MATIC Slips Into ‘Buy’ Zone as Polygon Aggressively Pursues Business Partnerships and ZK Strategy
Just over a month ago, Polygon unveiled the public testnet of its Ethereum virtual machine-equivalent zero-knowledge rollup, Polygon zkEVM, built on a full-featured open-source proving system. The announcement brought the network to the near-same rank as Matter Labs and Scroll, which are equally in the race to win dominance in the zero-knowledge technology space.
Matter Labs, the development team behind zkSync, released the second version of its Ethereum scaling solution (zkSync v2) on Oct 28 in a ‘baby alpha’ launch stage, while Scroll, a zkEVM-based execution layer Ethereum L2 scaler from the latter team, was announced in April. In a separate development, Matter Labs revealed on Wednesday (Nov 16) that it had closed a $200 million series C round to fund the launch of its zkSync V2 rollup network whose code it also plans to open-source under an MIT Open license before the end of the year.
Scaling the base layer: Polygon zkEVM testnet update
Now five weeks into opening the virtual environment to Web3 developers for testing (deploying contracts) and identifying bugs, Polygon has shared an update. The update, albeit sketchy, adds to positive headlines for the ecosystem this week. On Monday (Nov 14), Nike unveiled a new Web3 marketplace .Swoosh built on Polygon, through which it will sell non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The global athletic footwear and apparel brand plans to onboard users to the exclusive platform and build a community of enthusiasts of its digital wearables through the end of the year before its first drop is scheduled for January.
The NFTs will be minted on Polygon – the first time Nike has moved away from the Ethereum blockchain, which it has leveraged for several previous drops. Meanwhile, Polygon has established itself as the go-to blockchain network for brands pushing entry into Web 3, previously being chosen by Disney, Coca-Cola, Stripes, and most recently, Reddit. Last month, Polygon confirmed a collaboration with Sportfive to expand Web3 initiatives into the sports and entertainment sector. The partnership involves working with intellectual property holders and sports brands to deliver projects on the new iteration of the internet.
The announcement came the same day Polygon confirmed support of the Binance BUSD stablecoin on its PoS chain. Users have since been able to withdraw BUSD, a USD-backed stablecoin originally issued on the Ethereum and BNB chains, from the Binance chain to Polygon. The inclusion of BUSD adds to USDT as the second stablecoin that users can mint natively on Polygon, providing users an alternative to dabble with available across multiple blockchains. Fintech firms and other businesses, too, can settle payments using BUSD – swaps for the token are already available in Robinhood’s non-custodial wallet.
BUSD holders now interact with Polygon’s rapidly growing ecosystem, which currently powers over 53,000 dApps across various services, including lending and trading platforms. Polygon delivering support for another pegged crypto coin, one that is green-listed by the New York State Department of Financial Services, adds to initiatives geared towards bridging traditional and decentralized finance.
MATIC loses the battle at $0.90, charts course toward October lows
Polygon (MATIC) is trading below $0.90 on Thursday after registering mild losses in the last dozen hours and moving south to $0.87, where it was hovering at writing. The recent chaotic market scene has stifled any upside movement across altcoin markets, including MATIC, despite positive developments within its ecosystem.
MATIC/USD 5-day trading chart
The 24-hr and 4-hr trading charts show that MATIC has established a tight range-bound campaign as bulls show strength in holding off further losses. While further declines could ideally open up the market for traders to jump in at October lows and accompany the token in its next climb, they could also trigger a dip to June lows depending on the catalyst at play.
On-chain data show Polygon network has been attracting mass users
The news of Nike’s NFT marketplace coincides with the network tracking major milestones. Highlighting an increase in users joining the network, the number of active PoS chain addresses surged to a four-week high of 575,309 last Thursday (Nov 10) – the third-highest figure for this count thus far in 2022. The 782,186 active addresses count observed on Oct 13 remains the yearly peak per data from blockchain explorer tool PolygonScan.
Polygon addresses and transactions chart
The total number of unique addresses on the PoS chain has also continued bulging throughout the year, markedly, at an increasing rate since mid-October. Last month, the largest daily increase of unique addresses was 1,028.123 on Oct 14 while thus far, in November, the daily accumulation of 837,505 on Sunday (Nov 13) has been the most significant spike.
To learn more about Polygon, visit our Investing in Polygon guide.
