Polygon was co-founded in October 2017 by Jaynti Kanani, Sandeep Nailwal and Anurag Arjun. Jaynti Kanani serves as CEO, previously worked as a data scientist at Housing.com and contributed to Web3, Plasma and WalletConnect on Ethereum. Sandeep Nailwal is the COO, a blockchain programmer and former CEO of Scopeweaver. Anurag Arjun is a product manager with experience at IRIS Business, SNL Financial and Cognizant. The team was a major contributor to the Ethereum ecosystem before launching their mainnet in 2019.

Polygon launched in October 2017 and went live on its mainnet in 2019. The project attracted over 50 DApps to its PoS-secured sidechain. In January 2022, Polygon implemented the London Hard Fork and EIP-1559 upgrade. The project achieved carbon neutrality through a partnership with KlimaDAO, committing $20 million toward sustainability initiatives. Polygon is backed by major investors including Binance and Coinbase.

Polygon uses a customized version of the Plasma framework combined with proof-of-stake checkpoints, running through the Ethereum main-chain as a Layer 2 solution. The architecture supports up to 65,536 transactions per block with block confirmation under 2 seconds. The Polygon SDK is modular and flexible, supporting building optimistic rollup chains, ZK rollup chains and standalone chains. MATIC/POL is an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum blockchain.

POL has a maximum supply of 10 billion tokens with approximately 4.88 billion in circulation. Initial distribution included 3.8% in the 2017 private sale and 19% in the April 2019 launchpad sale at $0.00263 per token. Team received 16%, advisors 4%, network operations 12%, foundation 21.86% and ecosystem 23.33%. With the EIP-1559 upgrade, MATIC tokens are burned as base fees, creating a deflationary effect projected at 0.27% annually.

Polygon operates as a Layer 2 solution using a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism. Validators stake MATIC tokens as collateral to participate in the PoS consensus and receive rewards. Non-validators can delegate their tokens to validators to earn staking rewards. The network uses block producers at the block producer layer with checkpoints and fraud-proof mechanisms to achieve finality and decentralization. The project focuses on maintaining security through Ethereum while enabling faster transactions.

Polygon enables scalable and low-cost transactions for Ethereum DApps, supporting various DeFi protocols. The platform allows creation of globally available decentralized financial applications with up to 65,000 TPS. Use cases include DeFi lending, exchanges, gaming and NFT applications. Polygon also focuses on sustainability through its Green Manifesto with carbon neutrality initiatives. The network supports multiple sidechains and aims for interoperability with additional basechains beyond Ethereum.