensus
  • The Polygon security layer
  • Polygon’s network layer - interopeeratibility
  • Execution - smart contracts

In other word's it's Complex - but the 70 page long White Paper does have this handy diagram in it to explain how all that fits together....

There's a lot of Partnerships with and Dapps already built on Polygon

Polygon has partnered with all of the following which have allowed more than 100 Dapps to be built on its ecosystem...

  • Several DEFI apps are now integrated with Polygon - including Aave and Vault.

  • Quick Swap seems to be one of the most successful Dexs around in the Defi space

  • Polymarket is an interesting Dapp which allows you to bet on events, and take profits at any time! (NICE!)

  • Graph is integrated with Polygon which allows for easy tracking of transactions and investments

  • Some NFTs are hosted on Polygon such as Atari's NFT platform is hosted on Polygon Aavegotchis (which sold out in 60 seconds) were released on Polygon.

  • Matic is also list on Coinbase

The Matic token

Matic token is used to pay for all of these apps, so demand will probably continue.

It is possible to stake Matic to Validators and receive staking rewards, which vary from 4% to 420% per year depending on the proportion of the total supply staked (which sounds NICE, plenty of potential for return there.)

Matic has a fixed supply of 10 billion, but a good chunk of what’s already been minted has been allocated to private investors and the core development team, locked for up to three years, but more become available every six months, meaning a possible flatlining of the price in the short to medium term.

Matic/ Polygon - the downsides...

The success of Polygon and thus Matic all depends what happens with Eths’ scaling solutions. If ETH 2.0 scales successfully, that renders Polygon redundant as the main selling points is that Polygon solves Eth’s problems

Polygon are apparently having hard time finding Devs, but I guess we could say that about ANY project.

The company is based in India, and there is a lot of FUD about crypto coming out of India, but it this might all just be noise, there is some talk of a crypto ban being unconstitutional

Final thoughts - Matic - worth buying?

For me it's a yes - there's a lot to like about Matic - it allows for fast, very cheap transactions, it WORKS, there's a lot of development going on (despite the lack of Devs) and given the slow slow pace of Ethereum's scaling development I think there could be utility in this platform for even years to come.

However I'm not sure that piling in right NOW is a good idea, given the sell pressure coming from locked up tokens being released and the fact that it's already done a 10 times this year, we could see a lot of sell pressure in the coming months.

So I might look at picking some up, but maybe not this year.

Polygon/ Matic - Find out More....

The video below from coin bureau is well worth a watch! https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1055&v=34wQaNSvi10&feature=emb_logo

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