The runaway success of Binance Smart Chain has attracted the industry’s top projects to the chain. The latest move by EasyFi, a leading decentralized protocol will benefit the project, crypto investors, and the ecosystem itself. 

However, Ethereum remains the most dominating fundamental blockchain layer in the crypto market. The emerging technology has its limitations and challenges that developers address. On one hand, where Ethereum introduces scalability updates, DeFi applications, stablecoins, tokens, etc have begun to expand to additional chains. These additional chains include Polygon or the ultra-hot Binance Smart Chain. 

EasyFi network is a universal second layer lending protocol, currently rocking the DeFi space. The project to expand to Binance Smart Chain is EasyFi Protocol and the $EASY token. The integration of BSC support will create new opportunities with the DeFi sector and enable more efficient and faster transactions. The appended benefits of interoperability will profit investors and the ecosystem alike. 

The $EASY token will now be available as an ERC20 token as well as a BEP20 token on three different chains specifically Polygon, Ethereum, and Binance Smart Chain. All the products and services offered by EasyFi protocol V1 are powered by Polygon Network on Ethereum. These services will also be available on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) integration. 

In addition to the benefits like speed and scalability, EasyFi and $EASY can now access the Binance community for a greater reach and engagement. The Binance Smart Chain will integrate assets into EasyFi as collateral. New money markets will also be introduced such as metals, tokenized stocks, and other commodities.

BSC is the ideal fit for EasyFi’s “Do more with DeFi” mantra. Integrating other chains is a primary part of EasyFi’s Q1 2021 roadmap.

Decentralized Finance (DeFi) protocols have evolved ever since the inherent problems of the Ethereum Network have become more apparent. From bottlenecks in adoption and scalability to the ways in which current platforms lack the sophistication and seamless user experience offered by traditional markets, DeFi continues to resolve these issues alongside Ethereum's bid to usher in Web3.

The universal layer 2 lending protocol recently announced that its core network is expanding to a new blockchain through an integration with Binance Smart Chain (BSC). This key decision will bridge EasyFi's network across three compatible chains, namely: Polygon (formerly Matic), Ethereum Networks, and now, BSC.

According to the blockchain firm, driving DeFi adoption requires interoperability. The EasyFi Network's user community can now transact with $EASY both as an ERC20-standard token and as a BEP20 token. This transition has already begun, as outlined in EasyFi's Q1 2021 Roadmap. This integration is in response to the current need within the DeFi space to address and provide a solution to cross-chain compatibility to reduce the burden of gas fees for its user community.

EasyFi Network's design is Ethereum compatible and blockchain agnostic, enabling near-instant asset settlements over parallel blockchain networks, while retaining custody with the asset owner's network. This cross-chain framework enables lending and borrowing activities across global markets, including both private platforms and permissionless public chains. As a layer 2 protocol, EasyFi's network is secured through a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus algorithm open community governance for participating voters.

The integration with the Binance Smart Chain brings about new opportunities for inter-chain asset transfers through improved interoperability and flexibility with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). These transactions are now more cost-effective and have a higher speed threshold across various money market chains.

The firm cites the "[...] rich and growing digital asset ecosystem on Binance" as a key factor in its decision, given how this opens opportunities for further synchronization with the rapid development of the DeFi space. The blockchain company hopes to "build innovative and intuitive lending products and services on a world-class platform."

According to the announcement, the protocol will work towards integrating new assets present on the Binance Smart Chain to its own protocol as collateral, hence enhancing the blockchain infrastructure necessary for building robust lending markets. The move will also consolidate and expand the protocol's integration to new money markets for tokenized stocks, precious metals, and commodities. Through this interface, the EasyFi product ecosystem will integrate and accept newer wallets and create new yield generation opportunities for its community.

The universal layer 2 (L2) decentralized financial services protocol has provided updates on its ongoing integration with the Binance Smart Chain (BSC). EasyFi’s ongoing upgrades to its core network’s expansions are aimed at improving its interoperability and cross-chain capabilities to efficiently facilitate its services for its community at scale.With its BSC Bridge Integration, token transfers on the Binance Smart Chain happen through a token canal or Bridge built on BSC. This is the lightest method of implementation for cross-chain assets to achieve inter-blockchain liquidity between BSC and other compatible chains, including Ethereum-based dApps. This service allows EasyFi users to exchange their $EASY tokens, among other compatible tokens, and transfer them seamlessly throughout a variety of blockchains integrated with the Binance chain ecosystem.CryptoDaily has previously covered the network’s initial announcement of its expansion. The BSC bridge integration will bridge liquidity across chains through EasyFi's internal protocol which is also accessible through both Polygon (formerly Matic) and Ethereum networks. The EasyFi Network is blockchain agnostic and L2 agnostic by design. With the upgrade, EasyFi users will be able to move collaterals to and from the chains that the network is deployed on, as well as to its BSC-based protocol, using the $EASY token as a cross-chain settlement instrument to share liquidity across the compatible ecosystems.This also expands the decentralized financial services that EasyFi currently provides (staking, farming, and lending) to be compatible with the vast network of ERC-20 and non-ERC20 pegged assets on the Binance Smart Chain. Notably, EasyFi’s $EASY token deployment services on BSC will now expand its protocol through a deployment that uses the Binance Smart Chain token standard called BEP20, which comes with an Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible environment. This means that wallets, DEXs and dApps within the BSC network are now fully cross-chain compatible with EasyFi’s suite of products and services, maximizing collateral options for the money markets on its protocol.The upgrade has another perk, and the update delineates its benefits as follows: “Once the EASY tokens are deployed on the BEP20 token standard, the distribution and emission of EASY as a yield and reward asset can be taken up through the various lending, staking, and liquidity farming services on the EasyFi lending protocol on BSC.” With this, EasyFi users can earn $EASY tokens by simply using the abovementioned services (protocol incentivization and staking rewards). The network notes, however, that the $EASY token’s supply will remain fixed at 10 million units.Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

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On this episode of the Unhashed Podcast, we talk taproot signalling, theft on BSC DeFi platforms, and Charlie Munger surprising everyone with a perfectly nuanced take on bitcoin. We finish off trying to determine whether or not we should get rid of everyone's pets to save the environment. Probably, right?

Cryptonews writes: Bitcoin's long-awaited Taproot upgrade - its biggest upgrade since SegWit in 2017 - has been kicked off with Speedy Trial - giving miners three months to signal readiness to enforce the upgrade. The first of six epochs has failed to lock in the upgrade. On May 1, the network saw another mining difficulty adjustment, which signalled the beginning of the 'will it-will it not activate' phase of the Taproot upgrade, a proposed protocol upgrade that should improve Bitcoin's privacy and flexibility. Simply said, Speedy Trial's aim is to allow the upgrade activation attempt to fail or succeed quickly - making a difference between no mandatory activation and the guarantee that taproot would be activated. The mining difficulty of Bitcoin is adjusted every 2016 blocks, or approximately every two weeks. What the miners have before them now is the current signalling period of 2016 blocks, with six activation epochs set in the period of three months, during which 90% of the blocks have to signal for Taproot activation - meaning, they have to include a signal bit into the mined blocks. If this 90% threshold is reached, the upgrade will be locked in, then activated in November. If miners don't lock in Taproot, another mechanism can be used to try again. – -lock-in-in-this-e-10143.htm

