$900 million dollars of value flows through their layer-2
In just one week more than 75,000 active user wallets interacted with dapps from the top 20 Polygon dapps. Ethereum layer-2 solution Polygon is currently experiencing the most successful period in its history as a raft of new DeFi dapps drive the platform to new heights.
Not only are users flocking to Polygon for yield farm opportunities, but they are also adding lots of value to the layer-2 solution. The increase in usage brought almost $1 billion dollars in volume with it. In the last 4 weeks, the number of submitted and now tracked Polygon dapps on DappRadar has grown from 61 to 93. Vitally, 46 of the total 93 dapps are in the DeFi and Exchange categories.
Interestingly, as most DeFi dapps are built on open-source design Polygon dapp developers are simply copying popular dapps on Polygon and other chains like BSC and Ethereum. Rebranding them, adding a few new features, and pushing them out onto Polygon with one key difference.
Faster & Cheaper
Two words everybody loves. Polygon can offer users far cheaper and faster transactions than its competitors operating on Ethereum. That’s because of the gas fees that are hampering the DeFi sector on Ethereum. One year ago this wasn’t much of an issue, but now investors with smaller bags of money also want to trade. The high gas fees make the Ethereum blockchain very unsuitable for this. New investors who want to move hundreds of dollars, don’t want to pay a $50 gas fee.
This could be especially true for new traders that joined the hype in 2021 and are in essence looking to cash in on the current bull run. Arguably, with very little knowledge but perhaps coming from traditional trading backgrounds where speed and fees are a given, rather than a benefit.
As mentioned above, in the last 7 days over 75,000 unique active wallets have interacted with the top 20 Polygon dapps ranked by users. Interestingly, of those 20 dapps, 16 are in the DeFi and Exchange categories which shows Polygons’ intention to nurture a DeFi ecosystem to rival Binance and Ethereum more clearly. Moreover, success can not only be seen through the usage of the applications running on the network but also in the price of the native token.
In the last 30 days, the price of POLYGON has surged over 300% from $0.34 to $1.50 at the time of writing. Interestingly, a large part of that surge came recently as other cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum and Bitcoin saw a dip.
Most popular Polygon DeFi dapps
Currently, three dapps dominate the Polygon DeFi landscape. QuickSwap, Aave, and new entrant ParaSwap. ParaSwap stands out amongst the three as it has introduced a different user experience to the copy and paste applications mentioned earlier. The platform also boasts cheaper fees for Ethereum transactions than Uniswap.
Aave had already been enjoying success through its Ethereum dapp but has quickly pulled users over to its Polygon version where we now see 3 times more users, ten times the number of transactions, and over a billion dollars in transaction volume.
The undoubted king of the hill right now on Polygon is QuickSwap. As reported last week, the platform saw the number of users increase by over 210% to almost 27,000. This increase of active users also had a considerable impact on the other key metrics of the DeFi platform. The number of transactions has shot up to over 440,000, an increase of 240%, while transaction volume swelled to an impressive $1.39 billion.
Moreover, we see that the average transaction on the platform is somewhere around an impressive $3,159. Arguably, this indicates that QuickSwap is maturing, as users are becoming more comfortable doing bigger transactions on platforms outside Ethereum. This shows that Polygon is becoming a trusted blockchain and that QuickSwap is clearly becoming an established decentralized exchange.
Ever since the name change from Matic to Polygon, there has been a renewed sense of enthusiasm surrounding the protocol. A clear desire can be seen to develop a DeFi ecosystem that matches the competition. Polygon appears to be reaping the rewards of increased awareness of layer-2 solutions and guides being made available to investors about how to leverage these platforms.