Polygon (Previously Matic), has been one of the more successful L2 scaling solution for Ethereum. It was a star in the previous bull run, reaching more than $2, from a previous valuation of just a cent. A lot of the Ethereum top apps have their versions on Polygon.
After the bear market It is still in the upper part of the ranking around the 20th spot. But meanwhile there has been a lot more L2 on Ethereum and a lot more competition.
Some other major developments like the zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) rollups and other things.
Let’s take a look at the data on the Polygon network and see what has been happening in the last period.
The data presented here is mainly from polygonscan charts.
We will be looking at:
- Number of Addresses
- Active Addresses
- Daily Transactions
- Fees
- Contracts
Number of Addresses
One of the key metrics for crypto projects is the number of wallets.
First the overall number of wallets.
The number of wallets on Polygon has been growing a lot. Interestingly it has growing even more aggressive in 2023 during the bear market. Starting from April 2023, there is an increase in the number of new wallets created. Polygon now has 450M wallets. It has surpassed Ethereum in the numbers of wallets and is in close fight for the number one position with BSC.
Out of the 450M wallets close to 200M were created in 2023. It is worth noting that there is no cost for creating new wallet addresses so this can sometimes be exploited and spammed.
If we take a look at the new daily wallets we get this.
We can notice the spikes in daily created wallets in the summer of 2021 and the record reached in September 2021. A slow down in 2022 and again an increase in 2023.
Starting from April 2023 there is an increased number of new wallets created daily on Polygon. More than 1M new wallets were created daily in April 2023. A steady drop since then, but still a lot higher than in 2022.
Active Addresses
What’s more interesting in times like this is how many wallets are transacting. Volatility should increase the numbers of active wallets. How many of those 344M addresses are actually active?
An increase in the number of active wallets on Polygon!
We can see an uptrend in the active daily wallets here as well. Just a month ago the number of daily active wallets reached more than 3M, but there is a sharp drop since then to around 1.5M DAUS now. A lot of volatility in the last period.
For reference the number of active wallets on ETH is around 500k.
Daily Transactions
The activity on the network is mostly represented by the number of daily transactions.
A massive spike in the number of transactions towards the end of 2023, from 2M per day up to 10M. Previously the number of transactions has been going down from and has been hovering around 2M. After the spike at the end of 2023 the number of transactions has retraced to around 4M.
On Ethereum the number of transactions per day is around the 1.2M mark.
Fees
Polygon is known for its very low fees, that are one of the lowest in the industry, to under one cent. Here is the chart.
The above are the fees per transactions in $.
We can see the spike in December 2021 and January 2022.
In the last period the average fees are bellow one cent. Much lower than the ETH fees that are a few dollars per transaction or even up to 20$.
Contracts
Polygon as Ethereum is a smart contract platform so here is the chart for verified contracts per day.
The number of daily contracts has been steady around 200 per day.
Price
At the end the chart for the price.
At the beginning of 2021, the price of MATIC was very low, just a few cents. Then in the spring of 2021 it started growing aggressively and reached 2.5$ at one point. A massive drop in 2022 to 0.5 and it has been in the range of 0.5 to 1 since then. At the moment the price is at $0.5.
The major takeaway here is the number of wallets and active wallets that have kept growing in the period. Polygon now has more active wallets per day compared to the bull market of 2021. The number of transactions had a massive spike towards the end of 2023. The fees are just one cent. The price is struggling at the moment at the previous lows.
All the best
@dalz