7 ms·

Polygon: L2 or Not L2?

94 points by adlrocha 5y ago

timdaub 5y ago
Polygon's ETH bridge is behind a proxy smart contract that is controlled by a 5 of 8 multi signature contract. Polygon has repeatedly made confusing statements towards their tech. In their FAQ, Polygon clearly states that they're a "side chain". Their FAQ reads super weirdly and not like a neutral technical document. https://docs.matic.network/docs/home/faq/#what-is-matic-network https://docs.matic.network/docs/home/faq/#what-is-matic-netw... You may also be interested in learning why smart contracts don't work on Plasma. https://ethresear.ch/t/why-smart-contracts-are-not-feasible-on-plasma/2598 https://ethresear.ch/t/why-smart-contracts-are-not-feasible-... I see a conflict for Polygon wrt this point. In case of the network's crash, how are funds that e.g. are locked in Polygon contracts, distributed? That won't be automatically resolved like e.g. on Optimism. It'd be a major drama. I'm not putting my money there.
- patrickaljord 5y ago
  Polygon is working on their own L2 solution, both optimistic and zk rollup. Optimistic will be released by end of year, co-founder also said current sidechain could be upgraded to rollup when released https://twitter.com/MihailoBjelic/status/1398648183354429444 https://twitter.com/MihailoBjelic/status/1398648183354429444
  - timdaub 5y ago
    Sure they can upgrade and whatever. But from my experience, usually the projects that compromise on decentralization principles never ship anything useful in that direction anymore. Once an architecture is put in place and people are hired, that's when a point of no return is reached. Years ago, I've written about this effect in the context of deploying a dapp on a PoA chain: https://timdaub.github.io/2019/02/28/poa/ https://timdaub.github.io/2019/02/28/poa/
  - ketamine__ 5y ago
    Matter Labs is launching their mainnet in August. zkSync.
  - yourabstraction 5y ago
    I'm not convinced they'll be able to create a rollup in any reasonable amount of time. The teams building this tech (arbitrum, starkware, zksync, etc.) are doing so closed source and stacked with people with deep applied cryptography experience. As far as I'm aware, Polygon outsources most/all of their development. Do you really think an outsourced dev team is going to complete in building bleeding edge tech at the limits of applied cryptography?
vmception 5y ago
I’m so glad people are catching on! Polygon is two separate products, masquerading as union advertised as an Ethereum layer 2 The two products are 1) a completely independent and separate proof of stake blockchain with validators, and a cron job that stores the network state hash on the Ethereum blockchain for shits and giggles. This is the only product anybody uses. 2) The Plasma system. Which would sometimes maybe be an Ethereum layer 2. Its fairly pointless. The first product competes with other EVMs (Ethereum virtual machines) such as Binance Smart Chain (BSC) and Ethereum testnet. Somehow people have been swayed to believing the identical BSC is centralized while Polygon is a decentralized layer 2 solution. Oh by the way, if you are new here, people want an Ethereum layer 2 solution. Polygon isnt it. It is not a layer 2 solution it is a separate blockchain. Why is this important? Its kind of not. Congratulations on being USD billionares in India guys!
- inter_netuser 5y ago
  why do people want an eth l2 solution? the success of BSC seems to show otherwise?
  - vmception 5y ago
    They want the security and finality of Ethereum’s consensus model. BSC is showing that the permissionless deployment model has utility to the market, whether it is centralized or not. People want to deploy contracts and create liquidity, the same ones that work on ethereum work there. It’s no different than shopify launching an app marketplace, people don’t care that’s its centralized it wasn’t even a factor.
    - CryptoPunk 5y ago
      BSC gets its credibility from being backed by the largest crypto exchange in the world. But even then, it's far less trusted for long term storage of digital assets than Ethereum mainnet. But I do agree that BSC, and to a lesser extent HEC, show the market places a premium on permissionless-ness and composability, even in the absence of a decentralized consensus process. It's simply more convenient to use MetaMask to interact with exchange-native assets than an exchange-specific username/password. But I think all of that just solidifies Ethereum mainnet's utility as the root settlement layer.
flixic 5y ago
All “true” L2s (Optimisitc, zk) use ETH as the currency to pay the fees. Polygon can’t do that because they want to maintain value of their own token. I just can’t see any future in that.
- youdumbaf 5y ago
  I think zkSync use other tokens to pay the fees
- yourabstraction 5y ago
  I think long term we may see tokens for the various rollups. Arbitrum and zksync are going to launch in somewhat centralized ways, and as they decentralize over time they'll need to provide incentives to network participants and to support decentralized governance. Transaction sequencing within a rollup will become decentralized over time to help deal with front running and MEV, and it would make sense to incentivise sequencers with a network token, which also gives them some say in governance.
SubiculumCode 5y ago
Is Polygon a side chain or a commit chain: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f7F67ZP9fsE&feature=youtu.be https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f7F67ZP9fsE&feature=youtu.be
yourabstraction 5y ago
I made a nice 4x return riding the Polygon hype, but the writing is on the wall for this project long term. It's going to get absolutely crushed when real L2s like optimism, atribturm, zksync, starkware, etc. get significant adoption (likely by this summer). The meme of it being a better BSC allowed easy dapp porting and a quick surge of liquidity, but just being a better BSC is not nearly good enough long term. Liquidity can flow out of Polygon just as quickly as it flowed in when better solutions are available. I think their somewhat recent branding from Matic to Polygon was a distraction ploy to get users to think they'll be competitive in the true L2 space and grow beyond just having a seperate POS chain. They keep saying how they're not just one scaling solution, but a suite of scaling solutions, yet have released no evidence of any progress on implementing rollups. From what I can see right now, it seems highly unlikely the team will have any kind of working rollup in the near future. Rollups are still bleeding edge tech, and most of the code from the teams battling in the space is closed source. As far as I'm aware Polygon outsources most of its dev work, while other L2 teams are stacked with industry veterans with deep knowledge in applied cryptography. Once enough of the rollup tech becomes open source, Polygon can copy it, but by that time it'll likely be far too late.

