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📝 Editor’s Note: Setting the Scene

Welcome to OurNetwork’s second Ecosystem Mega Issue for 2024! Today we’re diving in on Polygon, which has one of the most vibrant and credible ecosystems in all of crypto – we are proud to be collaborating on this one.

Polygon has a reputation as being one of the most ambitious projects in crypto, which is absolutely true, as it is constantly launching new networks/initiatives. For some, this stream of new developments have made Polygon a difficult network to track – I think this issue is going to be especially helpful to those looking to get up to speed.

This is very likely the most well-rounded, data-driven snapshot you’ll find on Polygon anywhere. It covers high-level network health, key ecosystem segments, marquee projects & much more using cold, hard onchain data. We’ve also made sure to zoom out our coverage at times to help you properly understand how all of its different pieces fit together. I have high hopes you will walk away from this mega issue with a new perspective on Polygon that gets you as excited about the network as I currently am.

Before we dive into our scheduled coverage, here are a few of my big takeaways about Polygon after reviewing the onchain data.

1. Future ecosystem outlook is bright given current levels of developer activity. Blockchains are only as strong as the applications built on top of them, and Polygon is second only to Ethereum when it comes to active weekly developers (909) and commits (5,900). Assuming these contracts have market-standard code quality and there aren’t above-normal levels of copy code, this is a noteworthy leading indicator of future ecosystem growth for Polygon when compared to its peers.

1. Polygon applications are delivering real-world value and utility beyond just speculative activity/trading. As I tweeted recently, Polygon has a huge number of stablecoin users (1.9M over 30 days) especially relative to its peers, who appear to be using the network for more than just DeFi/speculative use cases.

1. Polygon has one of the largest and most vibrant onchain economies. TVL currently sits at $987M with nearly half of this attributed to the chain's leading lending protocol Aave ($472M TVL). Year-to-date, $1.97B of bridging inflows have come to Polygon (98% from Ethereum Mainnet) vs $1.85B in outflows. Taken together, net positive inflows over an extended period of time is a strong indicator, showcasing real demand for the services in the Polygon ecosystem.

To get started on Polygon, check out popular EVM-compatible wallets MetaMask, Coinbase Wallet, or Rainbow and begin exploring the rapidly growing Polygon Ecosystem.

With that, let’s dive into the coverage.

– S 🕛

• Polygon offers a collection of scaling solutions for Ethereum, such as PoS, AggLayer, CDK and zkEVM. As of May 26 2024, Polygon PoS recorded 8.7M monthly active wallets, 3.7M weekly active wallets, and 1.1M daily active wallets, reflecting a doubling in DAU over the past year. The blockchain also processed 3.8M daily transactions, a 35% increase compared to the past 12 months. The increase in network activity now makes Polygon PoS one of the leading EVM chains in terms of active wallets and transactions -- this throne was previously held by Binance chain.

Over the past 12 months, Polygon PoS’s DEXs have processed a total of $54.9B worth of volume and 301M DeFi transactions. When compared to Arbitrum, Base and Optimism in the same period, Polygon is noted to have the second largest number of traders, trades and trade volume processed in the Uniswap protocol.

A few of the most well-known DeFi protocols on Polygon PoS are Azuro, a tool behind the prediction apps, and Quickswap, a native DEX protocol in the Polygon ecosystem.

• At the heart of Polygon PoS are DeFi use cases with over 452M DeFi transactions carried out – more than Arbitrum, Base and Optimism combined. Throughout these transactions, users executed 1.5B DeFi transfers for various DeFi use cases such as trading within Quickswap, lending on Aave, or prediction tooling within Azuro.

• Polygon PoS has a current total value locked (TVL) of $980.1M. Approximately 90% of this TVL is concentrated within the top ten protocols. The leading three protocols are Aave, which accounts for 47% of the TVL, Uniswap with 12%, and Quickswap at 10%.

• Since the start of the year, Polygon PoS has seen a 31% increase in its overall stablecoin market cap, rising from $1.3B to $1.7B. This growth is primarily driven by a 44% increase in USDT's market cap, which expanded from $614M to $886M. USDC's market cap is currently $512M.

• OKX: Since its mainnet launch, OKX's X-Layer has attracted $57M in deposits. The top assets are the stablecoins USDT, USDC and DAI, which make up 42.9% of the total asset value deposited, followed by OKB at 30% and ETH at 19%.

