‘POLYGON’ BRINGS HOME THE COVETED SHARK- MARK CUBAN IN A RAISE TO EXPAND THEIR PLATFORM.

An open, borderless world? We welcomed it with the globalization of our economy. Finance, on the other hand, has been catching up to this new-age phenomenon. Cryptocurrency, the next big revolution, and Indians are all here for it. Speed and safety of transactions remain a primary concern given the growth of e-commerce and cross-border sales. Blockchain technology allows for this to become a reality. Education of the society about the technology behind cryptocurrency needs to be the primary step for traditional institutions to make the shift towards adopting crypto. Fin-tech companies, crypto-friendly payment providers, and neo-banking platforms will significantly affect the way transactions are carried out, and customer processes such as Know-Your-Customer (KYC), Anti-Money Laundering (AML) procedures, as well as digital authentication, and Source of Fund (SoF) document verifications. 

The complete benefits of the various cryptocurrencies can be brought to fruition only through a leap of faith and adoption of this into mainstream finance. A major advantage being, the lack of intermediaries allows a globally valuable exchange. Ethereum, the latest buzz in the crypto world, is a decentralized, open-source blockchain technology with smart contract functionality. It is a close-runner to the most prominent cryptocurrency in the market, Bitcoin. Proposed in 2013 by Vitalik Buterin, the network went live in 2015 with Ether (ETH or  Ξ) as its native cryptocurrency of the platform. The key feature of this cryptocurrency is that it allows developers to build and deploy decentralized applications (Dapp) that allow the facilitation of smart contracts, i.e., an immutable, simple computer program that facilitates the secure exchange of valuable assets between two parties.

 Recognizing the scalability issue as well as the extremely high transaction (high gas) costs, three software engineers, Jaynti Kanani, Sandeep Nailwal, and Anurag Arjun created a well-structured and easy-to-use platform for Ethereum, transforming it into a multi-chain ecosystem with secured Layer 2 chains and standalone chains, to scale and develop the Ethereum infrastructure. Through a proof of concept, the engineers created the genesis of a platform that addressed the scalability issue, Matic Network. Entering the list of the world’s top 20 cryptocurrencies, making the co-founders, the first Indian crypto-billionaires, the Matic Network creates sidechains along with the Ethereum network to ease the user experience, as well as reduce the transaction costs through the creation of an infinite number of sidechains apart from the pre-existing ones. 

Through the entry of a fourth engineer, Mihailo Bjelic from Serbia in early 2021, Matic expanded its scope of operations and rebranded the company as ‘Polygon- The Internet of Ethereum Blockchains’. Initially raising funds from friends and family, the Bangalore-based startup raised $5 million in 2019 via Binance. Recently, in May 2021, Polygon, after rebranding itself, raised an undisclosed amount from US-tech billionaire and serial entrepreneur, Mark Cuban. With plans to integrate the platform into his portfolio company, Lazy.com which allows users to display their NFT’s with ease, the Big Shark claims to be a Polygon user himself. Having integrated the Polygon assets into Google Cloud’s BigQuery, the users can use this platform to inquire about any Polygon datasets, running analytics, or extracting insights. 

With over 400 apps running on the platform, 250 decentralized applications, 76 million transactions, and 7,90,000 unique users, Polygon crossed the market capitalization of $13 billion, raising its MATIC token by 24%. A few of the app’s range across games, virtual reality, cryptocurrency exchanges, and identity solution platforms among others. Apart from building a network of trust and arbitration, the company has affiliated itself with Infosys Ltd. and launched Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT), insurance, and decentralized finance (DeFi) into their systems. In a market dominated by Western companies, Polygon has been making substantial advancements in this field and establishing itself as a leading name in the market. 

Explore Polygon and the various solutions offered by the company.