Coindesk writes: Spartan Protocol, a decentralized protocol built on Binance Smart Chain for incentivized liquidity and synthetic assets, was exploited earlier Sunday UTC due to “a flawed liquidity share calculation” in the protocol, resulting in a loss of more than $30 million, according to a Medium post by on-chain analysis and security startup PeckShield. "In particular, the specific hack inflates the asset balance of the pool before burning the same amount of pool tokens to claim an unnecessarily large amount of underlying assets," the post read. "What we know so far – attacker used $61 million in BNB to overcome the pools via a[n] as yet unknown economic exploit path to remove roughly $3 million in funds from the pools," according to the official Twitter account of Spartan Protocol, which first reported the incident around 12:21 a.m. UTC on May 2. According to Spartan Protocol's official website, the decentralized finance (DeFi) liquidity platform "provides community-governed and programmable token emissions functions to incentivize the formation of deep liquidity pools." The attack came just a few days after Binance Smart Chain's DeFi exchange Uranium Finance lost more than $50 million in an exploit on April 28 from a similar attack. The attack on Spartan Protocol makes it the sixth-biggest monetary exploit in DeFi history, according to Rekt, after EasyFi's $59 million, Uranium Finance's $57.2 million, Kucoin's $45 million, Alpha Finance's $37.5 million and Meerkat Finance's $32 million. – 0m-in-exploit

At the Berkshire-Hathaway Shareholders conference, BRK vice Chairman Charlie Munger did not mince words when it came to bitcoin, stating “‘Of course, I hate the bitcoin success and I don’t welcome a currency that’s useful to kidnappers and extortionists, and so forth. Nor do I like just shoveling out a few extra billions and billions of dollars to somebody who just invented a new financial product out of thin air. So I think I should say modestly that I think the whole damn development is disgusting and contrary to the interests of civilization. And I’ll leave the criticism to others.’ To which Warren Buffet added “I’m okay on that one.” Is this just another case of “old man yells at dog?”

As uncovered in the Unhashed Podcast chat, Pet food for dogs and cats causes twice the amount of greenhouse gas emissions as Bitcoin. In 2017 UCLA professor Gregory Okin calculated that the meat eaten by dogs and cats creates 64 Mt of CO2 per year, while the latest estimates for Bitcoin 52.10 Mt CO2, still not eclipsing 2017s pet numbers

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Here is our weekly collection of digital asset listing and delisting, trading pair-related announcements by crypto exchanges that we found last week and today.

Have we missed something? Do you have information about new listings and/or delistings? Let us know X Listings: Smoothy.Finance (SMTY) DefiDollar DAO (DFD)

Bibox Listings: Wenmoon (WENMOON)

BigONE Listings: Alphr Finance (ALPHR) The Crypto Prophecies (TCP)

Bilaxy Listings: Power Cash (PRCH) Pocketnet (PKOIN) Sensitrust Token (SETS) ALPHR (ALPHR) CHARLI3 (C3) SMTYToken (SMTY) Refinable (FINE)(BEP20) JulSwap (JulD)(BEP20) My DeFi Pet Token (DPET) Bogged Finance (BOG)(BEP20) SeedSwap Token (SNFT) Slam Token (SLAM)(BEP20) BSCS Token (BSCS) AlpaToken (ALPA)(BEP20) NFT INDEX (NFTI) BSCPAD (BSCPAD)(BEP20) Bunny Token (BUNNY)(BEP20) Mobox (MBOX) AlpacaToken (ALPACA) BGOV Token (BGOV)(BEP20) BlockBank (BBANK) UnoRe (UNO) Pendle (PENDLE) Showcase Token (SHO) POP Token (POP!) The Crypto Prophecies (TCP) Route (ROUTE) Impermax (IMX) Ares Protocol (ARES) Black Hole Protocol(BLACK) Standard (STND) Goatcoin (GOAT)(BEP20) Goose Golden Egg (EGG)(BEP20) MarshmallowDeFi Token (MASH) Gen Token (GEN) SafeSun (SAFESUN) Truebit (TRU) BrickChain (BRICK)(BEP20) ENEX SPACE (ENX) 1MILNFT (1MIL) Olympus (OHM) Nectar (NCT) TopBidder (BID) NAOSToken (NAOS) Chord Protocol (CHORD) Delistings: Mysterium (MYST)

Binance Added Trading Pairs: BAKE/USDT BURGER/BUSD BURGER/USDT SLP/BUSD SLP/USDT TRX/AUD TRX/EUR VET/TRY

Bitforex Listings: Doge Killer (LEASH) Polywhale (KRILL)

Bithumb Listings: Rally (RLY) Ocean Protocol (OCEAN) Chiliz (CHZ)

Bitmart Listings: Moonshot (MOONSHOT) Safemars (SAFEMARS) Franklin (FLY) Lepricon (L3P) Newscrypto Coin (NWC) Mogul Productions (STARS) Strite (STRI)

Bitrue Added Trading Pairs: XYM/USDT BANANA/USDT XEM/USDT LUNA/USDT MIR/XRP

BitZ Listings: Clover (CLV)

BKEX Listings: Smoothy (SMTY) 100x (100X) QuickSwap (QUICK) BakerySwap (BAKE) Black Hole Protocol (BLACK) Ares Protocol Truebit (TRU) Battle Pets (PET)

catEx Listings: Costa Rica Digital Coin (COCO) SMG (SMG) Vangold Finance (VGD) SafeETH (SAFEETH)

CEX.io Listings: COTI (COTI)

ChangeNOW Listings: Klever (KLV) Solana (SOL) Waves Protocol (WAVES) ShareToken (SHR)

CoinEx Listings: BANANO (BAN) Serum (SRM)

Changelly Listings: IQONIQ (IQQ)

Coinsbit Listings: Salanests (SLNT) OFFY (OFFY) KGO (KGO) DeFi on MCW (DFM) Dirty Finance (DIRTY) Hedge4Token (HEJJ) Safe Community Token (SFC) Exenox (EXNX) Bitcen (BTE) SnowgeCoin (SNOWGE) Ideavis (IVC) EXTRA ORDINARY COIN (EOX) UNIFUNC (UFN) Busstrade (BTOKEN) Spades Coin (SPADES) Solnova (SNV)

Cream Finance Listings: Saffron Finance (SFI)

Crex 24 Listings: DACXI (DACXI) XX Platform (XXP)

Crypto.com Listings: Ampleforth (FORTH) Axie Infinity (AXS) Venus (XVS) Helium (HNT) RSR (RSR) AUDIO (AUDIO) Added Trading Pairs: DOGE/ETH ADA/ETH VET/ETH LINK/ETH

DigiFinex Listings: ShibaCorgi (CoShi) Chia Project (XCH)

FINEXBOX Listings: Veraswap (VRAP) Safemore (SAFEMORE) Atlantic Finance Token (ATFI) Dogicoin (DOGI) BafiFinance Token (BAFI) SAFU NETWORK (SAFU) WholeEarthCoin (WEC)

FTX Listings: Overline Emblem (EMB) Step Finance (STEP) Media Network (MEDIA)

Gate.io Listings: Persistence (XPRT) BSC Station (BSCS) QuickSwap (QUICK) Refinable (FINE) Black Hole Protocol (BLACK) Chia Project (XCH) DogeSwap (DOG)

HitBTC Listings: Klever (KLV) Elrond (EGLD)

Hotbit Listings: Papel Token (PAPEL) Eclipse (ECLIPSE) Dogelon Mars (ELON) SAFEBTC (SAFEBTC) Fox Finance (FOX) Porkswap.finance (PSWAP) Alchemist (MIST) MoonMoonCash (MOONMOON) Momo Protocol (MOMO) seedify.fund (SFUND) BaaSid (BAAS) DeStorage (DS) Showcase (SHO) Elena Protocol (ELENA) Alien Worlds (TLM) Bandot (BANDOT) NFT Starter (NST) SavePlanetEarth (SPE) Electra Protocol (XEP) Ares Protocol (ARES)

