Matic Network


Matic Review by NrdGrl007

What is Matic?

Matic is a 2nd layer scaling solution for Ethereum that solves the problem of slow block confirmations & high gas fees so that mainstream users can be targeted for mass adoption. It uses side chains for off-chain computation while ensuring asset security using the Plasma framework & a decentralized network of PoS validators.

Matic provides developers w the ability to deploy applications with faster and cheaper transactions while maintaining a high-level of security, by utilizing a novel combination of hybrid Proof-of-Stake & Plasma-enabled sidechains.

In short: Matic is a scaling solution currently enabled for Ethereum (ETH).

What are its purposes?

Matic’s aim is to make decentralized applications easy enough for anyone to use. It aims to be the de-facto platform on which developers will deploy & run decentralized applications in a secure & decentralized manner.

Who started the project?

Executive team qualifications & credentials. Started in 2017

  1. Jaynti Kanani – Co-founder & CEO – Bachelor of Engineering (BE), Information Technology. He worked as a data scientist for housing.com before contributing to Web3, Plasma & WalletConnect as a full-stack developer & blockchain engineer.
  2. Sandeep Nailwal – Co-founder & COO – MBA in tech, finance, & supply chain management. He was the Head of Technology & supply chain of Welspun Group’s eCommerce division, co-founder & CEO of ScopeWeaver.com. He’s a blockchain programmer & entrepreneur.
  3. Anurag Arjun – Co-founder & CPO – BE, Computer Engineering, was AVP (Product Management) IRIS Business, also worked for SNL Financial, Dexter Consultancy, & Cognizant Technologies

Advisory Board:

  1. Esteban Ordano – founder & CTO of Decentraland.
  2. Pete Kim – head of engineering, wallet at Coinbase.
  3. Ari Meilich – project lead at Decentraland

Funding model

ICO? Binance IEO; How many credits/coins were issued? Any directives on what those tokens are for? Plans for future creation of staked coins?

  1. Private Sale sold 3.8% of total supply (380 million)
  2. Launchpad sale – April 2019 – raised $5 million in BNB sold 19% of total supply (1.9 billion)
  3. Team was awarded 16% total supply (1.6 billion)
  4. Advisors were given 4% total supply (400 million)
  5. Network Operations tokens 12% total supply (1.2 billion)
  6. Foundation tokens 21.86% total supply (2.186 billion)
  7. Ecosystem tokens 23.33% total supply (2.333 billion)

What's in the Tech?

PoW or PoS?

Matic offers a hybrid Proof-of-Stake & Plasma-enabled sidechains. MATIC is an ERC20 token, used to pay for services on MATIC Network, also serves as settlement currency for users of the MATIC ecosystem.

  • Layers: Core PoS layer uses MATIC token to secure. MATIC can be staked. Developers use PoS layer for arbitrary state transitions.
  • Services: Developers can use Plasma for specific state transitions for which Plasma predicates have been written, such as ERC20, ERC71, asset swaps, or custom predicates. Used to pay for services & settlement currency for network users
  • Applications & Devices:
    • Matic Wallet – Plasma wallet mobile app, integrated w WalletConnect, allowing developers to seamlessly onboard users and work efficiently with sidechains while maintaining ownership of private keys.
    • Payments – Allows merchants & users to instantly accept or pay in ETH or ERC20s, fiat-enabled payment system, multi-asset cross chain transfer & payment.
    • Lending Platform – enables merchants to check users’ transaction history & asses creditworthiness to lend to users with insufficient funds. Uses Dharma protocol to issue tokenized debt.
    • Games – Games are a big part of Matic Network. Matic anticipates in-game assets (NFTs) will be bought, sold & traded in large numbers on sidechains.
    • Dagger – infrastructure for developers. Dagger is a notification engine to track ETH accounts & events in real-time.

Coins? (value, circulating supply, max supply, where sold/used)?