• Immutable zkEVM: As of May 26 2024, Immutable zkEVM’s mainnet reported 227K daily active fee payers, marking a 62% increase in daily active fee payers since Apr. 30 2024. During this period, successful daily transactions rose by 53% to 429K. Over 26 days, Immutable zkEVM achieved a total of 10.3M transactions. Immutable zkEVM’s growth is notable given the continued presence of Immutable X, the original chain.

Astar zkEVM

Over the past 30 days, unique users on Astar zkEVM had increased by 250%, reaching 65K as of May 25. The platform has also received a total bridged inflow of $16.4M from L1 to Astar zkEVM L2. Astar zkEVM also ran its opening campaign (Yoki) which saw 58,525 users take part in the campaign. In that campaign, almost 3M tokens were minted.

• 💦🔬 Tx-Level Alpha: This transaction shows a withdrawal of 100,005 USDC from X Layer to Ethereum that was completed within just 40 minutes, illustrating the tech advantage that CDK brings.

• Azuro is the tooling, oracle & liquidity solution for EVM chains to support prediction app ecosystems. 14 months after launching on mainnet, Azuro is hitting PMF on Polygon with 25+ live applications, $298M+ volume, $3.2M+ revenue, 4100+ LPs, and 1.93M+ transactions on Polygon.

• Azuro’s USDT LP on Polygon has the highest non-subsidized pure USDT return on the chain with APY sitting at 20.08% (as of May 22 2024) in a liquidity pool of ~$8M USDT, supported by >4k liquidity providers. This includes data over 14+ months.

• Apps on Azuro are becoming successful revenue-generating businesses. Bookmaker.XYZ leads with ~8k users, $34M in prediction volume, and $1.77M in revenue, contributing notably to overall activity. GambleFukkers, with just 318 users, has a high turnover per user at $70,755 and total revenue of $419k.

• 💦🔬 Tx-Level Alpha: We’re often stunned by the luck or incredible insight of the apps’ users: once, a user placed $1 at 863-to-1 odds and won! The 2nd tx shows a deposit of ~$260k into the Azuro LP, issuing an LP NFT. LP positions are represented by NFTs due to unique LP design: a provider gets access to a set of markets on the protocol at the time of the deposit. This allows for the free adding/withdrawing liquidity while preventing LPs from front-running pool returns or losses connected to particular markets.

• DIMO is an open connected vehicle platform that gives drivers insight into car health & driving habits, while rewarding users with DIMO tokens. Rewards are used on auto services like insurance, maintenance, repairs, or EV charging. Since launch in Q4 2022 there have been 84k+ vehicles added to the network and 31k+ unique drivers, averaging 2.71 cars connected per user. 77% of cars are paired using native software, with the other 23% using DIMO hardware devices connected to the car's OBD2 port.

• The DIMO platform began distributing DIMO tokens in December 2022, by rewarding users for maintaining their vehicle's connection to the network. The retention in DIMO Rewards recipients is very promising with 51% of users still holding 100% of any token rewards received from the protocol.

• Additionally, users earn rewards by using service providers available in the DIMO Marketplace. BlueDot is an app that simplifies EV charging through flat fee charging rates and comprehensive cash back rewards. Just this month, they rewarded almost $1k USD in DIMO tokens to drivers who used the app.

• 💦🔬 Tx-Level Alpha: In March, DIMO launched the Developer License, a first step to a fully-self-served developer model. The Developer License Contract (DLX) governs the administrative functions that can be applied to the licenses. This is where you can specify how to issue a license and modify your license details. This transaction is the first DIMO developer license issued. Since launch there have been 11 licenses issued representing a new era of builders on the DIMO protocol.

• QuickSwap has done $65B+ in total lifetime volume on Polygon PoS alone, and millions more on other Polygon CDK chains as it continues to dominate Polygon’s emerging CDK ecosystem.

• There’s been $1M+ in daily volume (and counting) since launch a few days ago on QuickPerps: Falkor, QuickSwap's newest decentralised Perps DEX on Polygon PoS

• There’s been $15M+ in fees accumulated over the last year (May 2023 - May 2024) for LPs and the dragon community

• 💦🔬 Tx-Level Alpha: This is a massive conversion from old QUICK to new QUICK tokens. This is a key initiative in an ongoing effort to migrate from the old to new token.

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