Huobi Listings: NuCypher (NU) Added Trading Pairs: BTC/USDC ETH/USDC

KuCoin Listings: The Crypto Prophecies (TCP) GamerCoin (GHX) Standard (STND) Tower Token (TOWER) Acent (ACE) LOC Game (LOCG) Added Trading Pairs: UBX/USDT

LBank Listings: Refinable (FINE) Smoothy Finance (SMTY) Raydium (RAY) Solana (SOL) NAOS Finance (NAOS)

MXC Listings: Chia Project (XCH) Smoothy (SMTY) 1MillionNFTs (1MIL) Xels (XELS) ChainSwap (TOKEN) Antimatter (MATTER) Truebit (TRU1)

OKCoin Listings: Dogecoin (DOGE)

Poloniex Listings: Dogelon Mars (ELON) Alchemist (MIST) KuCoin Token (KCS)

P2PB2B Listings: Deimos Token (DIO) FullSend (FULLSEND) BaaSid (BAAS) DeStorage (DS) Astronaut (NAUT) Space Sharks (SPACESHARKS)

VinDax Listings: My Identity Coin (MYID) Hachiko Inu (HACHIKO) ILGON (ILG) Ideavis (IVC) VerseCoin (VERSECOIN) ITC (ITC) Therios (THRS) Oviex.com Token (OVI) SafePe (LOOX)

WazirX Listings: IOST (IOST) FTX Token (FTT) EasyFi Network (EZ) PancakeSwap (CAKE)

XT Listings: Loom Network (LOOM) Wrapped BTC (WBTC) Orchid (OXT) The Graph (GRT) Skale Network (SKL) Origin Protocol (OGN) ClinTex CTi (CTI) Fundum Capital (FND)

ZB.COM Listings: UMA Protocol (UMA) Reserve Rights (RSR)

ZBG Listings: SafeMoon (SAFEMOON) Lemond Finance (LEMD)

ZT Global Listings: ClinTex CTi (CTI) UniLend (UFT) Xend Finance (XEND)

Source

Back in 2018, not long after the Bitcoin crash, many casual crypto enthusiasts and nocoiners were quick to write off the potential the ecosystem had. Many saw the crash as the time to liquidate and back off from the crypto space. Ethereum, then three years old, was still plagued with scalability issues, along with slow transactions with a low transaction throughput.  While some blockchains attempted to solve the scalability issues, and boasted a high throughput back then, they also had to severely compromise on decentralization, something which is one of the most important benefits of blockchain technology. 

The Reserve Bank of India issued the infamous ban, in April 2018, suspending banks from dealing with cryptocurrencies, creating a limbo in the Indian ecosystem. This made it extremely surprising when Jaynti Kanani, Sandeep Nailwal, and Anurag Arjun came up with a whitepaper for what was then called the Matic Network shortly after the ban, in May 2018. 

When Jaynti – then a Data Scientist from Housing.com, Sandeep Nailwal – a Blockchain Expert, and Anurag Arjun, former AVP, Product Management at IRIS Business Services Limited, came up with Matic, little did the world realize that they were about to witness something revolutionary. The Matic Network, a Bangalore-based startup, aimed to solve the “scalability and usability issues, while not compromising on decentralization”. 

They intended to leverage the existing developer ecosystem, providing us with a side-chain scaling solution for existing dApps. Initially, this Ethereum based blockchain went live on the Kovan Testnet, allowing near-instant transfers, with a high transaction throughput and increased scalability. 2018 had a heavy focus on the inception of something revolutionary. 

In short, along with solving the scalability issues for dApps in the Ethereum ecosystem, Matic also functions as a one-stop DeFi platform, with the intention of increasing blockchain adoption rates. 

If 2018 was focused on introducing the platform to the world, 2019 was focused on growth and marketing. Their IEO launch, as part of the Binance Launchpad program, would definitely be their marquee event. 

Forging a strategic partnership with Binance, the Matic network was able to raise over $5 Million Dollars, which was the best performing IEO in the industry back then. A total of 1.9 Billion (19% of the total supply) MATIC tokens were listed on sale in Binance, with each of the winning tickets (16,666 in total) being allocated a maximum of 114,004.56 (300 USD). 

They also entered into a strategic alliance with Coinbase Ventures, who invested in the Matic Network in their seed round. Matic utilized this investment to help realize their vision of achieving scale for dApps. They integrated the Coinbase Wallet, alongside the existing Matic Wallet, ensuring additional security and accessibility to the Matic network. 

This enabled users to use dApps built on Matic, directly from their Coinbase wallet, if they chose to do so. Along with this, they also integrated stablecoins like USDC and DAI to address volatility and provide stable payment rails. 

While the investments did hog the limelight, it should in no way undermine the progress the Matic Network made in 2019. During early March, they announced a developer support program, which will provide teams building on Matic with support grants, technical guidance, security audit, marketing and promotion, investor connections, and access to Matic sponsored hackathons (which has since then become a mainstay since it was initially announced). They allocated a sum of 500,000 USD to fund grants for dApps, with the sole intention of bringing Ethereum to the public attention. 

They had organized over 50 hackathons to assist the “BUIDLers of Web 3.0” and make a significant impact in the “global decentralized movement”. They’ve continued to organize hackathons globally (with primary focus in India), providing innovators a range of bounty as an incentive to dabble with the blockchain.  Events like Inout, ETHWaterloo and ETHIndia were particularly successful in 2019. 

The product became much more polished, and evolved from the proof of concept phase in 2019. They officially introduced the Matic Wallet in April 27th, with native support for Plasma Chains. With an expanded team of 10+ developers, the team managed to not only deliver the Testnet earlier than expected, they were also able to deliver on alpha and beta versions of the mainnet within September of 2019! 

Over the year 2019, 40+ dApps integrate with the Matic Network, making it the most adopted Layer 2 solution. In fact, the rate of adoption was so staggering that they were ranked the top 15 blockchain platforms in terms of adoption. Some famous dApps that integrated with Matic in 2019 includes Decentraland, Harmony, Incento and BetProtocol among others. 

Overall, Polygan has seen widespread adoption with 250+ DAapps, ~20M+ txns and ~390K unique wallet users. Here’s the list of all DApps on Polygon. Well known DeFi dapps include Aave (5bn+ USD market cap), Sushi, Curve. Most of prediction markets like Polymarket, PlotX and many others

For Polygon, the target customers are DApp developers. If you’re an Ethereum Developer, you’re already a Polygon developer and can leverage Polygon’s fast and secure transactions for your DApp. Currently averqging 1.2 Million transactions per day, the network is within striking distance of Ethereum’s numbers of 1.4 million transactions per day! Meanwhile, $1.2 billion MATIC tokens are being staked and securing the network, with $5 billion in TVL locked.

Adoption from developers is only one side of the coin, as without community support, Matic would not be where they are now. With an elite team of Matic Mitra (global project ambassadors), they successfully spread awareness across countries. This saw immense success, as witnessed by a massive 2200% increase in twitter followers, and 600% increase in Telegram followers.

Though 2020 will always be remembered for the deadly COVID-19 pandemic, the cryptocurrency ecosystem saw a massive surge in popularity with the general public finally seeing the inherent faults with centralized systems. Matic, entering into its second year, was able to launch the official mainnet, and welcomed a whopping 77 new dApps into the Matic ecosystem. 

In fact, Matic maintained it’s spot as the most widely adopted Layer 2 platform in the industry. With moves into the DeFi space, NFTs, gaming and other projects, adoption has really snowballed in 2019. Notably, AMM DEX by WazirX, EasyFi, OroPocket, Decentraland, Terra Virtua, TradeStars, NIFTEX, DiTo are few of the popular dApps that integrated with the Matic network. 

