As a crypto investor, you’ve probably heard of Polygon from fellow traders or read about it online, but the raft of features that it offers needs some serious unpacking. Polygon has soared in popularity recently thanks to its key features that close the gaps in Ethereum scalability.

With the potential to save cryptocurrency currency traders thousands of dollars over the course of the year, this innovative coin, which is the brainchild of Jaynti Kanani, Sandeep Nailwal, and Anurag Arjun, features next-level Blockchain technology that significantly improves the efficiency of transaction fulfillment and speeds up smart contracts for quick execution.

Let’s take a look at six must-know facts about Polygon for crypto traders at all experience levels.

It’s a solution to high Ethereum gas prices.

Polygon has gained a reputation for being Ethereum’s scaling solution – but what exactly is the problem that it addresses?

One of the features that makes Ethereum stand out is its use of gas – a way of representing the processing power that the blockchain needs to fulfill transactions. Unfortunately, during peak trading times the price of gas can rise significantly. This is a serious disadvantage for traders starting with cryptos because the costs associated with each transaction can cut into profits on a small portfolio.

Polygon drastically reduces the gas costs associated with Ethereum by acting as an outsourced blockchain that speeds up transactions.

Polygon has astounding speed and efficiency in its favor.

No matter how many updates Ethereum releases, traders are still complaining about two factors that hinder their ability to complete transactions: speed and costs.

Polygon is faster and more economical than Ethereum by at least an order of magnitude.

• Polygon can process up to 65,000 transactions per second. Ethereum manages only 17 per second.
• Ethereum’s average transaction fee of $15 can quickly escalate to over $50 during peak trading periods. Polygon’s fees have been know to be as low as a few cents.
• Polygon uses an innovative Proof-of-State mechanism that allows rapid transaction verifications while preserving the privacy and data integrity of both buyer and seller.

Polygon adds huge value by reducing the time and cost of transactions through a process known as a plasma chain.

Once the trades have been processed, they are returned to Ethereum’s blockchain. The two coins have forged a symbiosis with Polygon providing an efficient back end to ensure that trades and smart contracts are executed seamlessly.

It’s a coin with public backing from billionaire Mark Cuban.

The revolutionary efficiency of Polygon has won the coin its share of fans – and Mark Cuban is definitely one of them.

The billionaire entrepreneur of Shark Tank fame, who also owns the Dallas Mavericks NBA team, is an outspoken fan of Polygon as well as being a major investor in the coin.

Cuban is a frequent user of Polygon who decided to invest in the company after experiencing the coin’s cost savings and efficiency. His views on Polygon are predictably punchy and direct: “there’s Polygon and then there’s everyone else”.

Now that’s a vote of confidence.

Cuban’s endorsement – along with the coin’s inherent value proposition – has allowed the company to raise additional funds from investors.

In 2022, fresh investment worth $450 million flowed into Polygon as the number of daily transactions carried out on its blockchain topped 3 million.

Polygon could aid efforts to combat climate change.

The global climate change crisis has reached a tipping point this year as summer temperatures reach dangerous levels in major cities across the world.

Cryptocurrency mining is a major user of electricity, and efforts to conserve power are essential in a world where much of our energy is still generated by burning fossil fuels.

Recent studies suggest that cryptocurrency mining currently accounts for 120 to 240 billion kilowatt-hours a year of electricity usage around the world – an amount equivalent to the entire energy consumption of small, developed nations like Sweden.

Considering that many countries still rely on fossil fuels for energy generation, the carbon footprint of crypto equates to 62 megatons of carbon equivalent on an annual basis. One of the major causes of this is the Proof of Work algorithm adopted by early cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.

Ethereum (and Polygon in particular) have switched to a Proof of Stake framework which has the potential to cut energy usage by 99%. Polygon processes transactions thousands of times more efficiently than relational blockchains, using its Proof-of-State consensus mechanism to reduce the energy consumption per trade dramatically.

In 2022, Polygon concluded a large carbon credit purchase to the value of $400,000. The business acquired enough traceable BCT and MC02 carbon credits to erase its carbon footprint from its date of inception. Going forward, the Polygon network will be carbon-negative and actively contribute to the prevention of further climate change.

It’s approaching full circulation.

Unlike traditional currencies that are printed and issued on a continuous basis, many crypto coins are finite – in other words, there’s a limited supply that will never be exceeded.

Polygon’s MATIC coin was created with a maximum supply of 10,000,000,000 units. While 10 billion may sound like a highly substantial number, the current supply of MATIC in circulation had exceeded 9 billion already.

At the time this article was written, 9,319,469,069 MATIC coins were in circulation. As the crypto’s circulation approaches the max supply level, some traders expect prices to rise. One of the main arguments in favor of this is the crucial role that the Polygon blockchain plays in the fulfillment of Ethereum transactions.

Final Word

Polygon represents the next level of advancements in cryptocurrency with its unique utilization of the POS framework to ensure a super-low transaction costs and rapid processing times.

With the backing of billionaire Mark Cuban and a commitment to environmental sustainability, and carbon emissions reduction, this coin ticks all the boxes for traders in search of affordable transaction costs. The potential for future appreciation thanks to the circulation level approaching the maximum supply level presents a great opportunity for traders to speculate on future Polygon price movements.

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