As Polygon [MATIC] gains momentum, co-founder steps in with new initiative

• MATIC was one of the biggest losers in the market over the last month.
• The active users on Polygon rose to the highest level in five weeks on 16 May.

After a protracted period of lull, network activity on Polygon [MATIC] started to gain strong momentum. As per DeFiLlama, the active users on the Ethereum [ETH] sidechain spiked to 389,000 on 16 May, reaching its highest level in five weeks.

Source: DeFiLlama

Read Polygon’s [MATIC] Price Prediction 2023-2024

The jump in the user base showed a proportional effect on the number of transactions processed on the network.

A big chunk of the transaction volume was driven by L2 scaling solution Polygon zkEVM. According to a tweet by Polygon, transaction volume on the zero-knowledge rollup (zk-rollup) reached record-breaking levels over the past few days.

Polygon’s new initiative

Polygon grew into prominence over the last few months. Whether it was the launch of the much-anticipated Polygon zkEVM or the hard fork intended to stabilize gas fees on the network, the ecosystem has taken a proactive step in making blockchain technology more efficient and accessible.

As part of the continuing efforts, Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal announced the launch of the Nailwal Fellowship – a program aimed at providing financial assistance and resources to early stage Web3 developers.

Nailwal said that he would invest $500k of his own money into this initiative, divided equally among 10 people every year.

Apart from the grant money, the fellows will receive mentorship from Symbolic Capital, a venture capital fund founded by Sandeep Nailwal. And access to top founders and investors, to help them commit to building in web3 full-time for 6 months.

MATIC stayed immune

The positive developments coming from the ecosystem failed to uplift native token MATIC. The token dropped by 1.4% in the last 24 hours, as of this writing.

Infact, MATIC’s woes are not recent. It was the one of the biggest losers in the market over the last month, incurring losses of more than 27% until press time, data from CoinMarketCap revealed.

The price losses dented investors’ confidence in MATIC as the weighted sentiment continued to trend in the negative zone. As a result, user adoption was hit, indicated by the steady fall in the number of new addresses.

Source: Santiment

Realistic or not, here’s MATIC’s market cap in BTC terms

On the futures market, MATIC’s Open Interest (OI) jumped by 3.24% in the last 24 hours. The metric reached $182.82 million, as per data from Coinglass.

Most of the new positions being opened were targeting price gains as indicated by the increase in Longs/Shorts Ratio.

Source: Coinglass