Though stablecoins were announced to be supported back in 2019 (announced along with their partnership with Coinbase ventures), the support officially made its way to the mainnet along with the product launch in 2020. USDT, USDC and DAI are available to be utilized by users of the Matic network to promote stability. 

The Hackathons continued to be a mainstay through 2020. They doubled the number of Hackathons they conducted, to over a 100 during the course of the year, by partnering with DevFolio. They doubled down (quite literally) on their motive to incentivize the global talent to dabble with blockchain, with a particular focus on India. 

They continued their support for up and coming developers working on Ethereum. The initial $500k fund was expanded to over $2 Million. Along with this, they also offered an incentive program that offers monthly, reliable benefits. This is to ensure that teams that are in need of a reliable and predictable source of cashflow, during the course of initial stages of the app lifecycle, before they reach a point of sustainable growth. 

Dubbed the Build-n-Earn program, the Matic network assisted 36 dApps in 2020, helping them raise over $105,000. Along with this, they also introduced a “Multi-million dollar DeFi Incubator Program”. Along with financial assistance, they also helped DeFi teams to utilize the Matic Layer 2 solution by givingtem access to a wide range of developer tooling, along with Matic ecosystem tokens. 

Matic stayed true to their objective of improving user experience, and formed 16 strategic partnerships with industry players like Chainlink, Ren Protocol, LTO Network, Ankr, Razor and Moonpay. The community continued to grow through 2020, with a 68.7k Twitter following and 41.5k Telegram members. The global awareness of the Matic ecosystem continued to grow, and Matic launched 14 regional Telegram communities. 

In 2021, Matic rebranded to Polygon, reportedly to pursue it’s motive of being “Polkadot on Ethereum”. The founders of Matic, joined by Mihailo Bjelic (Serbian Information Systems Engineer) founded Polygon. Though the Polkadot on Ethereum is not the official tagline, the community found it easier to comprehend and was thus popularized. However, with the new Polygon SDK (Software Development Kit), Polygon now allows developers to build dApps on an “Ethereum-anchored infrastructure, without having to choose any technology in particular”

Although only four months have passed since the inception of 2021, Polygon’s focus is becoming extremely clear – ecosystem growth. With the increased number of players in the Polygon ecosystem, it is fair to categorise the different players into three different categories. 

If you’d told us in April of 2018, that a Bangalore-based startup would seriously make a mark in the blockchain space, we’d ask for a sip of the tea you’d been drinking. Amidst regulatory concerns which were enough to make several startups pack-up or transfer abroad, Polygon has had one heck of a journey to be where they are today. 

With the 1-year anniversary of the Mainnet launch (May 31)  just around the corner, I thought this would be the perfect time to put up a post on Polygon’s journey so far, and take this opportunity to congratulate the team on their success till date. The crypto space is showing no signs of slowing down, and neither does Polygon. 

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Hitesh Malviya is the Founder of ItsBlockchain. He is one of the most early adopters of blockchain & cryptocurrency enthusiast in India. After being into space for a few years, he started IBC in 2016 to help other early adopters learn about the technology. Before IBC, Hitesh has founded 4 companies in the cyber security & IT space.

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Crypto is a midwife for the next generation of finance: A simple set of tools built around a core idea of removing trusted intermediaries could form the foundation for a more secure, robust and innovative economy. Ethereum aims to be “the ultimate, fundamental settlement layer of this” new digital-first world, as Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder of ETH scaling solution Polygon, said.

Polygon, which was founded in India, itself was reborn this past year. Founded as the Matic Network in 2017, it was an early secondary layer to the Ethereum blockchain. It used an experimental solution called Plasma to shift transactions off the perennially clogged Ethereum base layer to a super-lightweight rail running parallel to it. 

“We were among the top Plasma teams in 2018, then the industry hype moved somewhere else,” Nailwal said in an interview. “It keeps on moving.” The Polygon team is now focused on building something of a scaling-solution aggregator for Ethereum. Instead of focusing on just one scaling technique, Polygon wants to incorporate them all.

Ethereum has been a victim of its own success. It’s the most used decentralized application blockchain, with the largest developer community. It is frequently the source of some of crypto’s most innovative and popular trends. But the project can’t scale. In order to disrupt legacy finance, crypto developers have become obsessed with hacking Ethereum – with layer 2s, sidechains and, the most ambitious blockchain upgrade to date, Ethereum 2.0. 

See also: Matic Network Now ‘Polygon’ as Platform Targets Ethereum’s L2 Woes

For a while, Plasma was the hot topic when discussing Ethereum’s chokepoints. It was the brainchild of Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s co-creator, and Joseph Poon, a co-founder of Bitcoin scaling startup Lightning Labs. They wrote a coolly worded white paper describing a framework with plenty of upside and “without significant limitations.” 

Published during the 2017 supercycle – a period of hyperbolic growth during which Ethereum’s inability to scale couldn’t be ignored – Plasma was soon billed as a way for Ethereum to match Visa’s transaction count (the yardstick for all blockchains, for some reason). 

In practice, Plasma may have had more significant limitations than advertised or expected. Although Matic found early success – Nailwal said they counted about 150 live protocols or applications before deciding to rebrand as Polygon – people’s attention began to shift elsewhere.

Other scaling solutions hit the market (or were proposed), and talk of Ethereum 2.0, a complete overhaul to the Ethereum blockchain, began to pick up. Instead of resisting this changing landscape, Polygon has decided to embrace it. 

This decision has paid off. Amid a booming market cycle, MATIC, the network’s native token is soaring. It’s a small vindication today for a project that will never be complete.

Over a late-night (for him) Zoom call, Nailwal and I discussed why his team decided to expand the scope of Matic’s original vision, what that work entails and when, if ever, the project of reinventing finance will be finished. 

See also: Buterin, Srinivasan Donate to COVID Relief Fund for India ‘Shaken’ by Second Wave

The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

What was the drive to reinvent Polygon? 

So, basically, with Matic Network we were doing one particular scaling approach, which was Plasma. We were onboarding hundreds of dapps, working with small DeFi (decentralized finance) builders, NFT (non-fungible token) application builders, games, enterprises – a large number of teams – when we realized there was no one solution-fits-all. 

Secondly, we also definitely believe that Ethereum is going to be the ultimate, fundamental settlement layer of this Web3 internet. So instead of providing one type of scaling solution on top of Ethereum, we should provide a suite of scalability solutions for developers to choose what they really want. 

If you take AWS (Amazon Web Services), they allow developers to choose between Linux, Windows, other kinds of servers. You’re free to choose. We wanted to do the same for decentralized, execution platforms. 

We’re doing Optimistic Rollups, zk-rollups, data-availability chains, Polkadot-like substrates, standalone chains where teams can come and create their parachains that connect back to Ethereum. 

Why are you choosing one blockchain to focus on, but multiple scaling solutions? 

There are multiple aspects: First, Ethereum has network effects. We do a lot of hackathons, like 100 a year. 99.999% of all the developers we meet are breaking into blockchain development, and almost always, the first blockchain they work with is Ethereum. Once you come into Ethereum, the community, with its documentation, tooling, you kind of feel like a part of it. 

All these newbies fall in love. These days, funding is available in plenty, so they’re most likely to stay to build products. 

Second, the ethos of the Ethereum community. Think of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is the way it is because Satoshi built it that way, and at a very early stage anonymized himself. No normal leader would do that. Although Ethereum does have Vitalik and the Ethereum Foundation, who are still the biggest figures, the way they’ve been able to cultivate this fully decentralized community without dictating anything. As a person coming in, you feel as though you can propose any change to Ethereum, without taking orders from anyone. No one owns Ethereum. 

