49% Lower Fees, Big Growth: Why Polygon (MATIC) Surged in Q2
Don’t call it an “Ethereum killer.” Polygon (MATIC) builds on and enhances Ethereum’s blockchain. Its developers and user base must have missed the memo that we’re in crypto winter. While prices crashed, Polygon’s ecosystem grew in leaps and bounds to finish quarter two.
The crypto platform enables developers to build bridge infrastructure between blockchains. As a result, Polygon is facilitating improved interoperability between Ethereum-compatible chains. The collaborative, value-add approach paid off for the DeFi cryptocurrency in the June quarter.
Freshly-published Polygon data from Q2 reveals the ecosystem grew dramatically. Additionally, users paid significantly lower network fees for using Polygon and doing business on its decentralized apps.
Polygon Network Usage and Development Burgeons in Quarter 2
Network usage on the second layer speed and privacy chain burgeoned in the second quarter. Unique address creation, new transactions, and network revenue all increased over the market “winter” quarter. These were up to 5.3 million, 284 million, and $5.5 million, respectively.
Developer activity also surged on Polygon, with a longtime reputation for its popular SDK. Some 90,000 devs published their first contract to its chain in Q2, the network revealed Tuesday:
“Over 90k developers published their first contract. This is more than 3x the pace of Q1 growth. On average, 1k new creators and 2.7k new contracts went live on the chain every day.”
Average gas fees dropped by half last quarter, falling to $0.018 per transaction going into July. That’s a substantial 49% reduction in the cost per transaction to use MATIC.
Cheaper fees for users, along with the basic economic principles of supply and demand, might have something to do with the DeFi crypto’s growth over the previous three months. The Layer-2 blockchain scaling solution for Ethereum has enjoyed a robust rally since late June.
New Partnerships, Price Rally for MATIC in July
The spot price of MATIC tokens for Polygon traded up from $0.40 a coin on June 18 to $0.90 on July 22. Since then, the coin has been moving across crypto exchanges in a range bound between the $0.77 and $0.90 levels. With a total market capitalization of $7.5 billion Sunday, MATIC is the 12th largest cryptocurrency by this metric.
Over the one-month view to date, Polygon’s native token grew dramatically compared to its peers. With a 64% climb from 30 days ago, MATIC outpaced Ether (+37%), BNB Coin (+14%), Solana (+4.5%), and Polkadot (-2%).
In addition to slashing gas fees in half over the previous quarter, Polygon is putting together a number of strategic partnerships. In early June, the network announced that US Dollar Coin (USDC) now supports Polygon:
“The second biggest stablecoin US Dollar Coin (USDC) now supports Polygon, its backers – a cryptocurrency-focused payment company Circle – said. Polygon-native USDC will replace the current process of bridging USDC from Ethereum to Polygon manually via the Polygon Bridge. The update will cut transaction times and ether gas fees.”
Additionally, Reddit announced earlier this month that it’s launching an NFT avatar marketplace. Polygon Network will power the new NFT market. Meanwhile, London-based Nothing Technology Limited is working with Polygon to extend Web3 for mobile.
