3 reasons why Polygon’s Matic has emerged as an alternative to Ethereum

Polygon Network was seeing usage grow as the cryptocurrency market tackled volatility. Over the past few months, the project witnessed a meteoric rise which was relatively organic. As Ethereum transaction count flattened due to the network being at capacity, traders found an alternative in Polygon.

1.Transaction Count

Polygon’s daily transaction count hit an all-time high of ~7.4 million, as per data collected by Joel John in Our Network newsletter. Binance Smart Chain-based Polygon Network had a smaller ecosystem of decentralized finance [DeFi] applications which were already battle-tested on Ethereum.

Source: Our Network

The above chart highlighted the surge in Transaction count noted on the Binance Smart Chain in May. The transactions on BSC scaled from under a million over a day to 11 million a day. While Polygon followed this upward trend, Ethereum Transaction count remained under 2.5 million a day.

2.Accessibility 

While high network fees caused by the use of DeFi applications on Ethereum pushed users away from its ecosystem, Polygon offered similar DApps as Ethereum but with low fees. This was inviting for the Defi users seeking a similar experience. QuickSwap and Aave proved to be extremely crucial for Polygon’s growth.

QuickSwap, Polygon’s variation of Uniswap boarded more unique than any other DApp.

Source: Our Network

QuickSwap noted 107k unique users and can be linked with the rise of other DeFi projects. However, it does allow over 10,000 swaps consistently which proved that users were making great use of lower transaction fees. The average value of a swap has risen from $186 to $30,000 at its peak over time, although the swap value has now fallen under $5,000 owing to the recent pullback in markets.

3.Interest and Adoption

Polygon’s MATIC token was keeping up with the positive sentiment within the community as it maintained its value above $1. At the time of press, MATIC was trading at $1.44 with a market capitalization of $8.08 billion. Interest for Matic also grew over the last year as seen by Google trends. The project received vocal support from Mark Cuban recently, who also invested in the project.

In February 2021, MATIC’s market capitalization stood at $200 million. In four months, the growth in the asset’s fundamentals was reflected in the price as well. This has resulted in a growing number of Matic traders, HODLers.