Polygon (MATIC) Price, Chart, Value & Market Cap | CoinCodex

Polygon is a blockchain project that’s tackling the area of blockchain scalability—in other words, it is working on solutions to help users access faster and cheaper blockchain transactions while still maintaining a high level of security. 

Polygon, which was formerly known as Matic Network, was founded in 2017. The project held a token sale for their MATIC token on the Binance Launchpad IEO platform in April of 2019, in which they successfully raised around $5 million. In February 2021, the project announced a rebrand from Matic Network to Polygon, but decided to keep the MATIC name for their token.

Here’s a quick summary of some of Polygon’s most important features:

  • Launched in 2017 under the name Matic Network, rebranded to Polygon in 2021
  • The project is building a suite of scalability solutions focused on the Ethereum ecosystem
  • Polygon’s most popular solution is the Polygon PoS network
  • Polygon PoS offers compatibility with Ethereum while keeping transaction costs low

You can find up-to-date prices, MATIC price charts and historical data for the Polygon cryptocurrency on CoinCodex.

What is Polygon and how does it work?

We’ll be focusing on the Polygon PoS network, as it’s by far the project’s most popular offering. The Polygon network can handle up to 7,000 transactions per second—a big step-up from Ethereum’s throughput, which tops out in the low double digits. The Polygon platform also offers full compatibility with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which makes it easy for Ethereum developers to port their applications over to Polygon. 

The Polygon network uses the Ethereum mainnet as its settlement layer. Polygon submits “checkpoints” to the Ethereum mainnet approximately every 30 minutes. Polygon validators earn rewards in exchange for securing the network, validating blocks and submitting checkpoints to Ethereum. Users can participate in Polygon staking either as a validator or as a delegator. 

Users can transfer their token from the Ethereum mainnet to Polygon and vice versa through “bridges”. The network currently offers a Proof-of-Stake bridge and a Plasma bridge. The PoS bridge is more convenient, but the Plasma bridge offers more security guarantees. 

A number of leading decentralized applications and protocols from the Ethereum blockchain have also launched on Polygon to provide their users a cheaper and faster alternative. Some examples include:

The most popular decentralized application that was originally launched on Polygon is QuickSwap, a decentralized exchange that started as a fork of Uniswap.

Polygon price history

The Polygon crypto price began seeing immense growth in 2021, when congestion and very high transaction fees on Ethereum made it clear that scaling solutions are necessary. With the token rallying throughout the year, the MATIC crypto reached its all-time high in December 2021 at just under $3. 

Let’s go through some of the biggest price milestones that the MATIC price has seen since its launch in 2019.

  • $0.0026 – The price at which MATIC was sold during its token sale on Binance Launchpad
  • $0.01 – The price of MATIC reached $0.0100 for the first time in May 2019
  • $0.05 – The MATIC coin price hit $0.05 for the first time in February 2021
  • $0.10 – The first time that the MATIC/USDT price reached $0.10 was in February 2021
  • $0.50 – MATIC reached $0.50 for the first time in March 2021
  • $1 – MATIC hit the $1 milestone for the first time ever in May 2021
  • $1.50 – The MATIC price reached $1.50 for the first time in May 2021
  • $2 – MATIC value reached $2 for the first time in May 2021

The Polygon market cap reached its peak in December 2021, when the MATIC token had a valuation of almost $20 billion. While this peak was followed by a steep correction, MATIC has established itself as an important asset in the cryptocurrency market. 

Polygon supply

The MATIC max supply is set at 10 billion tokens. 12% of the MATIC supply (1.2 billion tokens) is allocated for staking rewards to incentivize validators to maintain the security of the network. As these tokens are rewarded to validators, the circulating supply of MATIC will continue growing until it reaches the 10 billion mark.

Here is the planned distribution of the MATIC supply:

  • Ecosystem: 23.33%
  • Foundation: 21.86%
  • Binance Launchpad token sale: 19%
  • Team: 16%
  • Staking rewards: 12%
  • Advisors: 4%
  • Seed investors: 2.09%
  • Early supporters: 1.71%

The most important Polygon milestones

The Polygon project has seen significant growth thanks to the scalability issues facing the Ethereum blockchain, becoming one of the leading players when it comes to Ethereum-compatible layer 2 solutions. Let’s quickly take a look at some of the most notable milestones accomplished by Polygon:

  • April 2019 – Matic Network holds its token sale on Binance Launchpad
  • February 2021 – Matic Network rebrands to Polygon
  • June 2021 – The Total Value Locked (TVL) of the Polygon blockchain hits $10 billion for the first time
  • July 2021 – Polygon launches Polygon Studios to invest in blockchain gaming and NFT use cases
  • July 2022 – Polygon announces the Polygon zkEVM scaling solution

The Polygon project is building a variety of blockchain platforms

When we talk about Polygon, we typically mean the Proof-of-Stake blockchain that uses MATIC as its native asset. However, it’s important to mention that the Polygon project is also working on other solutions that address the issue of blockchain scalability. Here’s the current lineup of Polygon’s solutions:

  • Polygon PoS – Proof-of-Stake network that’s compatible with Ethereum
  • Polygon zkEVM – A zero-knowledge (ZK) rollup layer 2 solution for Ethereum
  • Polygon Avail – A blockchain focused on data availability
  • Polygon Edge – A framework for creating Ethereum-compatible blockchain
  • Polygon Nightfall – A scaling solution that leverages both optimistic and ZK rollups
  • Polygon Miden – A ZK rollup that supports arbitrary smart contracts