Polygon

Polygon

Polygon is a series of Layer 2 scaling solutions for Ethereum. It was founded and launched in 2017 by Jaynti Kanani, Sandeep Nailwal, Anurag Arjun and Mihailo Bjelic. Prior to taking on the name of Polygon it was called MATIC.

The PoS Chain

It was launched in 2021 and allows for EVM-interoperability with Ethereum. It is technically defined as a Plasma Chain, which means that the PoS chain periodically posts a "snapshot" of its state to the Ethereum blockchain. Differently from L2 scaling solutions, Polygon PoS chain does not share Ethereum security, it has instead its own consensus mechanism based on MATIC staking by validators. It features low fees and fast transaction execution, two features which attracted a vibrant DeFi and NFTs ecosystem.

Polygon Hermez

Hermez is a ZK-rollup currently used only for payments (token transfers) but with the aim to become a general purpose EVM-compatible rollup.

Polygon Avail

Avail is a data availability layer which other blockchains or rollups can use to post their data and retrieve it. It uses erasure coding to always ensure data availability.

Polygon Nightfall

Nightfall is another ZK-rollup with privacy features. It leverages ZK technology to bring privacy to the blockchain.

Other projects

Polygon is also developing two other ZK-rollups, namely

• Polygon Zero
• Polygon Miden, a STARK-based ZK rollup

It also offers Polygon Edge which is a modular and extensible framework for building private or public Ethereum-compatible blockchain networks.