Polygon Deep Dive: a scalable Ethereum solution on Orion

Polygon is now integrated into Orion Terminal, giving users the speed and low-cost of a scalable Ethereum blockchain to trade aggregated crypto assets on CEXs, DEXs and swap pools in one place. To understand what Polygon brings to Orion’s growing ecosystem, it’s important to acknowledge the concepts behind it.



What is Polygon?

Polygon is the first simple and effective scaling platform for Ethereum scaling and infrastructure. Initially known as Matic Network, rebranding in 2021 to Polygon, the development work of the team centers on the primary scaling of Ethereum’s architecture.



Scaling solutions

Polygon has several scaling solutions that are live: Polygon PoS commit chain and Plasma Chain, zk-rollup, with optimistic roll-ups in beta, and data availability-blockchain, which is still in development.

This growing suite of Ethereum-scaling solutions aims to solve the obvious limitations of Ethereum, tackling low throughout, gas prices, delayed PoW finality and governance dependence. Whereas various projects attempt to explore Ethereum-compatible blockchain’s in order to navigate around these limitations, it leaves ecosystems fragmented and imposes various development challenges.

Polygon’s protocol and framework for building and connecting Ethereum-compatible blockchain networks present a notable solution to Ethereum’s main issues. Polygon provides one-click deployment of preset blockchain networks and a growing set of modules enabling the development of custom networks. Modular and optional interoperability protocols enable arbitrary messages with Ethereum and other blockchain networks. Adaptor modules present interoperability for existing blockchain networks as well.



Features of Polygon

Built by developers, for developers, Polygon combines the best of Ethereum along with sovereign blockchains to form an appealing feature set.

Ethereum compatibility: established tech stack tools, languages, standards, enterprise adoption.

Scalability: dedicated blockchains, scalable consensus algorithms and custom Wasm execution environments.

Security: modular “security as a service”, either from Ethereum or via a pool of professional validators.

Sovereignty: dedicated throughput/resources, fully customizable tech stack, sovereign governance.

Interoperability: native support for arbitrary message passing (tokens, contract calls), bridges to external systems.

User experience: comparable to Web2, “zero-gas” transactions, instant (deterministic) transaction finality.

Developer experience: similar equivalent to Ethereum. No protocol-level knowledge is required, no token deposits, fees or permissions.

Modularity: high customizability, extensibility and upgradeability, short time-to-market community collaboration.

Technology of Polygon

Polygon removes borders and joins a new revision of economy and society together. It provides projects with the best features of stand-alone blockchains, with sovereignty, scalability and flexibility, along with Ethereum’s security, interoperability and developer experience. Each of these blockchains enables compatibility with existing Ethereum tools and they can seamlessly exchange messages between themselves and Ethereum.

Polygon’s framework provides simple one-click deployment of present Ethereum-compatible blockchains and features a growing set of modules. These include pluggable consensus, staking, governance, EVM/Ewasm, and execution environments, for any developers wishing to build their own custom blockchains.

The protocol provides arbitrary messages passing between two Polygon chains, and also between Polygon and Ethereum. Its “security as a service” enables modular security services either by Ethereum or a dedicated set of validators.



Polygon chains

Ethereum

Polygon supports two major types of Ethereum-compatible chains. Stand-alone networks fully control their own security, such as having their own validators. These offer top flexibility and independence and can involve both enterprise networks and established projects with powerful communities. The Ethereum layer implements via smart contracts and can involve finality, staking, dispute resolution, and messages between ETH and Polygon chains.

Security

Secured chains use “security as a service” instead of establishing their own validator pool. Ethereum or professional validators form this service. Whereas secured chains provide a high level of security, they sacrifice independence and flexibility. These can suit startups and security-focused projects. A non-mandatory layer, the “validators as a service” can check the validity of any Polygon chain. This often “meta” blockchain usually runs alongside Ethereum and can deal with functions such as validator management, including registration, rewards, and shuffling, as well as Polygon chains validation.

The security layer can have multiple instances, implemented by various entities and characteristics. The implementation may also be directly on Ethereum, of which validations occur through Ethereum miners.

Architecture

The architecture of Polygon comprises the Polygon Networks layer and the Execution layer.

The Polygon Networks layer involves multiple sovereign blockchain networks, which maintain functions such as Transaction Collation, Local Consensus, and Block Production.

The Execution layer interprets and executes transactions agreed upon and that are present within the Polygon networks’ blockchains. Two sub-layers of this include the execution environment and the execution logic. These are through the pluggable virtual machine and the state of the transition function of a specific Polygon network, often written as an Ethereum smart contract.

Polygon exists to provide for an open and borderless world where information and exchange occurs on a global scale and freely. Polygon reinforces thriving communities, beyond the limitations of borders and regulations. Connected to Orion Protocol, users tap into this progressive blockchain and immediately use its speed and low-cost characteristics when trading digital assets. Orion Bridge, the most secure bridge in market, provides users with a secure way of exchanging crypto assets across several chains, providing a one-stop-shop solution to trading and more.

About Orion Protocol

Orion Protocol is the chain-agnostic protocol building the single point of access to the crypto market - powered by Orion's Universal Liquidity Aggregator. Orion Protocol is the first, and only, platform to provide decentralized access to CEXs, DEXs, and swap pools in one place, directly from users' wallets. As the first cross-chain, cross-exchange trading Terminal in market, Orion Terminal aggregates siloed liquidity into one place.

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About Polygon

Polygon is the leading blockchain development platform, offering scalable, affordable, secure and sustainable blockchains for Web3. Its growing suite of products offers developers easy access to major scaling solutions including L2 (ZK Rollups and Optimistic Rollups), sidechains, hybrid, stand-alone and enterprise chains, and data availability. Polygon’s scaling solutions have seen widespread adoption with 19,000+ decentralized applications hosted, 1.6B+ total transactions processed, 142M+ unique user addresses, and $5B+ in assets secured. Polygon is carbon neutral with the goal of leading the Web3 ecosystem in becoming carbon negative.

If you're an Ethereum Developer, you're already a Polygon developer! Leverage Polygon’s fast and secure txns for your dApp, get started here.

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