Polygon, the Ethereum-based layer-2 scaling protocol, is making an impressive move to expand its developer ecosystem to bring the needed competition to the dominant leader in this niche - Cardano.
Polygon welcomes new cohort of developers
On its official X page, Polygon unveiled the birth of Village Startup Support, a "tailored support program for select founders offering immersive guidance, strategic support, 1:1 mentorship, and access to an elite network."
This is like a modified version of the Grizzlython campaign launched by Solana earlier in 2023, with a similar goal to raise a new generation of innovators building on the chain. As part of the announcement, Polygon unveiled 17 diverse projects it welcomes into its fold.
One of the projects, Moongate, aims to provide an "all-in-one solution to create and adopt NFT tickets and membership" for brands and events. Beyond NFT integration and real-world use cases of digital collectibles, some of the projects will also pursue sustainability, lifestyle, gaming and tokenization.
The Polygon protocol is undergoing a drastic change, and the emergence of this protocol might help bolster its evolution overall. As these newer projects mature, their contributions to Polygon will be profound, creating a win-win scenario for all stakeholders in the network.
Polygon renaissance
Over the past few years, Polygon has been on a major growth course, with notable network milestones to show for it. In its bid for L2 dominance, Polygon has mounted some strong competition against protocols like Solana, especially as it relates to its NFT innovation.
Now, Polygon is aiming at an upgrade to Polygon 2.0, with plans to rebrand MATIC to POL in the near future. All of the technical aspects of these upgrades are already finalized with a couple of network updates spanning a period of time needed to bring the innovations to the mainnet.
At the time of writing, MATIC is up 1.8% to $0.7952, per data from CoinMarketCap.