Polygon to Delegate $189M Worth of MATIC to Bitfinex for Staking

Polygon to Delegate $189M Worth of MATIC to Bitfinex for Staking

In the new program with Bitfinex, users could receive up to 41% in annualized staking rewards by participating in the new MATIC program – but that is only “available for a limited time,” according to the post.

Polygon upgrade ignites token burn to make MATIC more valuable

Polygon, the layer-2 scaling network, rolled out a major upgrade on Tuesday, incorporating Ethereum’s London hard fork. With EIP 1599 now on its mainnet, the Polygon upgrade will now limit the supply of MATIC and make the tokens potentially more valuable.

Polygon upgrade EIP 1559 happened at block 23,850,000 just before 11 a.m. Hong Kong time. The purpose of the upgrade is to replace the current gas fee calculation mechanism to make it easier for users to estimate transaction fees while burning MATIC tokens. First tested on the Mumbai testnet in December, the Polygon upgrade also now offers “better fee visibility,” according to the Polygon team.

Tuesday’s update went smoothly, according to all accounts, and some suggest that this may lead to a boom in the price of MATIC, independently on Ethereum.

EIP-1559 replaces the first-price auction, in which the highest bidder wins, with a base fee for transactions. Users can also pay a priority fee to miners to speed up processing of their transactions.

“The key difference here is that the ‘base fee’ is burned rather than paid to miners,” Marcus Sotiriou, analyst at digital asset broker GlobalBlock, told Forkast. “This means that over time there will be less supply in circulation, hence making the MATIC token more deflationary.”

While the purpose of the Ethereum and Polygon upgrades is the same, there are differences in how they burn tokens. On Ethereum, the Ether token burn happens block by block, but for Polygon, MATIC tokens are first burnt on Polygon and then completed on Ethereum, Matthew Rossi, director of product management at Polygon told Forkast in an email.

“The update will have an immediate and noticeable effect on all of Polygon’s core stakeholders, i.e., MATIC owners as well as the ecosystems’ validators and delegators, dApp devs and users,” Rossi said. “Developers will benefit from the overhaul by having their Ethereum-related operations face minimal operational and tooling issues. At the same time, validators and delegators can reap the advantages of the upgrade’s aforementioned deflationary pressure — since all of their incentives are denominated in MATIC anyway.”

Polygon’s MATIC is the 14th largest crypto by market cap with its founders originating from India. Polygon has gained superstar status as the gateway to Ethereum when the latter was struggling with high network congestion and gas fees.

MATIC has a fixed supply of 10 billion tokens, with 6.8 billion currently in circulation. According to Polygon’s estimates, a total of around 0.27% of the total MATIC supply will be burned annually. Limiting the supply of MATIC would, therefore, make it deflationary, meaning that it will likely become more valuable over time.

While the upgrade does not lower transaction fees, which fluctuate with demand and supply, it allows users to estimate costs more accurately and hence reduces the number of users overpaying, Sotiriou said.

As a layer-2 scaling solution for Ethereum, Polygon usually offers lower transaction fees than Ethereum. But it has also struggled to keep transaction fees in check as it skyrocketed due to increased demand earlier this month, according to data from Dune Analytics.

Shivam Thakral, CEO of Indian crypto exchange BuyUcoin, told Forkast that the upgrade will “result in fewer spam transactions and less network congestion as currently the base fees increase automatically once the block is filled up.”

Following the trial of the upgrade in December, the price of MATIC had soared by nearly 30%, although it has now retraced those gains, mirroring the larger downtrend in crypto prices. “I expect MATIC to rise to new all-time highs soon and I would not be surprised if it rallied by over 30% in the coming weeks,” Sotiriou said.

However, Tony Sycamore, City Index’s senior market analyst for APAC, believes that it could take nearly six months for the upgrade to affect MATIC prices.

The current slump in MATIC prices “suggests greater macro forces are driving prices at this point of time, including interest rate hikes and reduced central bank liquidity,” Sycamore told Forkast. “Additionally, as the upgrade has been well-flagged, I think the price movement in the short term will be limited.”

In the long term, the upgrade will likely help drive MATIC prices higher as the benefits from the change start to materialize, Sycamore said.

At publishing time, MATIC prices — down 30.3% since its all-time high of US$2.92 on Dec. 27 — tumbled another 6.1% in the last 24 hours, to US$2.03, according to CoinGecko data.

