Thread by @srinathariharan

If you know ETH, you've heard of Polygon - $MATIC

They've had a ton of buzz recently with @mcuban investing in them

and have seen a 500% rally since April

But what is it? I read the whitepaper, so you don't have to

Here's all about polygon for the avg non technical user

a 🧵

Polygon started as Matic Network in 2017 by @sandeepnailwal @_anuragarjun and @_jdkanani

For context

Polygon sits on the ethereum ecosystem

It tries to solve the biggest problems with the network while taking advantage of the existing ecosystem of solidity devs, Dapps and users

Ethereum did ~1.2 million transactions/day

ETH killers like DOT do avg of 10-15k/day

More *imp* context:

Polygon uses an adaptation of Plasma

Plasma was created by @VitalikButerin and @jcp

it tries to do for smart contracts what the lightning network did for micropayments

TLDR: Plasma makes smart contract processing faster using off chain transactions

What is polygon?

Polygon uses a modified version of plasma to create an ecosystem of side chains on popular blockchains

Think of it like this:

If the ETH main chain is the trunk of a tree, polygon is trying to create a series of branches and sub-branches

How it works:

As seen in the image, polygon has a checkpoints layer and a blocks layer

For every few blocks on the blocks layer a checkpoint with all the signatures is created

This is added to the ethereum network and can be contested by anyone for a limited time

Further clarity:

The Ethereum network is made to prioritise high value transactions

Polygon tech is for micropayments

So instead of every low value transaction paying high GAS each

A handful of low value transactions each pay small Matic fee and together pay one GAS fee

Consensus mechanism:

Polygon has dual POS at the checkpointing and block producer level which leads to:

- High transaction speeds (~1 second block generation)

- low to negligible fees

- ETH gas fees are only payable for every checkpoint block

Advantage 1: Horizontal sharding

Polygon allows for unlimited sidechains, which could mean that scaling becomes incredibly easy

Furthermore - Businesses could have their own internal side chain for information

almost like a local area network

The sky is the limit

Advantage 2: Not ETH exclusive

Polygon has started on ETH, but the goal is to be a centralised layer 2 solution for every major blockchain network

No matter who wins, polygon has a place

More importantly, cross chain compatibility becomes easier

Problems being solved: Ownership

One major problem that Polygon has been trying to solve is

verifying ownership of various sidechains

the team is working on various methods to solve this issue

What could go wrong:

- Since this is such an obvious scaling need, sidechains could just be the next update on legacy blockchains(ETH 3.0)

- This is important because Vitalik *was literally* the coauthor of the plasma paper. This is not a tech moat for Matic

Final sentiment:

all in all I'm bullish that the network effect of being on multiple blockchains makes it a winner

Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with the polygon team, just an enthusiast

If you like this thread,

id really appreciate an R/T

(the white paper was 26 pages long xD)

If you have questions - comment below 👇

and follow me @srinathariharan for more such content

First tweet if you want to R/t 😉

https://twitter.com/srinathariharan/status/1400862517698564097?s=19