Recently, I participated in creating solutions on the Binance Smart Chain network - precisely in order to avoid the costs of the Ethereum network.

Unfortunately, this is associated with costs in other areas, such as the need to use non-ETH decentralized exchanges, low decentralization of the BSC network (only 21 validators) and the lack of refined wallets (cooperation between Ledger and Metamask in the BSC network is currently only for advanced users). Recently in my analyzes I came across the Polygon network and tested it.

It turned out that this second layer to Ethereum basically no longer needs its first layer.

Currently ETHEREUM network needs POLYGON, not the other way around.

Polygon’s ticker is MATIC.

Polygon aims to provide tools to improve the speed and reduce the cost and complexity of transactions on blockchain networks.

Ethereum is at the center of Polygon's interest, as the high activity on its blockchain has made Ethereum almost useless as transmission costs rise and traffic becomes clogged.

Polygon presents itself as a Layer 2 network which means it acts as an add-on layer to Ethereum that is not intended to alter the original blockchain layer.

Following rebranding, Polygon retained its MATIC cryptocurrency, the digital coin on which the network is based. MATIC is used as the payment and settlement unit between participants that interact on the network.

Polygon was founded in India in 2017 and was initially called Matic Network. It was the brainchild of Ethereum developers Jaynti Kanani, Sandeep Nailwal and Anurag Arjun, as well as Mihailo Bjelic.

The Matic network was launched in 2020 and attracted Decentraland and MakerDAO among others. The Matic Network changed its name to Polygon in February 2021.

In its initial offer in April 2019, the Polygon team raised the equivalent of $ 5.6 million in ETH, selling 1.9 billion MATIC tokens in a quick 20-day period.

Polygon can be compared to other competing networks such as Polkadot, Cosmos, and Avalanche.

Architecture;

The core of the network is the Polygon Development Kit (SDK), used to create Ethereum-compatible dApps as sidechains and link them to the main blockchain.

Sidechains can be built using one of the following methods:

Plasma Chains – combine transactions into blocks, grouped into a single batch on the Ethereum blockchain

zk-Rollups – enable to combine multiple transfers into one transaction

Optimistic – collective packages – similar to Plasma Chains, but with the possibility of scaling Ethereum smart contracts

The main Polygon chain is the Proof of Stake (PoS) sidechain where network participants can place MATIC tokens to verify transactions and vote for network updates.

The main PoS Polygonside chain for Ethereum behaves like a full-fledged blockchain.

It is fully compatible with EVM so you can freely transfer contracts between both networks.

Conclusion;

POLYGON has become an independent network that is much cheaper to maintain than ETH. Currently, ETHEREUM needs POLYGON, not the other way around.

There are no differences in contract programming for POLYGON PoS, so switching between the BSC, ETH and Polygon chains does not require changes in the team or starting recruitment and knowledge building.

The BSC and Polygon PoS transaction costs are similar and average around $ 0.2.

The BSC speed is ~60 tx/s, and Polygon is ~65K tx/s.

Validators: BSC – 21, Polygon – 100 slots with the possibility of increasing this number.

The PoS process is managed by contracts deployed on the ETH network - everyone who has MATIC and starts Heimdall validator and Bor becomes a validator, which significantly increases the number of nodes in relation to BSC.

Using Layer 2 for dApp