  • current value - $0.02
  • circulating supply – 3.433 billion tokens
  • max supply – 10 billion tokens
  • where is it sold?
    • Binance – paired to USDT, BTC, BNB, & BUSD (I get 10%, you get 10%, Ref code: WLMCD0DF) | Bilaxy – USDT – Ref code: 1318874 | Bitrabbit – USDT | Bitmax – USDT | WhiteBIT – USDT | WazirX – Ref code: ru33uu5a | CEX.io | Bitforex – Ref code: 2452957 | bw.com | Poloniex | Tokok | Bitrue | Omgfin | Binance DEX | Bitmart Ref code - 7tcKgS | HitBTC | Coinsuper | FTX | Coinone | Dcoin | Hotbit | Rekeningku.com | Bitcoin.com | BiKi | LiteBit.eu | Fatbtc | Bidesk | Cat.Ex | COSS | IDEX

Where is it used?

There are 3 primary use cases within MATIC network

  • i. Staking – network participants stake MATIC to participate as validators.
  • ii. Paying for transaction fees & paying staking rewards to PoS stakers.
  • iii. Intends to enable separate staking mechanism for supporting ecosystem projects. Funded by reserving a percentage of transaction fees

What’s coming up to look forward to?

  • Binance US will list the token when the mainnet is live (very soon)
  • Rumors of a Coinbase Pro & Coinbase listing (backed by knowledge that Coinbase invested in the project very, very early https://ventures.coinbase.com
  • Mainnet is now live.
  • Staking will begin very soon.

Developer Partnerships

Over 100 companies are interested in building on or migrating to MATIC once the mainnet launches including Decentraland, MakerDao, 0X, Neon District, Bet Protocol, Harmony, etc

  • Decentraland - confirmed
  • MakerDAO
  • 0X
  • Neon District
  • Bet Protocol
  • Harmony – Nikolas Kostopoulos – Digital communities & market adoption said confirmed Harmony is interested in working w Matic to provide additional L2 layer on Harmony. Announcement here.

Portability

Future plans include supporting other (non-ETH) blockchains, offering interoperability features alongside scalability. This means Matic could be used on other base-layer protocols like EOS, Cardano, etc.

F. Matic Wallet, Payment APIs & SDKs, products & other enabling solutions that will allow developers to build or migrate DApps built on other base platforms (like ETH).

G. Cross-chain transfers like BTC (using pegging), allowing anyone to trade currencies on Matic-based DEX.

Pros & Cons

Pros

  • i. Executed multiple milestones on time early in the project
  • ii. Increased developer activity – According to the GitHub, Matic developers are actively working on and updating the mainnet code. They are actively updating the smart contracts and fixing bugs as well, which is important since this whole project aims to help improve smart contracts.
  • iii. Will allow investors & hodlers to earn rewards for staking.
  • iv. Primary target is India, which now has clarity on banking services for crypto companies.
  • v. Matic perpetually holds sufficient fiat reserves to fund operations for 1 year, with the remaining assets held in cold wallets w multisig support.
  • vi. According to Binance research & other resources MATIC is:
    • a. fast, cheap, & secure
    • b. Smooth UX
    • c. An easy tool for Ethereum Developers to use for scaling dApps/Protocols
    • d. Sidechains are structurally effective for supporting many DeFi protocols in ETH ecosystem.
  • vi. Coinbase being an early investor in this project with a member still on their board means there’s a good chance this token could be listed on the exchange, and we all know about the Coinbase pop.

Cons

  • i. Reliance on ETH as a settlement network, which is relevant to foundational security (for now).
  • ii. The distribution of coins that went to seed stage investors and those who participated in the IEO and when those coins will be liquid is unclear. It is a large number of coins, relative to the current circulating supply.
  • iii. The plans for distribution of the Network Operations tokens, Foundation tokens, and Ecosystem tokens are also unclear, which is only troubling if there isn’t a graduated mechanism in place to guarantee a large number of tokens can’t be dumped on investors. Matic’s Whitepaper is currently down and no one at the network responded to my request for information before we went live today.
  • iv. Media coverage is lacking. Interviews with the founders and developers are hard to listen to because of the heavy Indian accents.

Final Thoughts

Reminds us a bit of Cosmos, with some code forked from Cosmos.

I’m not a developer, so this product isn’t really marketed to me, but from what I can see several experts and thought leaders are saying, Matic (in conjunction with ZK rollups, Raiden Network, OMG Plasma & Starkware) solves ethereum’s scalability issues.

If this is true, blockchain – and Web3 in particular – just got a whole lot more exciting.

Although I am not a financial advisor and this should not be interpreted as financial advice, I am comfortable informing our audience that I have decided to keep my portion of the bounty for this piece in MATIC tokens for the time being.