Now with layer 2, scalability is coming. That makes it difficult for me to understand how any other blockchain will, first, be able to get the same network effects and, second, how they will be able to cultivate an ethos, which depends on the OGs. Many competing chains are VC-driven. Network effects and community are intangible things you cannot buy with money. You have to do the grind. 

See also: Andrew Keys – 16 Ethereum Predictions From a Crypto Oracle

Then, Ethereum is not slowing down. If you compare 2020 to 2017, Ethereum has this DeFi wave. Previously, it had the ICO (initial coin offering) wave. Then you have NFT waves, there were DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations) in between. These waves keep on coming, innovation keeps on coming. Do you see any particularly innovative product coming out of these other chains? I do not recall any project that was not already done on Ethereum. 

How much of Matic are you keeping in Polygon? 

Some people think that it’s a rebrand, that it’s a pivot. But actually, it’s an expansion. Matic stays the way it is. Think of it as a Venn diagram. Matic is a smaller circle within Polygon, while Polygon’s scope and vision has become much bigger. Polygon is now just launching. Matic has already launched. 

When do you expect to go fully live?

Polygon, actually, technically will never be fully live. Because it is a layer 2 aggregator, and there will always be new solutions. There are multiple mainnets expected. You have this current Poly Plasma, and PoS, and data availability. Later this year you might have Optimistic rollups going live, Zk-Rollups going live. These solutions will keep on coming and getting consolidated in Polygon. 

That’s a lot of specialized knowledge – does the Polygon team have to grow exponentially if the platform is, too?

That’s absolutely a valid question. The team has grown aggressively. The way we’ve built the Polygon ecosystem, we’ve never had a foundation or sold too many tokens. We’re holding tokens – maybe up to a billion dollars in treasury assets – and we intend to spend that money to grow this ecosystem. We already have people in Serbia, in Eastern Europe, building SDK (software development kits). We have a specialized team in India building data availability. Our previous team, the network team. We’re also collaborating with other specialized teams. 

These will be multiple, decentralized teams all working for scaling Ethereum. 

You’re building failure into the model. You’re willing to spend capital to build solutions that may not take off or fail, with the idea that it’s an ever growing, expanding universe.

That’s a nice articulation: We’re building failure into the model. The fundamental goal of Polygon is to not go all in on one particular approach. We learned that the hard way. We were among the top Plasma teams in 2018, then the industry hype moved somewhere else. It keeps on moving. We faced the brunt of that and decided we don’t want to be too specific. We want to be a multi-approach solution and provide these solutions to see which one picks up. 

The vision is adoption. We see where that adoption is and go deep on that. Ultimately, it’s a community thing. If one type of solution is adopted, automatically, we’ll start to provide support. 

Doesn’t Eth 2.0, an Ethereum that can scale on its own, reduce the need for Polygon?

Ethereum 2.0 is supposed to have 64 shards, each one is going to be similar to what Ethereum is today. Let’s say after you add proof-of-stake to the current, single Ethereum chain, it’s able to process 50 tps (transactions per second), up from 13 tps today. Multiply that 64 shards: 3,200 tps. 

Do you think if Ethereum is going to become the fundamental settlement layer of the world that even 3,200 tps is a good enough scalability? 

No, absolutely not. Let’s think of it as the supply of scalability. At the moment it goes up on Ethereum, the demand is already there. It will grow immediately and you will end up with the same bottlenecks. 

That’s why Vitalik published a layer 2-centric roadmap for Ethereum, where he says ETH2.0 will only have data availability shards, meaning they will only have the data of the applications, but the execution happens on layer 2. 

Ethereum 2.0 will become 64 times more scalable than Ethereum is now, but the demand is 1,000 X than where we are. You will need L2 scalability. 

Polygon is often discussed alongside Polkadot and Cosmos. Are there plans for greater blockchain interoperability?

We are interoperable, but within Ethereum. A good mental model is to think of Polkadot as being in the center of a nest of parachains. With Polygon, the Ethereum chain is in the center with an array of Polygon chains around it. That’s why some people call it ‘Polkadot on Ethereum.’ It is interoperable between scaling solutions. Some people are building bridges to Binance Chain or Bitcoin, but at the foundation we are solely focused on Ethereum. 

Every week there is a DeFi hack. Just recently EasyFi was hacked. Don’t these exploits harm adoption?

We should think about it as free markets. In free markets, eventually you have a way to create the alpha in the market that emerges out of it. You have these solutions like Compound, Aave and others that are extensively audited. They have not been hacked that much. Even in some larger protocols, like MakerDAO that have gotten hacked, it did not deplete it completely. It was a few million dollars, which is nothing compared to the size of the whole ecosystem. And then the community learns something, and that’s how it evolves. That’s the power of the network, of Ethereum.

See also: Did Ethereum Learn Anything From the $55M DAO Attack?

If you think there will be a future of programmable money, then that programmable money is going to be hacked. There is no way that it wouldn’t be. There were big hacks in Web 2.0, and there will be in Web 3.0 also. But that’s how the industry evolves. They are not bad things. 

I was looking at your calendar, and it looks like you have calls after this. Do you ever get to sleep?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have one more call after this, then, after that, some internal calls. Generally, I end up doing 16-17 calls a day, so about 12 hours only on calls. Then I rest five-six hours and work to have things to discuss on those calls. My life is always spending. Personal life gets affected a lot. And this is not only for me. 

Everybody who is doing anything significant in crypto is going through the same situation. I think it’s the nature of the industry. The assets never sleep, there’s no holidays, no Christmas, no year-end holidays. People have said before there will be studies on mental health on the people in crypto. People in this industry are mentally… I myself have had medical issues. I have had to be on constant medication, but then I can’t take a break, so I have to keep going with medication. 

This is such a huge topic, and I think it’s only gotten worse during the pandemic. 

When you are building your own token startup, basically you are a public company, you have similar obligations as being a public company because everything is on view. Plus, you have to handle all of the pressure of being a startup. You have to build your product, find your customers and all that. The pressure is multifold. You are working in the finance industry and you are working in a startup – both are extremely excruciating things, but together in one job. It has been very taxing. On a personal level, professional level I feel like I have aged a lot. 

I’ll be 34 this July. Kids call me ‘uncle’ already. 

It seems like the Indian ecosystem is poised to explode, but it’s also being hampered by regulatory uncertainty. Could you give a little insight into the legal situation?

The legal situation has been overly sensationalized by the media. And that was the object of the Indian government: to keep a shadow of uncertainty over crypto in India, so retail does not get into it. They also tried to bring a shadow ban via RBI, the Bank of India. But that was not a ban by law. And also, obviously, India is a leading country – not as strong as in the U.S. – in terms of material liberty. People challenged the ban in court, the court overturned it and all that. The moment that happened the whole industry exploded and India is back to being one of the top regions for crypto. 

What’s the appeal of working in crypto in India?

Developers have really found a gold mine here. Elite developers are getting into it, because they get paid in dollars. If they take USD, their salaries go up relative to those getting paid in rupees. It’s very lucrative. It’s difficult to find comparative salaries here. The salaries will likely continue to rise over the next three to four years, approaching what you have in Silicon Valley. 

See also: How Normies Are Getting Crypto-Rich With DeFi

I think the salaries for good developers across the world will start approaching some global standard. Right now, a $60,000 salary in India would get you a senior developer. In SF (San Francisco), that would get you a college student. So the scene is poised to explode. 

And that’s part of the reason the government is unlikely to ban it outright. It’s an important front for the country. They are definitely going to regulate it, though. 

Let’s find out some interesting crypto news for today.

