Polygon has been silently gaining strength in this bear market. Its partnerships with global brands are well known (Mastercard, Samsung, Disney and Reddit for example). It continues to be the top Layer 2 of Ethereum. Its recent hard fork will likely aid its development for the long term.

Here are 5 reasons why it is a strong, strong project.

1. MATIC has been resilient

In a bear market, usually Bitcoin and Ethereum hold most of the value as altcoins bleed heavily from lack of confidence from users. 
In the last year or so, MATIC has been resilient. Since November 2021’s all-time-high for Bitcoin, MATIC is up more than 70% to date on the MATIC/BTC pair. SOL and ADA have lost more than 50% of their value against BTC in this period.

MATIC/BTC performance in the last year. Source: TradingView

2. Polygon is the leading Layer 2 on Ethereum

Scaling solutions are essentially used for doing transactions in bulk with cheaper fees. With more than 300K daily active users (DAUs) this week, Polygon is the leading scaling solution of Ethereum. Total daily fees on the network is still lower than that of Optimism (OP) which has 73K DAUs.

3. Its partnerships are great

Polygon has approached and partnered with multiple brands globally to become their default NFT marketplace partner as well as a Web3 partner for a few. Meta, Disney, Reddit and Adidas are some of the key ones. In India, Flipkart recently became its partner. It must be doing something right, right?

4. Recent hard fork fixes a possible price hike issue

The only question that remained was – does its development match its public persona and confidence? The recent hard fork addressed two issues that are key to its long term success – 1) lower gas fees when network activity peaks by optimizing network usage; and 2) reducing data block time preventing an issue called ‘reorgs’. While Polygon did receive backlash on the number of validators that voted in this exercise, a successful hard fork this week is notable.

5. MATIC’s staking returns are good

For long term hodlers, MATIC is currently providing more than 5% returns via a staking delegation. Staking is a safer way to earn interest in crypto and allows users to hold on their assets unlike lending where assets are used for furthering returns by a central entity. Around 40% of MATIC’s circulation is staked currently.