The price of Polygon (MATIC) has hit a new all-time high above $1.5 after the Ethereum scaling solution integrated numerous popular decentralized finance (DeFi ) projects and the number of transactions it processes per day skyrocketed.
According to data from a MATIC network explorer, Polygon has now processed over 62.4 million transactions and has nearly 700,000 wallet addresses. Per day, it’s processing 3.3 million transactions, each costing less than once cent paid in the cryptocurrency.
In contrast, the cost for transactions on the Ethereum blockchain hit a new all-time high this week above $64 on average, before plunging to $31.75 at press time. The cryptocurrency’s network has been congested over the last few months as the growing decentralized finance space and meme coins have been increasing demand.
Polygon aims to provide faster and cheaper transactions on Ethereum using layer-two sidechains – blockchains that run alongside the main ETH blockchain. Users can deposit ETH to a Polygon bridge smart contract and interact within the Polygon chain with them, to later withdraw them back to the main Ethereum network.
Demand for the layer-two scaling solution has grown so much that MATIC is now up over 270% in the last 30 days, and over 7,000% in the last 12 months. It’s currently trading close to its new $1.51 all-time high.
Over the last few weeks, the Polygon network has integrated several large DeFi platforms, including Aave, Curve, SushiSwap, 1inch, and others. These integrations have seen transactions on its network explode, as it makes it cheaper to use Ethereum-based DeFi platfrosm.
Polygon has its own Proof-of-Stake consensus algorithm and MATIC holders can stake their funds to earn rewards. The network is also targeting sustainability in the non-fungible token (
NFT) space by collaborating with Cent, a platform that tokenizes tweets.
SushiSwap has, on the Polygon network, already surpassed $500 million in total value locked, according to a recent tweet.
MATIC’s price continued to rise even as the wider cryptocurrency market endured a hefty correction this week, after Tesla CEO Elon Musk published an announcement revealing the electric car maker would no longer accept bitcoin payments over environmental concerns.
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