InvestAnswers Calls Polygon ($MATIC) a Top Altcoin Pick

James Mullarney, the host of the very popular YouTube channel “InvestAnswers”, says that $MATIC, the native token of Polygon, is one of his top altcoin picks for investors to keep an eye on. 

Polygon is “a decentralised Ethereum scaling platform that enables developers to build scalable user-friendly dApps with low transaction fees without ever sacrificing on security.” The Polygon Lightpaper describes Polygon as “a protocol and a framework for building an connecting Ethereum-compatible blockchain networks.”

On 18 May 2021, Independent Ethereum educator, investor and advisor Anthony Sassano took to Twitter to clear up some of the confusion around Polygon (e.g. some people refer to Polygon as a sidechain to Ethereum, while others call it an L2 blockchain). Below are a few highlights from that Twitter thread:

• “There is the Matic Plasma Chain and the Polygon PoS chain. The vast majority of the activity is happening on the PoS chain.“
• “The PoS chain is what people refer to as a ‘sidechain’ to Ethereum because it has its own permissionless validator set (100+ who are staking MATIC) which means it doesn’t use Ethereum’s security (aka Ethereum’s PoW).“
• “The PoS chain goes beyond a standard sidechain and actually relies on and commits itself to Ethereum (what some people may call a ‘commit-chain’). It relies on Ethereum because all of the validator/staking logic for the PoS chain lives as a smart contract on Ethereum.“
• “This means that if the Ethereum network went offline, the Polygon PoS chain would also go offline. Secondly, the PoS chain actually commits/checkpoints itself to Ethereum every so often.“
• “This has 2 benefits: it provides Ethereum-based finality to the PoS chain & it can help the chain recover in case of catastrophic event. This also means that Polygon is paying Ethereum to use its blockspace (in ETH) & paying for it to secure the contracts & checkpointing.“

Source: Polygon

In a recent YouTube video, Mullarney told viewers that $MATIC offered an attractive balance to investors between upside and potential risk. While the show’s host gave the caveat that $MATIC may not be the type of crytpoasset to bring exponential returns, he said it provided the “least amount of downside.”

The crypto analyst claimed Polygon ranked third highest in his “smart-contract platform score,” falling just behind Ethereum ($ETH) and Solana ($SOL). He noted that MATIC benefited from having an “extremely high” rate of adoption, in addition to providing the lowest risk of the altcoin alternatives. 

As reported by The Daily Hodl, InvestAnswers’s host said, 

[MATIC has] very solid daily active users, especially considering all the stuff that’s happened in this crypto winter. It has ZK (zero knowledge) rollup functionality, and the move of Ethereum to proof-of-stake will not negate the need for L2s at all, by any stretch. 

Despite falling more than 70% from its all-time price high of $2.92, the InvestAnswer’s host said that MATIC has built substantial support at $0.60. The crypto analyst said that Polygon reaching $0.65 would provide a “killer entry” for investors looking to get in on the altcoin. 

In a blog post published on 23 August 2022, the Polygon team explained why “the merge is only good news for Polygon.”

The blog went on to say:

“… the merge means Ethereum will be more environmentally friendly, like us. But it will not lower Ethereum’s gas fees or increase its speed. In fact, the network depends on Polygon and other Layer 2 solutions to solve for this. 

“To quote from the Ethereum Foundation: ‘The Ethereum ecosystem is firmly aligned that Layer 2 scaling is the only way to solve the scalability trilemma while remaining decentralized and secure.’

“The merge prepares Ethereum for future upgrades, like sharding, that will help it grow and scale. But as Ethereum grows, Polygon should as well. Every improvement made to Ethereum, as a settlement layer, magnifies the power of Polygon.

“The merge fixes the massive carbon footprint of Ethereum, arguably beefing up Ethereum’s security, and reducing ETH inflation. Polygon gains from Ethereum’s improved security and general growth to the ecosystem–even while Ethereum massively gains from the Polygon companies’ suite of scaling solutions, like the recently announced Polygon zkEVM. 

“So proof of stake changes the narrative: Ethereum is now like Polygon, a significantly more environmentally-friendly network.“

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Featured Image via Pixabay

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