Veteran investor and serial entrepreneur Mark Cuban expanded his blockchain portfolio, purchasing a “sizeable” stake in Polygon, the Bengaluru-based blockchain firm.”I was a Polygon user and find myself using it more and more,” Cuban told CoinDesk in an email.
Polygon, which was earlier called Matic Network, is one of the fastest growing blockchain companies in the world. The company built a secondary blockchain, on the same design contours of the Ethereum blockhain. But unlike Ethereum which suffers from high transaction costs and slow processing speeds, Polygon’s network is much cheaper and faster since it sheds some of the burden and traffic on the Ethereum network. At the same time, Polygon ensures that all transactions are eventually reported on the Ethereum blockchain.
🔥 @mcuban is one of the most prolific and insightful investors with investments in top startups and he is also one of the Sharks on @ABCSharkTank.
🙌🏻 We're proud to share that @0xPolygon is now part of the Mark Cuban company portfolio!
🌐 Visit: https://t.co/RZg0oIomFS
— Polygon (previously Matic) (@0xPolygon) May 25, 2021
Cuban, who pioneered online streaming back in the ’90s and owns the Dallas Mavericks basketball team, has a net-worth of around $4.4 billion and has invested in over 100 companies. The Shark Tank judge is a major backer of crypto-currencies and has investments in several blockchain firms like Mintable.app, Zapper, Injective Protocol and CryptoSlam.
He told CoinDesk that he would integrate Polygon’s blockchain tech-stake into one his portfolio companies called Lazy.com. Lazy essentially allows artists and others to promote their non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
“Polygon is the first well-structured, easy-to-use platform for Ethereum scaling and infrastructure development…Polygon’s scaling solutions have seen widespread adoption with 250+ Dapps, ~76M txns and ~790K unique users,” the website of Cuban’s portfolio companies said.
The investment from Cuban comes at a significant time and signals that Indian crypto-companies and blockchain firms have matured. With Cuban betting on a Bengaluru-based firm, other domestic crypto-entrepreneurs can breathe a little despite large-scale regulatory uncertainty over crypto-currencies in India.
In a statement to the Economic Times, Polygon’s co-founder Sandeep Naliwal said that the best thing to hear was Mark Cuban himself uses applications on Polygon. “Getting investment from Mark Cuban is a big stepping stone for Polygon as it will attract more Tier I investors in the US towards Polygon ecosystem,” he said. “It was so spectacular to know that the nuances of the industry, the tech and adoption we had figured out after months of grind, he was already thinking about those and had those questions in mind,” Naliwal told Mint. He did not disclose the size of Cuban’s investment.
The Polygon Network is essentially a secondary blockchain layer or sidechain that works alongside the Ethereum network. A sidechain is a semi-independent blockchain that works in tandem with a ‘main chain’.
At present, on Ethereum, every step of the transaction is recorded on the blockchain which tends to clog the network. Polygon essentially splits this transaction. This frees up network capacity on Ethereum, therefore reducing the time and cost of processing transactions.
“Every public blockchain has a token. Ethereum’s token is Ether, similarly Bitcoins’ token is called Bitcoin. So imagine that the Ethereum blockchain is running and another blockchain running separately. Our token, MATIC, is built on the same principles and technology so it is easy for developers to develop solutions on Polygon at a lower cost and better user experience. Their solutions can then be quickly scaled to the Ethereum blockchain” Arjun Kalsy, vice president of Growth at Polygon told MediaNama back in March.
According to a report in The Block Research, Polygon’s network is used across 356 projects and companies across 13 different verticals.
Someone messaged me this and just said
“Mind boggling”
Credits : @TheBlock__ 🙏🏼 pic.twitter.com/wpg9Xak2t9
— Sandeep – Polygon(prev Matic Network) (@sandeepnailwal) May 26, 2021
Polygon’s token called MATIC was listed on Coinbase, the global crypto-exchange giant, back in March this year. With increased adoption of its Layer-2 blockchain scaling solution, Polygon’s token has received widespread attention and in just a few weeks MATIC has become a leading crypto-token to invest in. MATIC is now the 14th most popular crypto-token out there with a market cap of around $12.3 billion, according to Coinmarketcap.com.
MediaNama has prepared a guide on crypto-currency regulations in India, listing the government’s position over the last few years and various policy recommendations; read it here: A complete low-down on crypto-currency regulation in India.
- Also Read