OIN Finance partnered with PAID Network to explore and utilize SMART Agreements. PAID Network simplifies business agreements and allows businesses and individuals to deal directly with each other without any intervention. This coalition helps OIN to utilize PAID’s SMART Agreements with utmost transparency and decentralization. As PAID Network is equipped with DeFi tools, such as staking, insurance, and decentralized escrow, OIN would utilize these services to add liquidity through the minting of the USDP stablecoin in partnership with PAID Network. This decentralized stablecoin would settle the agreements and disputes within the PAID Network by executing in PAID’s escrow system and SMART Agreement toolbox.

Tidal Finance partnered with Polygon (previously Matic) to provide security and insurance coverage to its ecosystem. Moreover, Tidal Finance provides insurance coverage for cross-chain assets, and its insurance market is built upon Polkadot. It also allows users to design custom insurance pools for one or more assets with high-grade security for DeFi. As per the tweet, Polygon will utilize a new layer of security provided by Tidal Finance. This will help Polygon to safeguard its ecosystem assets through mutual cover pools. Further, Tidal Finance users can enjoy low and cost-efficient gas fees with Polygon’s integration. Additionally, Polygon will add its native token – MATIC – into the Tidal risk pool. This, in turn, allows Tidal liquidity providers to earn extra returns by providing insurance.

Cartesi join hands with IOTA to strengthen its decentralized smart contracts. Collaboratively, the team will employ a Linux-based virtual machine with IOTA oracles to design non-blockchain-based use cases. These use cases would further enhance the DeFi space, gaming, NFTs, and industrial IoT. Moreover, Cartesi is a chain-agnostic Layer 2 infrastructure that solves scalability issues of blockchains. On the other hand, IOTA is a distributed ledger created to exchange value and data between humans and machines. The IOTA network is built for the Internet of Things to enable economic relationships between machines and humans. Hence this unification enables data integrity and the invention of game-changing tools. In addition, this would also help to increase the user base of popular DeFi use cases, such as automated market makers (AMMs), gaming, and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

Bluzelle collaborated with Mintable to release its first set of the Bluzelle NFT Collection. Mintable is an NFT marketplace that enables the creation, purchase, and trade of unique digital collectibles on the Ethereum blockchain. Its high-speed technology allows designing and trading NFTs within seconds. Bluzelle aims to launch a brand-new collection of artistic NFTs designed by renowned art directors. With this partnership, Bluzelle will utilize the intuitiveness and robust User Interface (UI) of the Mintable platform to create and launch its rare NFTs. Further, the community members can participate in artistic NFT campaigns to collect these NFTs as rewards.

In the last segment of crypto news for today, we have EasyFi announcing the integration of EASY on the Binance Bridge. As per the tweet, this would enable EASY token transfers instantly between Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain (BSC). Binance Bridge strives to enhance interoperability between different blockchains and allow digital assets to convert into BSC-wrapped tokens. Further, this integration would bridge liquidity between protocols on Polygon, Ethereum, and BSC. Besides this, EASY token holders will get new opportunities in the growing ecosystem of BSC. This will help to enhance the staking, farming and lending programs of EasyFi in an effortless and seamless manner. Additionally, this also intimates that EASY is now completely integrated and deployed on the BEP-20 token standards apart from being an ERC-20 token.

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To put things into perspective, within a span of just 24 hours, over $1 billion worth of BTC longs were liquidated, causing one of the most intense value drops witnessed by the digital market in its brief history. Another way to look at the crash is that during the above-stated time frame, BTC lost nearly 50% of its value, a statistic that is quite striking, to say the least.

Also worth noting is the fact that over the course of the same week, Bitcoin and many other cryptocurrencies exhibited an extremely high correlation with the United States stock market, which at the time was seen as a possibility due to the overall drop in investor appetite for high-risk assets, especially as the COVID-19 pandemic was just beginning to rear its ugly head.

The steep correction in the U.S. stock market — which saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average dip by 2,300 points — was its worst decline in over 30 years. This correction, coupled with a lack in demand for BTC, resulted in the cryptocurrency’s price first dropping first to around the $5,000 mark and then to around $3,600.

To explore the possibility of whether the crypto sector may be on the receiving end of another massive dip sometime this month, Cointelegraph reached out to CryptoYoda, an independent analyst and cryptocurrency expert. In his view, the triangular combination of finite supply, ever-growing demand and highly leveraged trading is a recipe for flash crashes and turbulent volatility, adding:

Hunter Merghart, head of U.S. operations for cryptocurrency exchange Bitstamp, pointed out that even though the structure of the crypto market has evolved dramatically since last March, the possibility of another crash cannot be ruled out entirely. That being said, he stated that the crypto industry is now full of regulated spot trading avenues, derivatives platforms that ensure a high level of liquidity.

Furthermore, Merghart believes that when compared to previous years, there are now many more active participants within the global crypto landscape who can help ease out any imbalances if volatility were to suddenly increase overnight for some unforeseen reasons.

Anshul Dhir, co-founder and chief operating officer for EasyFi Network — a layer-two DeFi lending protocol for digital assets — pointed out to Cointelegraph that currently, an immense amount of capital has been locked in decentralized finance, and the overall market cap of the crypto industry is more than $1.5 trillion. However, of this figure, Dhir pointed out that the majority of positions are over-leveraged even to the tune of 50x.

While some fears of a possible crypto crash do exist, by and large, the sentiment surrounding the crypto space seems to be much calmer this time around. For example, Chad Steinglass, head of trading for U.S.-based crypto trading platform CrossTower, believes that even though the one-year anniversary of the much dreaded “bottom” is coming up, there is nothing to worry about in regard to such a scenario repeating itself again:

He further opined that the Federal Reserve’s response to COVID-19 was the confirmation of the original thesis behind Bitcoin, and it kicked off the bull run that has been ongoing for the last 11 months. Steinglass said that the Fed has shown no signs of tightening its monetary policy, and even Congress, despite partisan gridlock, has shown that it will continue to inject stimulus into the economy until the recession brought on by the coronavirus is fully in the rear-view mirror.

Furthermore, with the steady flow of institutional adoption — with a new major traditional asset player announcing its support for digital assets seemingly every other week — it appears as though there will be no serious correction for any reason other than some surprise prohibitive regulations coming from the Treasury or the Securities and Exchange Commission, which, at this point, seems highly unlikely.

The only caveat that Steinglass has in relation to his otherwise bullish stance is the possibility of some profit-taking from the U.S.-based investors who may have bought BTC at the bottom and have been waiting to sell until the calendar rolls over for tax purposes. “However, I expect that the volume of BTC that these sellers will look to unload is relatively small in the grand scheme of things,” he added.

Daniele Bernardi, founder of PHI Token and Diaman Group, believes that last year’s Bitcoin price drop and the collapse of financial markets all over the world were totally related to the onset of the pandemic. In this regard, he told Cointelegraph that it’s unlikely that such an event will happen again:

Though the events of March 12 are etched in everyone’s memory at this point, most technical indicators seem to suggest that the possibility of such a scenario playing out once again seems improbable.

In this vein, it is also worth mentioning that many of the coronavirus fears that were running rampant this time last year — and appear to be the primary drivers of the crash — have now largely died out, especially with vaccinations starting to be rolled out on a global scale.

If there is one thing that the crypto market has taught its participants over the years, then anything is possible when it comes to this niche. Therefore, any prediction of future price action is nothing more than a very well-educated guess and that any unforeseen global event may reshuffle Bitcoin’s deck to form a completely different narrative.

