Q&A with Polygon

In case you missed the news, we recently announced that the Polygon blockchain has launched on the Wirex Wallet! We wanted to explore the ideas behind Polygon and Arjun Kalsy, VP of Growth at Polygon, was able to provide us with some exclusive insight into what the project is about.

What is the Polygon blockchain, and what makes it different to other blockchains?

Polygon is a scaling solution aggregator for Ethereum, designed to address two of its biggest drawbacks, high gas fees and slow transaction speeds. With its ease of use, low cost and high processing speeds, Polygon is quickly becoming the de-facto platform for Web3 developers to build their projects, powering over 7,000 decentralized applications (dApp) so far. Some of the high-profile projects that make up Polygon’s vibrant ecosystem include Uniswap, SushiSwap, Decentraland & Sandbox.

We first came together to address Ethereum's high gas fees and congested network. Now, we’re bringing like-minded people together to contribute to the protocol or build their own dApps on Polygon.

What specific issues within the crypto community is the Polygon project hoping to solve?

Ethereum seeks to decentralize products and services in a variety of use cases that transcend money, but transactions are costly and can take a long time to process. These issues are only made worse when traffic is high, deterring developers who wish to scale their projects efficiently. We address this by taking a multi-chain approach by creating a scaling solutions aggregator.

We offer a variety of solutions for Web3 developers to build on Polygon and leverage our low cost and speedy transactions. We’re essentially emerging as the Amazon Web Services (AWS) of Web3. By taking a multichain approach for scaling Ethereum, developers can choose what solution they require —a full-blown side chain, zero-knowledge roll up, proof of stake chain, or create a custom chain based on their needs and requirements.

Other parameters include: levels of decentralization, gas fees, transactions speeds, censorship resistance, etc

Polygon Edge, Polygon PoS Chain and Polygon Avail are three Web3 solutions akin to Amazon Web Services’ offerings for Web2 developers.

Important to add, unlike today’s Web2 solutions, Web3 will not be held by one entity, it will be decentralized. The community will be running these nodes, not Polygon.

What role is blockchain technology and dApps playing in the role of the Web 3.0, and how is Polygon supporting this?

In web3, dApps contain the business logic on which users create transactions which are then executed on the underlying blockchain infrastructure layer. To onboard millions of users to Web3, we need to create a large ecosystem of dApps so that there is a high degree of composability which can then be supported by the underlying high-performance blockchain infrastructure.

At Polygon we have built one of the largest Dapp ecosystems in the blockchain space. Over 7000 Dapps are live on Polygon including all Tier-1 Dapps in DeFi, NFT & Gaming. To further grow our Dapp ecosystem, we are actively focussing on two main aspects:

• Developer Education and Tooling - we want to make it really easy to develop dApps on Polygon. To achieve this we are focusing on creating high-quality content and tooling to make it easier and more efficient to create dApps on Polygon. We are also working on improving dApp design by creating systems like Finity - which is a UI design hub to help dApp developers to create high-quality front ends.
• Ecosystem Grants & Support - Polygon has a very comprehensive grants program in which grants are administered by our Ecosystem DAO. We also have an investment arm that invests in projects which are solving core ecosystem problems. We also help Dapps with marketing support to help them get more adoption and users on launch.

Our aim is to be able to provide a 360-degree support system to dApps looking to get deployed on Polygon.

Why is ensuring scalability so important in blockchain projects?

For blockchain technology to be successful, millions of people need to be able to onboard without compromising UI/UX. Without highly scalable blockchain infrastructure, we will be unable to realise this dream. At Polygon we are trying to create the technology and platforms which will allow blockchain technology to be used and applied at global scale.

Blockchains like Ethereum provide for a high degree of security but are also slow and expensive to use. Polygon enables fast transactions at a very low cost so that applications can build business logic without worrying about transaction performance. To achieve this, we are building a suite of scalability solutions that fit all the different use cases that a developer might need. We have done this while preserving the same Ethereum Virtual Machine execution environment as Ethereum along with full interoperability. This means that any code written for an EVM blockchain can be used with minimal changes and deployed on Polygon.

This allows us to also scale the number of developers and project builders for the web3 space.

What do you think is in store for the crypto movement going forward?

We’re at the forefront of seeing a paradigm shift in the way businesses are run, owing to decentralized autonomous organisations (DAO). DAOs enable anyone who holds its tokens to have a say in the running of the business by voting on proposals on-chain. This means rules and regulations are codified via the use of smart contracts allowing its members to come to a consensus on operational decisions.

This is turning traditional hierarchies on their heads by dissolving this model altogether, taking on an egalitarian approach to decision-making in the company. In August last year, we announced plans to create our own DAO to onboard our next 100 million users.

Where do you hope Polygon will be in the next year or so?

We hope to continue driving innovation in the Web3 space by building the infrastructure needed for developers to build scalable projects. Within the next year, we are looking to deploy our next-generation ZK Rollup blockchains and further build tooling support for our ecosystem.

What’s one interesting fact about Polygon/MATIC that we might not know?

Polygon is not just a single blockchain but instead is a suite of solutions that include standalone chains, sidechains and off-chain scaling solutions that come together to solve Ethereum’s scalability issues. Polygon’s multi-chain design features a generic validation layer that compliments Polygon Proof-of-Stake chains and Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) sidechains. This way, the blockchains can run simultaneously, interacting and moving assets to each other.