But for developers and the larger Polygon ecosystem, the lower fees associated with the upgrade are still coming as good news.

“Projects built on Ethereum may be more inclined to shift over to MATIC with this upgrade,” Sotiriou said.

Polygon Expands Its Footprint As Evolving NFT And Gaming Ecosystems Seek Ethereum Alternatives

Built with an emphasis on simplicity and ease of use, Polygon (previously Matic) is designed to let organizations and businesses create and deploy their own decentralized applications (dApps). The platform serves as a layer-2 scaling solution that addresses the scalability and rising gas costs of Ethereum and other EMV-compatible networks. Additionally, it also works as a fully-functional chain on its own, thereby cementing itself as a preferred choice for a diverse range of blockchain-based projects.

The Polygon development team is also tapping into the NFT and blockchain gaming ecosystems to expand its offering footprint even further. As part of its efforts to bridge Web2 and Web3, Polygon recently launched Polygon Studios, a new initiative that will focus on NFT and blockchain gaming. As of date, Polygon has bloomed into a vibrant ecosystem with more than 100,000 active gamers on its network. More than 3,000 dApps are already harnessing the power of the Polygon network as the platform inches closer towards becoming the go-to layer-2 destination for blockchain gaming, DeFi, and NFTs atop Ethereum.

Polygon’s multichain infrastructure offers many features, including one-click deployment, extended modules for developing custom networks, and interoperability with Ethereum and other individual chains. In 2021, Polygon announced its intention to leverage the growth of NFTs by investing in Colexion, Asia’s biggest NFTs marketplace. The platform also highlighted that it would finance 50% of all development costs for projects on GameOn, one of the leading Asian game tech startups, to help bring NFT games on its network.

In the meantime, the Polygon team has also launched grants to support promising projects building on its network. Recently, blockchain game Gaia EverWorld, built on the Polygon technology stack, received an undisclosed amount from the Polygon Foundation via a grant. Harnessing Polygon’s unmatched speed and low gas fees, Gaia EverWorld unlocks unlimited opportunities for users in the metaverse.

The Gaia EverWorld project is backed by some of the biggest names within the crypto ecosystem, including Binance, BSCStation, AU21, Panda Capital, and others. The platform completed a successful $3.7 million funding round set to be allocated towards expanding into Binance Smart Chain via its NFT collection launch on the Binance NFT platform.

As the blockchain gaming and NFT markets continue their upward trajectory, users often face issues like slow throughputs and sky-high gas costs. Polygon combines the best of Ethereum and sovereign blockchains into an attractive feature set, making it one of the most preferred platforms for up-and-coming projects.

While there are hundreds of projects harnessing the power of Polygon, two NFT gaming use cases stand out for their potential to play crucial roles in the nascent blockchain gaming industry’s evolution amid the transition to Web3 and the metaverse.

Facilitating A Diverse Range Of Use Cases

XAYA, the blockchain game development studio behind the first-ever blockchain game Huntercoin (2014), is bringing over its experience and innovative game development product suite to Polygon. Per a recent announcement, Autonomous Worlds, the company behind XAYA, has entered into a long-term strategic partnership with Polygon to bring its decentralized gaming infrastructure onto the layer-2 scaling network.

As part of this partnership, Autonomous Worlds will integrate XAYA into Polygon, enabling the development of new blockchain and NFT games on the EVM-compatible sidechain. By leveraging XAYA’s Game Channels technology and Polygon’s inherent features, the next wave of blockchain games can finally deliver unprecedented levels of scalability and interoperability alongside instant settlement and unlimited transaction capability.

Jelurida, the company behind Ardor, Ignis, and Nxt chains, has also announced an integration with Polygon. Even though the Ardor and Ignis chains offer the first-of-its-kind parent-child chain architecture merged with native support for NFTs, high speed, and low costs, projects built atop these chains aren’t currently directly compatible with Ethereum or other EVM-compatible chains.

Through this integration, Ardor-based NFT game Mythical Beings will be able to expand its reach by tapping into Ethereum and other chains while ensuring that users (and projects) benefit from Polygon’s built-in features. Mythical Beings will use the Polygon bridge to bring its NFT collection on OpenSea, the largest secondary NFT marketplace on Ethereum.