94 points by adlrocha 5y ago

Polygon's ETH bridge is behind a proxy smart contract that is controlled by a 5 of 8 multi signature contract. Polygon has repeatedly made confusing statements towards their tech. In their FAQ, Polygon clearly states that they're a "side chain". Their FAQ reads super weirdly and not like a neutral technical document. https://docs.matic.network/docs/home/faq/#what-is-matic-network https://docs.matic.network/docs/home/faq/#what-is-matic-netw... You may also be interested in learning why smart contracts don't work on Plasma. https://ethresear.ch/t/why-smart-contracts-are-not-feasible-on-plasma/2598 https://ethresear.ch/t/why-smart-contracts-are-not-feasible-... I see a conflict for Polygon wrt this point. In case of the network's crash, how are funds that e.g. are locked in Polygon contracts, distributed? That won't be automatically resolved like e.g. on Optimism. It'd be a major drama. I'm not putting my money there.

patrickaljord 5y ago
Polygon is working on their own L2 solution, both optimistic and zk rollup. Optimistic will be released by end of year, co-founder also said current sidechain could be upgraded to rollup when released https://twitter.com/MihailoBjelic/status/1398648183354429444 https://twitter.com/MihailoBjelic/status/1398648183354429444
- timdaub 5y ago
  Sure they can upgrade and whatever. But from my experience, usually the projects that compromise on decentralization principles never ship anything useful in that direction anymore. Once an architecture is put in place and people are hired, that's when a point of no return is reached. Years ago, I've written about this effect in the context of deploying a dapp on a PoA chain: https://timdaub.github.io/2019/02/28/poa/ https://timdaub.github.io/2019/02/28/poa/
- ketamine__ 5y ago
  Matter Labs is launching their mainnet in August. zkSync.
- yourabstraction 5y ago
  I'm not convinced they'll be able to create a rollup in any reasonable amount of time. The teams building this tech (arbitrum, starkware, zksync, etc.) are doing so closed source and stacked with people with deep applied cryptography experience. As far as I'm aware, Polygon outsources most/all of their development. Do you really think an outsourced dev team is going to complete in building bleeding edge tech at the limits of applied cryptography?