Matic Network was a Binance launchpad project. The token sale of MATIC was a grand success with more than $5 million raised in 2019. Total 19% of supply was allocated for the launchpad. Matic was a project which was trying to address the scalability issue of Ethereum blockchain. The vision of the project was to improve scalability through proof of stake sidechains. The project also focused on usability and thus created a blockchain structure to get lower transaction fees, faster confirmations and many other benefits. The team focused on creating a scalable Ethereum sidechain using an implementation of the Plasma framework, an Ethereum scaling solution. The public sidechain took the Ethereum transactions off-chain and provided faster and cheaper transactions. A set of developer tools were created to achieve a better UI. Yes, the ecosystem was always focused on UI. Matic was doing well and it entered the top 100 cryptocurrencies group as per market capitalization very fast. The DAPP ecosystem also grew significantly. Just yesterday, the team announced in this blog post that Matic has rebranded to Polygon. Rebranding of a successful project is not very common. Let’s take a deep dive.

Matic Network’s rebranding is ambitious. The project wants to be Ethereum’s Internet of Blockchains. The existing solutions remain fully functional and MATIC token will be continuing to act as the governance token of the platform. The project is basically expanding their visions. Matic is not a new project. The project was initiated in 2017 to provide a better world to carry Ethereum transactions and their Plasma implementation was one of the first successful implementations of the concept originally given by Vitalik Buterin. 80+ applications including Polymarket, Aavegotchi, Neon District, Skyweaver, Cometh, EasyFi etc were onboarded onto Matic chain. But could Ethereum scaling be the only USP of a project? Ethereum is really robust and scaling solution is the need of the hour but wide adoption of a scaling solution will take more time. Nowadays, blockchain technology is really changing at a fast rate. Ethereum has become the preferred value settlement layer undoubtedly but many other blockchains also look promising. The blockchains like Polkadot, Avalanche or Cosmos come with great technology but they have no organic ecosystem like Ethereum. The future wants all these blockchains to be inter-operable. The blockchains must talk to each other. Polygon protocol will provide the framework for connecting Ethereum-compatible blockchain networks.

Image Source - How to connect the Ethereum compatible blockchains?

Polygon will provide a dedicated, optimized instance of Ethereum to any project. Polygon will deploy any preset Ethereum compatible blockchain easily. This will reduce the developmental challenge significantly and reduce the fragmentation of the ecosystem. Polygon will also enable such blockchains to be compatible with existing Ethereum tools like Metamask. The protocol will enable arbitrary message passing between two participating Polygon chains and thus offer interoperability. Polygon will also have a growing set of modules to develop custom networks. The project is designed to provide ‘security as a service’ either by Ethereum or a professional validator pool. The user experience will be far superior in the web3 environment in comparison to web2 environment and the transactions will be instant with zero gas fee. The DAPP development landscape is based on Ethereum and the developers will be able to deploy DAPPs on Polygon without any protocol knowledge. DAPP deployment will not require any token deposit, fees or permission. It is important to note that the existing Matic chain remains fully functional and continues to be developed and grown as an important component of the Polygon ecosystem.

Image Source - Polygon solution

Polygon envisions a borderless world. The project is open-source and it aims to transform Ethereum into a multi-chain system. The vision is significantly strong as it wants to reap benefits from Ethereum’s network effect. Polygon does not deviate from Ethereum as it is built as an integral part of Ethereum. The projects like Polkadot, Cosmos are really built from scratch and quite untested. Polygon will make them expressive on Ethereum. Ethereum already has so many EVM compatible chains, enterprise chains and layer2 implementations. It is really the time to have Ethereum’s own Internet now!

We are happy to announce that Chainlink has been successfully deployed live on Matic Network as our recommended oracle solution for developers. Matic is the second blockchain, after Ethereum, to actively integrate Chainlink Price Feed oracles! Five price feeds have already been launched on the Matic mainnet: MATIC/USD, USDC/USD, ETH/USD, USDT/USD, and DAI/USD, with many more to come as a means of supporting the growing demand of DeFi on Matic Network. Several DeFi projects building on Matic have already committed to using Chainlink, including EasyFi’s undercollateralized lending protocol, PlotX’s prediction markets, and several more projects soon to be announced. Through Chainlink, these dApps can execute key DeFi functions such as checking loan collateralization, minting and swapping synthetic assets at fair market prices, settling prediction markets, and more. In addition to Chainlink Price Feeds for DeFi, Chainlink VRF (Verifiable Random Function) will also be launching in the near future on Matic Network to support a new wave of scalable gaming applications reliant on provably fair randomness. Several projects on Matic Network are already working on implementing Chainlink VRF into their protocol, such as Aavegotochi, FarmTogether, and more to be announced.  Outside of Price Feeds and VRF, Chainlink will also be available as a general-purpose oracle solution for connecting to any off-chain API, empowering development of virtually any externally connected blockchain application. One such project taking advantage of Chainlink’s flexibility and uniquely launching on Matic Network is Digital Bridge, a 2FA oracle built using Chainlink that allows developers to build an extra security layer into their smart contracts. Chainlink was selected as the preferred oracle solution on Matic Network because it provides Matic developers with access to high quality data, decentralized oracle infrastructure, Sybil resistant oracle nodes, and transparent processes so users and developers can monitor how the oracle networks and the individual nodes function in real-time. The end result is highly available, accurate, manipulation resistant, and transparent oracle networks for getting any off-chain resource necessary for success. The market leading Chainlink Price Feeds have proven to secure over $4 Billion in USD value on mainnet for startup and established DeFi projects, including AAVE and Synthetix. We’re confident that Chainlink Price Feeds are an optimal solution for Matic DeFi developers needing secure, reliable, and ready made oracle solutions that can easily be integrated into their protocols. This both accelerates their go-to market timelines and helps them avoid the many pitfalls of trying to build their own oracle solutions or relying on unproven alternatives.  If you are a DeFi developer on Matic and want to start using Chainlink Price Feeds, check out our documentation or reach out to us in the Chainlink and/or Matic Discord. Stay tuned for future announcements and documentation for how to use Chainlink on Matic, including the launch of Chainlink VRF on Matic mainnet. Chainlink is the most widely used and secure way to power universal smart contracts. With Chainlink, developers can connect any blockchain with high-quality data sources from other blockchains as well as real-world data. Managed by a global, decentralized community of hundreds of thousands of people, Chainlink is introducing a fairer model for contracts. Its network currently secures billions of dollars in value for smart contracts across the decentralized finance (DeFi), insurance and gaming ecosystems, among others. Chainlink is trusted by hundreds of organizations to deliver definitive truth via secure, reliable data feeds. To learn more, visit and follow on Twitter. | | | | | | | | Matic is a developer-first hybrid POS+Plasma sidechain on top of Ethereum, enabling Ethereum developers to scale their DApps for large scale usage. Matic is rapidly becoming the go-to Layer 2 Solution for developers, thanks to secure, scalable and instant transactions, secured by Ethereum. There are 70+ Dapps building on Matic, ranging from DeFi Protocols to thrilling games and prediction markets. Deploy your existing Ethereum DApp in less than 15 minutes! Get started with our | | | | |

Chainlink stated that they are excited to award a Chainlink Community Grant to Fiews_io to continue building more reliable Chainlink node infrastructure, particularly providing Chanlink node operators with backup Ethereum nodes and supporting additional blockchain environments.

Community members expressed that Fiews_io well deserve it and that they have been there from the beginning.

For those who do not know Fiews, they are a leading blockchain technology development shop which is focused on building infrastructure for Chainlink nodes, has been selected as a recipient of the Chainlink Community Grant Program. Also, they build tools and services around Ethereum.

Fiews will be creating an additional set of Ethereum nodes for Chainlink node operators to utilize as a backup broadcasting mechanism, thus making it as a possible fallback support in cases where the network access beyond their own full-node will be required.  Also, the initial expansion will provide for an additional backup for broadcasting.  They will continue to improve as a reliable infrastructure to Chainlink node operators.