The Mythical Beings development team will replicate all NFTs minted on the Ignis chain on the Polygon network via ERC-1155 tokens. Jelurida has already developed an open-source smart contract that will connect users’ Ignis and Polygon accounts via a bridge, enabling users to send all Ignis-based NFTs to Polygon. Once transferred, users can easily list them on OpenSea and other Ethereum-based marketplaces and trade using MATIC, ETH, and USDC tokens on the Ignis chain.

Besides facilitating a range of unique projects, the Polygon team is also expanding its footprint in the evolving blockchain ecosystem. In November 2021, the Polygon team introduced the network’s own community-driven and trustless IDO (Initial DEX Offering) launchpad called Polygen.

To overcome the problems of existing launchpads whereby whales get the most priority and the core goals of the participating projects are often overshadowed, the Polygen decentralized launchpad is designed to offer participating projects complete freedom. Projects can directly set the amount they want to raise, choose their preferred auction format, and manage their offerings. The Polygen launchpad also enables projects to implement multiple individual rounds and interconnected rounds for seed, private, and public funding campaigns.

While most traditional launchpads follow the “gatekeeper” system whereby only a few select projects are launched each month, primarily focused on short-term gains, the Polygen launchpad intends to facilitate the long-term success of promising projects.

Recently, Gains Network also launched its first decentralized leveraged trading platform, gTrade, on the Polygon chain. Harnessing Polygon’s inherent features, gTrade offers extremely high-speed and liquidity-efficient leveraged trading options compared to other existing platforms while still guaranteeing low trading fees, up to 150:1 leverage for cryptos, and 1000:1 leverage for foreign exchange pairs.

Gains Network’s asset-agnostic architecture opens a world of exciting DeFi opportunities on Polygon. To this point, the platform has been awarded the first of two grants from Polygon DeFi. The platform has already received $250,000 in MATIC tokens for successfully surpassing the first set of milestones and will receive another $500,000 in MATIC tokens once it reaches the next round of benchmarks set out for funding.

Cryptocurrencies Price Prediction: Bitcoin, Polygon and Crypto.com – European Wrap 18 January [Video]

Crypto.com token has been trading close to a crucial support level for nearly ten days. This consolidation seems to have set up a bottom reversal pattern, suggesting that a trend change is likely for CRO.

Ethereum price witnessed a minor uptrend as it bounced off a crucial support level. This bull rally failed to catch traction, leading to a steep correction back to the aforementioned foothold. Here, ETH contemplates its next course of action with its odds slightly skewed in favor of bulls.

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Why Chainlink, Polygon, and Monero Nosedived Today

What happened

As of 3:30 p.m. ET, top cryptocurrencies Chainlink (CRYPTO:LINK), Polygon (CRYPTO:MATIC) and Monero (CRYPTO:XMR) found themselves in the crypto doghouse. These tokens have dropped 6%, 5.1%, and 7.6% over the past 24 hours, respectively.

The top crypto projects each saw declines that were more than double the overall market, which dropped 2.3% over the past 24 hours, at 3:30 p.m. ET. Today, investors are pricing in amplified risk among high-growth stocks and digital tokens, amid a rising interest rate environment.

The yield on the U.S. 10-year Treasury rose above 1.87%, signaling the highest level since the onset of the pandemic. Additionally, the spread on five-year and 30-year U.S. Treasury bonds narrowed to its lowest level since the onset of the pandemic, another bearish signal for the market.

So what

Chainlink, Polygon, and Monero are projects that have grown rapidly over the past year. While each of these projects is very different in the utility it provides, each network provides investors with unique upside to the growing decentralized finance (DeFi) world.

Those in the crypto world looking for projects that benefit from rising blockchain usage for utility-focused projects like where these tokens are headed. However, today’s macro environment has stopped these major tokens in their tracks. Today, investors appear to be pricing higher levels of risk than what we’ve seen in a long time into such growth projects.

Now what

Whether we’re talking about oracle networks, scaling solutions, or privacy tokens, it doesn’t really matter. The market has spoken, and high-growth assets across a range of markets are being sold off today. This macro move is indiscriminate, and one that is hitting cryptocurrencies just as hard as stocks today.

For those who consider cryptocurrencies a meaningful market hedge, today’s price action doesn’t point in the right direction. Cryptocurrencies and higher-risk equities have traded in higher correlation of late, suggesting certain cryptocurrencies and tech stocks may have charts that look very similar. For those looking to de-risk their portfolios, that’s not a good thing.