Polygon is a modular, Ethereum compatible Layer 2 scaling ecosystem designed to address Ethereum’s inherent challenges such as high gas fees and slow settlement by operating independent sidechains and rollup networks that periodically anchor their state to Ethereum mainnet. Originally founded in 2017 as Matic Network, the project rebranded to Polygon in early 2021 to reflect its broader vision of an interconnected, multi-chain environment powered by tools like Polygon SDK, zkRollups, and the Polygon PoS chain.

The network hosts thousands of dApps and combines speed, low fees, and interoperability. Polygon PoS sidechain can process thousands of transactions per second with sub cent costs and supports projects like Aave, Uniswap, NFTs, gaming, and DAOs, all while preserving Ethereum compatibility via the EVM. Polygon’s zkEVM rollup offers full Ethereum equivalence and further gas savings, and the Chain Development Kit (CDK) empowers developers to deploy custom chains with modular consensus and execution models.

Polygon Labs, the organization behind Polygon, has raised substantial funding and continues scaling its influence. In February 2022 it closed a 450 million dollar funding round led by Sequoia Capital India, Tiger Global, and SoftBank Vision Fund, supporting development of its scaling and ZK technologies. More recently, it unveiled AggLayer in February 2024, a neutral aggregation layer linking multiple chains and rollups, and spun out key technology into Avail, which raised 27 million dollars in early 2024 to support custom chain deployment.