vmception 5y ago

I’m so glad people are catching on! Polygon is two separate products, masquerading as union advertised as an Ethereum layer 2 The two products are 1) a completely independent and separate proof of stake blockchain with validators, and a cron job that stores the network state hash on the Ethereum blockchain for shits and giggles. This is the only product anybody uses. 2) The Plasma system. Which would sometimes maybe be an Ethereum layer 2. Its fairly pointless. The first product competes with other EVMs (Ethereum virtual machines) such as Binance Smart Chain (BSC) and Ethereum testnet. Somehow people have been swayed to believing the identical BSC is centralized while Polygon is a decentralized layer 2 solution. Oh by the way, if you are new here, people want an Ethereum layer 2 solution. Polygon isnt it. It is not a layer 2 solution it is a separate blockchain. Why is this important? Its kind of not. Congratulations on being USD billionares in India guys!

inter_netuser 5y ago
why do people want an eth l2 solution? the success of BSC seems to show otherwise?
- vmception 5y ago
  They want the security and finality of Ethereum’s consensus model. BSC is showing that the permissionless deployment model has utility to the market, whether it is centralized or not. People want to deploy contracts and create liquidity, the same ones that work on ethereum work there. It’s no different than shopify launching an app marketplace, people don’t care that’s its centralized it wasn’t even a factor.
  - CryptoPunk 5y ago
    BSC gets its credibility from being backed by the largest crypto exchange in the world. But even then, it's far less trusted for long term storage of digital assets than Ethereum mainnet. But I do agree that BSC, and to a lesser extent HEC, show the market places a premium on permissionless-ness and composability, even in the absence of a decentralized consensus process. It's simply more convenient to use MetaMask to interact with exchange-native assets than an exchange-specific username/password. But I think all of that just solidifies Ethereum mainnet's utility as the root settlement layer.

flixic 5y ago

All “true” L2s (Optimisitc, zk) use ETH as the currency to pay the fees. Polygon can’t do that because they want to maintain value of their own token. I just can’t see any future in that.

youdumbaf 5y ago
I think zkSync use other tokens to pay the fees
yourabstraction 5y ago
I think long term we may see tokens for the various rollups. Arbitrum and zksync are going to launch in somewhat centralized ways, and as they decentralize over time they'll need to provide incentives to network participants and to support decentralized governance. Transaction sequencing within a rollup will become decentralized over time to help deal with front running and MEV, and it would make sense to incentivise sequencers with a network token, which also gives them some say in governance.

SubiculumCode 5y ago

Is Polygon a side chain or a commit chain: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f7F67ZP9fsE&feature=youtu.be https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f7F67ZP9fsE&feature=youtu.be

yourabstraction 5y ago

I made a nice 4x return riding the Polygon hype, but the writing is on the wall for this project long term. It's going to get absolutely crushed when real L2s like optimism, atribturm, zksync, starkware, etc. get significant adoption (likely by this summer). The meme of it being a better BSC allowed easy dapp porting and a quick surge of liquidity, but just being a better BSC is not nearly good enough long term. Liquidity can flow out of Polygon just as quickly as it flowed in when better solutions are available. I think their somewhat recent branding from Matic to Polygon was a distraction ploy to get users to think they'll be competitive in the true L2 space and grow beyond just having a seperate POS chain. They keep saying how they're not just one scaling solution, but a suite of scaling solutions, yet have released no evidence of any progress on implementing rollups. From what I can see right now, it seems highly unlikely the team will have any kind of working rollup in the near future. Rollups are still bleeding edge tech, and most of the code from the teams battling in the space is closed source. As far as I'm aware Polygon outsources most of its dev work, while other L2 teams are stacked with industry veterans with deep knowledge in applied cryptography. Once enough of the rollup tech becomes open source, Polygon can copy it, but by that time it'll likely be far too late.