Polygon (MATIC) is a so-called layer-2 scaling solution for the Ethereum (ETH) network. The project should allow the Ethereum network to process significantly more transactions for a lower price. Over the past year, Polygon has managed to put itself in the spotlight.
100 million unique addresses
Recently, the Polygon network has reached a new milestone. For the first time in history, the network had more than 100 million unique addresses. Since September, the number of unique users has even doubled.
While unique users doesn’t equate to active users, this is an impressive new record. It shows that Polygon is taking good steps for the future.
This is an extra special development because this month the Polygon network gas parties, or transaction costs, increased by a factor of 30. This was done to keep the large number of spam transactions out of the network. As a result, the amount of transactions on the network dropped sharply. However, users do not seem deterred, as is apparent from the new record of the amount of unique addresses.
Whales are at the helm
Despite the huge amount of unique addresses, a large part of the total circulation of MATIC tokens is in the hands of just one handful of major investors and addresses.
The 100 largest addresses on the Polygon network even control more than 90% of the total circulation of MATIC tokens. The two largest owners together even own about 36.6% of the total circulation. However, these are official addresses of the Polygon network such as the strike contract.
This causes a lot of criticism. According to some, the fact that almost 40% of the total circulation is in the hands of official Polygon addresses means that the network is too centralized. This criticism is further fueled by the fact that the network recently significantly increased transaction costs.
Nevertheless, the Polygon network is growing very fast. Record after record is being broken and it doesn’t look like this trend is going to be broken anytime soon. A while ago, the network reached more active daily users than the Ethereum network. Now, of course, there is the milestone of 100 million unique addresses.