Polygon (MATIC/POL)
Ethereum Layer 2 network — faster and cheaper transactions, large ecosystem.
Polygon is an L2 solution for Ethereum that dramatically reduces costs and increases transaction speed while maintaining Ethereum network security.
Products:
•Polygon PoS — the oldest network, EVM compatible, ~$0.001 fee
•Polygon zkEVM — ZK-Rollup with Ethereum equivalence
•Polygon CDK — toolkit for building custom ZK chains
Token: MATIC → POL (rebrand 2024), used for gas and staking.
Adoption: Disney, Reddit, Meta, Starbucks, DraftKings used Polygon for Web3 projects. Largest corporate adopter in the NFT space.
Ecosystem: QuickSwap DEX, Aave on Polygon, OpenSea.