Polygon (Matic) Explained! (Beginner's guide)

In this episode, I'll tell you everything you need to know about Polygon, well, previously known as Matic. And we're choosing to cover Polygon first for really two major reasons. There is a rapidly growing ecosystem, so even if you don't own the Polygon coin or the Matic coin, there are many projects that you need to pay attention here, especially with the blossoming DeFi and NFT ecosystem. Also, another reason why we're covering this is because Polygon had a few rebrands recently. It was previously known as Matic, and there's a little bit of confusion, which we really wanted to clarify in this video. Now, to make this video a little bit better, I've enlisted the help of two friends. So we got Jemmy, and we also got Nathan. They're going to help me try to explain what is going on. We're going to have a blast along the way as well. Instead of giving you a long-winded explanation of what Polygon is, we prefer to show you really, really fast. Polygon goes off up to 65,000 transactions per second on a single sidechain, along with a respectable block confirmation time of less than two seconds. In order to switch over to Polygon, first of all, you need to make sure you have the Polygon network on your Metamask. If you don't already have it, you'll have to manually enter all the blockchain details yourself. Simply by clicking the Custom RPC button and enter all the details, and I'll also put everything in the description box below. Once you have done that, click the Save button, and you're ready to go. From now on, whenever you want to use the Polygon network, click the network area of Metamask, followed by Polygon, and boom, you're there. And that's really all that is. You get to keep the same wallet address, even if you're using a hardware wallet like Ledger or Trezor. Now, in the video, you also noticed something important. When you switch networks, it's an entirely different account, so you won't have any of the coins you had on Ethereum. Oh no! What? What? So, instead of paying for transactions with Ethereum, you're paying with Metamask. Alright guys, Nathan here to tell you the advantages and disadvantages of Polygon. So first up, we're going to talk about the advantages. Do you know what's cheap and fast? Definitely not education, but McDonald's, my sister, and Polygon. Another advantage is that Polygon is extremely developer-friendly. Now, this is a very important trait that only the insiders know. Coding for Polygon is exactly the same as Ethereum. Essentially, it's the same thing. So it's... Copy paste! Yeah, copy pasta! So it's extremely easy for projects to migrate their code over. This is also why you might notice projects having similar interfaces on ETH, BSC, and Polygon. Now, this is a really fast-growing ecosystem with over 500 projects from every sector that keeps growing rapidly every day. Alright. Now, we are going to talk about the disadvantages. I know this is not something that you want me to do, but we're here, we're fair, and this is something I have to do. One of the disadvantages is that you'll need to bridge over your tokens from Ethereum. This is because it's a separate network. So you'll need to bridge over your tokens using the Matic bridge. This process is usually very fast, taking roughly around 7 minutes. However, you need to be aware that bridging back can take a long time. Up to 6 hours. Boo! Boo! That's enough to sit down, watch Netflix, maybe 3 Breaking Bad episodes? Sorry, 6 Breaking Bad episodes. Oh, my math is terrible. We're going to deep dive into this process in our next video during this series about how to use the Matic bridge. This would also include some tips and tricks, too. Click the video on the top left or in the comment section below. Just click it, okay? Click it, damn it. Boo, you sup, Nathan? I know, I'm also very threatening. So no coverage of a project is complete without the potential threats to the project of its success. So something that is very dangerous. The biggest threat that we see is competition, from other layers to scaling solutions, and even Ethereum scaling itself. Right now, Polygon is benefiting a lot from the high transaction fees on Ethereum. However, Ethereum won't be slow forever. Ethereum 2.0 is coming with a much higher TPS. In addition, other layer 2 solutions are coming, including Optimism and OmiseGo, which will directly compete with Polygon. Yeah, competition sucks. All right, it's me, Michael, back here again to nerd out and tell you what are the popular decentralized applications that are already running on Polygon. That's right. One of the great things about Polygon in its current state is that it's already live. There's a lot of action on board. First and foremost, the most popular applications are the exchanges. I mean, everyone likes speculating on coins, don't they? So we got QuickSwap, we got SushiSwap entering the competition, and there's actually quite a lot of other exchanges that are very popular on Ethereum migrating over to Polygon. So second of all, the other top dApps on Polygon are Farms. So for example, AutoFarm is here. We also have DinoSwap, so maybe it's going to not be as extinct as we think it is, but those are one of the top things. In addition to this, we see launch pads like PolyLauncher that are coming through, starting up new projects, and starting out this new ecosystem. Because of how cheap and fast Polygon is, it also means that it's a very ripe situation for games. I mean, at the end of the day, gamers do not want to pay $30 per a single transaction. They much prefer something that's faster and cheaper on Polygon, which is why Polygon has been very aggressively pursuing and investing in gaming projects to develop their ecosystem. On top of this, very closely related are NFT projects. So NFTs right now are just super mega hot. And yet again, right now it's mostly kind of the Ethereum core guys who are very rich and speculating on these very expensive items. But why can't the rest of the world do that? And that's where Polygon also comes in. Something I also want to point out for Polygon is that it's really built around Ethereum. I mean, one of the main marketing plans and kind of picks for the direction is that they want to be kind of supporting Ethereum. And this is very different from other projects which want to take away from Ethereum or be a competitor. Polygon has positioned itself to be kind of a companion, a side layer. And they never wanted to say that they're a completely different project, which is why they're getting a lot of the Ethereum developers and support from the Ethereum developers and that community as well, which is one of the reasons why it's growing so fast. And that guys wraps up the video for the introduction to Polygon. Now, I know there's a lot to take in, but hopefully you get the general gist of what's going on. To complement this video, we have a couple more in this series where we're going to explore in detail of how to bridge assets over. I mean, how to even get started on Polygon. That's important. And we're going to teach you how to use some of the applications as well. We're going to show you an in-depth demo. I've also added some of the tips and tricks in there. This is less commonly seen, but it's something that I personally use. And I thought this is something that you should know as well, because, well, at the end of the day, if you encounter a problem, what do you do? Well, just check one of my videos, right? So that's the way to do it. Well, guys, that concludes this video. It is a new format, guys. I know this is the first time I'm working with Jemmy and Nathan to produce something like this. I hope you guys enjoyed it. I'm actually really open to suggestions as well. If you liked or didn't like this format, we really want to improve this format and try to educate the community. So if you guys would really be helpful, leave a comment down below what you thought, where we can improve, and also what kind of coins you want us to cover in detail as well, because that's what we're going to be doing for the next few months. That's going to be producing some really top quality content that really helps you. So I hope you guys enjoyed this video. Remember to like and subscribe. Put that comment down. See you in the next one. What the fuck was that? Chewbacca? I don't know. Do you know what's cheap and fast? McDonald's, my landlord's daughter, and... Holy God. God. Keep going.