It is worthy recollecting that the Proof of Reserve contract will access the decentralized Chainlink oracle to verify the balances of BitGo custody wallets for wBTC in every 10 minutes.  Thus, 10 minutes is the average time between BTC blocks. If there is a deviation from a set threshold the oracle will push an update on-chain to reference the new balance.

Layer-2 DeFi lending protocol at EasyfiNetwork will integrate ChainLink price feeds launched on the MaticNetwork.  EasyFi will use the Chainlink price oracles to issue loans at fair market valuations & maintain a secure, transparent liquidation mechanism. 

In response one of the users queried, Why not integrate your price feeds with Equilibrium as well? They are much better than easyfi when it comes to giving out loans because they only have 110% collateral ratio and their liquidity is insured. Aside from that, they are cross-chained. Yet someone else tried to clarify stating that It’s usually the other way around, Chainlink’s oracles are integrated by third parties.

Gaming data provider DotaMind is running its own ChainLink node to sell their signed data directly to smart contracts. Developers can now build unique gaming dApps based solely around DOTA2 matches, player performance, Dota NFTs, and more. In response, some of the users expressed that LINK is eating up all their data. Some expressed that they love both DOTA and LINK. 

  We are thrilled to announce that Dapp.com has officially added Matic Ecosystem to our platform as the 18th blockchain we support. Over 30 dapps who are already live on the mainnet could be discovered in the Matic Dapp List. Additional integration between Dapp.com and Matic will be done to further facilitate Matic’s ecosystem in the next stage.      We are excited to see the growth of Matic and the huge impact it is bringing to the blockchain space - not just yet another layer 2 scaling solution,  it is merging seamlessly with Ethereum as an ecosystem.        Infrastructure Built Ready For Layer 2 Onboarding   6 months after its mainnet goes live, Matic has nearly 150,000 wallets created. To compare, Polkadot has less than 50,000 mainnet wallet address almost 4 months after the mainnet launch, according to Subscan. And Loom, another Ethereum Layer 2 chain, has less than 40,000 mainnet address 2 years after it’s launch.      This is a significant achievement for a new mainnet, and it is all due to Matic’s smooth onboarding infrastructure. Which includes:       Swap Ethereum Assets Powered by POS Bridge   Some stats about the most-used stablecoins on smart contract platforms:    Tether (USDT): Omni, Ethereum, Tron, EOS, Liquid, Algorand, Solona, Matic USDC: Ethereum, Algorand, Solona, Matic Dai: Ethereum, Matic BUSD: Ethereum, Binance Chain, Matic     This is all powered by POS Bridge and Plasma Bridge. It takes less than 10 mins to move your assets, including Fungible Tokens (eg. Ether, USDC, DAI etc.) and NFTs (Both ERC-721 and ERC-1155) to the Matic network and you only need to pay a tx fee on Ethereum.          Try Ethereum DeFi, Games, DEX and others on Layer 2 EasyFi, the Compound on Matic, where you could borrow or lend USDT, DAI, and USDC and earn $EASY at the same time. You could claim free $Matic on EasyFi for the gas fee when you deposit any of these stabecoins. The interest rate for borrowing is very low and gas is almost free. Get yourself some $EASY (listed on Binance) through providing liquidity before the liquidity runs out!    QuickSwap, a Matic version of Uniswap V1 DEX which you could earn from being a liquidity provider. Again, thanks to POS Bridge and the scalability of Matic, you could swap all major ERC-20 token such as MANA, KNC and earn its governance token $QUICK at the same time - within seconds, and super low fee.    Matic has gain really strong support from early Ethereum builders including Blockchain Cuties Universe, 0xUniverse, Marble Cards etc and there are more new games being built.  (Synerg of Serra)     Did we talk about having the core assets in Layer 1 and move the actions to Layer 2 in 2018?    Why don’t we do both on Layer 2! Matic All Products List       You may also like:          

The Ethereum blockchain network seems to be undergoing problems, leading to noticeable impact on associated service providers. In a service announcement, Ethereum infrastructure provider Infura mentioned that it is going through a service outage for its Ethereum mainnet API and it was examining the matter. Notably, due to the outage, some Infura users were impelled to stop Ethereum-based services. These include crypto wallet Metamask as well as Binance, apart from others. Specifically, the difficulties at Infura look to shoot up from an issue with Ethereum client Go Ethereum, or Geth. Soon after, Binance and Blockchair tweeted that there had probably been a split in the Ethereum blockchain. Although, Blockchair later mentioned that it had fixed the issue by upgrading Geth. The lead developer at Blockchair, Nikita Zhavoronkov tweeted, “At some point Ethereum developers introduced a change in the code that led today to a chain split starting from block 11234873 (07:08 UTC).” In fact, Zhavoronkov called it technically an impromptu hard fork and added that 3rd party services need to upgrade to take care of the issue. Zhavoronkov further mentioned, “Those who haven’t been upgrading their geth nodes for a while (I presume several months at least) got split with those with new geth versions.” Binance CEO, CZ tweeted: Crypto exchange Binance’s CEO comments that the exchange has restored services for Ethereum-based coins. CZ again tweeted: Defi platforms are also facing difficulties due to the alleged Ethereum chain split. One of the new Defi paltforms, Easyfi Network tweeted: It is to be noted that the price of ETH is unaffected at the time of reporting, as per coinmarketcap. At press time ETH is trading at a price of around 460 USD a pop. What do you think about the latest alleged Ethereum chain split? Let us know in the comments below! Ady is a technology geek. He likes making crypto doodles and crypto memes. Ady likes to write about latest developments in cryptocurrency and blockchain sphere. Published in Crypto News and Ethereum News Ady is a technology geek. He likes making crypto doodles and crypto memes. Ady likes to write about latest developments in cryptocurrency and blockchain sphere.

This is definitely great news for the entire Matic Network community. 2020 has been dubbed the year of DeFi due to the unprecedented growth and adoption of DeFi protocols this year. Decentralized applications in general cannot function effectively without reliable real-time price oracle feeds. Hence, Matic Network’s integration of Chainlink’s price oracles.

Matic Network boasts of operating a low fee, high-performance platform for DeFi applications. The platform in recent times has attracted the attention of innovators and developers due to its recent mainnet launch. Last month alone, the blockchain platform has partnered with top industry players, amongst which are Wazirx’s Automated Market Maker (AMM) DEX. Maha DAO, EasyFi’s lending, PlotX’s prediction markets, and OroPocket’s synthetic assets.

These DeFi applications all require real-time data from a secure and reliable oracle platform. Chainlink will provide this off-chain data to the blockchain platform.

Chainlink is arguably the most widely used oracle platform in the DeFi industry today. The platform boasts of securing over $3 billion worth of assets for top crypto platforms.

Chainlink stands out in the DeFi space because of several features, namely:

Speaking on the announcement, Anurag Arjun, co-founder of the Matic Network, pointed out that dApp developers on his platform want “easy and dev-friendly access to oracles.” He added that the entire Matic ecosystem is elated by the partnership with Chainlink’s price oracle network. Arjun furthermore reiterated on the platform’s commitment to “providing a rich and seamless developer interface for blockchain programmers.”

Daniel Kochis, the head of business development for Chainlink, said, “We’re excited to empower Matic’s innovative and fast-growing Layer-2 solution by providing them with secure and reliable oracles to power high-throughput, universally connected blockchain applications.”

Since the DeFi space is relatively new, the blockchain platform has plans to tutor interested developers on the rudiments of using Chainlink oracles. The tutorial will take place via a series of workshops.

Matic Network also recently completed its phase 1 staking.