Polygon's Impressive Portfolio of Ethereum Scaling Solutions
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TL:DR;
Is Polygon positioning itself as the dominant layer 2 scaling solution for Ethereum with its suite of projects?
Axie Infinity launches its mobile app on Android.
Chainforest member Nick van der Vink hosts the Moonshot Research Podcast
Crypto In The News
Germany announced that it is making all crypto gains tax-free after one year. This includes coins that have been staked. Germany adds itself to an increasing list of countries with crypto-friendly tax rules.
Robinhood announced this week that it’s releasing a non-custodial cryptocurrency wallet that will have no network fees. The wallet will be a “hot wallet” and allow users to have control of their crypto. This app, which is set to launch in late 2022 will be a separate app from the current Robinhood App.
Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon proposed a hard fork of $LUNA, calling it a “rebirth” of the Terra Blockchain. The forked blockchain would focus its efforts in the DeFi sector and all “Classic” chain holders would receive an airdrop of the new chain’s token.
Polygon’s Impressive Suite of Ethereum Scaling Solutions
Could Polygon be leading the charge as the best layer 2 project being built on Ethereum? Many would argue that they are already up there, but competitors such as Optimism and Arbitrum (amongst others) are giving Polygon a run for their money. However, Polygon is developing a whole suite of Ethereum scaling solutions, with some already launched and others currently being developed, that aims to take the Ethereum layer 2 scaling by storm.
Polygon Zero: Built to be the World’s Fastest ZK Rollup
Polygon Zero brands itself as the “World’s most performant ZK L2”. It does this through its use of Plonky2, which is 100x faster than current alternatives. Plonky2 achieves this performance through its use of recursive proofs, which is a much more efficient method of verifying transactions by allowing the chain to scale horizontally. A recursive proof can be accomplished on Plonky2 in just 170 milliseconds. Using recursive proofs, the protocol isn’t limited by its weakest node, but rather by its total compute power. The proof size is also only 45 kb in size-optimized mode and is fully compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine. All of this combined could make Polygon Zero the fastest and cheapest to verify protocol on Ethereum.
Polygon Miden: The General Purpose zk-rollup
Polygon Miden uses zk-STARKS to combine thousands of transactions into a single Ethereum transaction, increasing production and reducing fees. This rollup combines the security of the Ethereum ecosystem with a throughput of 1,000+ transactions per second before sharding and 10,000+ transactions per second after sharding. The code on Polygon Miden will be open sourced and boasts “community-driven development”.
Polygon Nightfall: Privacy Enabled Optimistic Rollup for Enterprises
Polygon Nightfall is a hybrid optimistic-zk rollup whose primary focus is privacy around business transactions, specifically supply chain networks. In its most notable project to date, the Polygon team partnered with Big Four accounting Firm Ernst & Young (E&Y) to launch ‘The EY OpsChain Supply Chain Manager’ on Polygon Nightfall which aims to help businesses move and track inventory at a low cost. A token is created for each inventory item or asset and is then tracked on the blockchain in correlation with the physical product. The privacy aspect ensures that only selected parties can view this information, protecting companies’ private information. The product is currently in beta testing at: https://blockchain.ey.com/
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Polygon Edge: The Modular Blockchain That Allows You To Build Your Own Blockchain
Polygon Edge is a modular blockchain that allows users to run their own Ethereum compatible blockchain network. The idea of this is that this allows users to use Polygon Edge’s customizability to build a blockchain specific to their project. Users can customize the type of consensus used, who are the validators, and much more. In the future Polygon Edge is focusing on their cross-chain bridge solution.
Polygon Avail: For Standalone Chains, Side-chains, and Off Chain Scaling Solutions
Polygon Avail aims to enable standalone chains and side-chains to “bootstrap validator security without needing to create and manage their own validator set by guaranteeing transaction data availability”. They advertise that chains created with CosmosSDK or Substrate can benefit by using Avail.
Polygon Hermez: The ZK-rollup Bringing Scalability to Ethereum
It was announced in August of 2021 that the Hermez Project will be joining forces with the Polygon team to form Polygon Hermez. Polygon Hermez is a layer two zk-rollup built on top of the Ethereum network designed to bring scalability to Ethereum. Hermez uses mathematical proofs to verify and settle transactions and the project boasts 2,000 TPS (compared to Ethereum’s current 12-15 TPS).
This impressive suite of projects could fast track scalability and high gas fees that the Ethereum Mainnet has run into in recent history. As users have moved their activity to blockchains with faster transaction times and lower gas fees, Polygon’s scaling solutions look to bring back the users to the Ethereum networks by increasing scalability.
Axie Infinity Launches Its Mobile Game on Android
The popular cryptocurrency game Axie Infinity has now launched its mobile game ‘Axie Infinity: Origin’ on android mobile devices.
Prior to this, users could only play the game on PCs. The game is not currently on the Google Play Store, but is downloaded using the APK file through the official link. Those looking to download should be cautious and double check the link to avoid malicious actors using fake links. With the launch comes a beginners gameplay guide to celebrate the Android deployment. The download includes three free starter Axies, aimed to help incentivize new users to the game.
Arguably the most popular blockchain based game, adding the ability to play on mobile devices will likely not only increase the users playing the game, but the play time of current users as they will have more opportunity to play given the fact that they won’t be limited to being near a computer to play. More users and more play time should equal more revenue to the project. Considering that Axie and the Ronin network were subject to A $625 million dollar hack earlier in the year, this new feature brings a much needed uplift in the news cycle of the game.
Around the Fire: Community Updates
Chainforest founder Amit (@AmitMukherjee) tweeted his thoughts on the comparisons of the UST crash with that of the Lehman Brother’s crash:
Chainforest member Nick van der Vink (@USA_pharoah) hosted the Moonshot Research Podcast and discussed UST’s depeg and the future of algorithmic stable coins. A link to his podcast can be found by clicking here.