Polygon Becoming More Independent From Ethereum as App Numbers Rise: Report

More than 3,000 apps are on the “layer 2″ platform, up from 30 last year.

AccessTimeIconOct 20, 2021 at 5:27 p.m. UTC
Updated May 11, 2023 at 7:08 p.m. UTC
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How long does a layer 2 remain a layer 2?

A new report released on Wednesday from blockchain development platform Alchemy shows that the number of apps on self-described Ethereum layer 2 Polygon is growing at a rapid rate and that the ecosystem is increasingly becoming independent from projects on the Ethereum base layer.

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  • More than 3,000 apps are now on the chain, up from just 30 last year, according to the report. Additionally, Alchemy has seen a 61% increase in the number of teams building on the chain month-over-month.

    Polygon is growing “two times faster than Ethereum did at this point in its lifecycle,” Alchemy product manager Mike Garland said.

    While Polygon is often referred to as a sidechain and developers are working to position it as a complement to Ethereum rather than a competitor, the data shows that the number of new Polygon-native apps is outstripping the number of apps deployed to both chains – possibly a sign of growing independence.

    Of the new apps deployed to Polygon, only 38% are being built on both Polygon and Ethereum, versus 62% deployed exclusively on Polygon, according to Alchemy’s report.

    Garland said that the data shows how projects that are ETH-native but also deploy to Polygon are growing in tandem with fully MATIC-native projects. MATIC is Polygon’s native token.

    “I think the most interesting thing to me about this data is that we’re seeing both developing in parallel (roughly 4/10 using Polygon alongside Eth, 6/10 using just Polygon). There are certainly many teams that are launching and growing natively on Polygon, but also a substantial group using Polygon to deepen what they started in the Ethereum ecosystem and enable new use cases,” he said.

    MATIC is up 3.86% on the day to $1.54, while ETH is up 8.35% to $4,105.

    CORRECTION: Updated to accurately reflect team growth percentage

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    Andrew Thurman

    Andrew Thurman was a tech reporter at CoinDesk with a focus on DeFi.


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