While several cryptocurrencies have enjoyed a strong January, Polygon’s native currency is primed to emerge as a striking outlier.
According to the data of CoinGecko, MATIC has risen 19% in the past week to $1.19. Bringing gains for the token to over 50% in January. In the previous 30 days, the value of Bitcoin and Ethereum has climbed by around 44% and 38%, respectively.
At the time of writing, MATIC is the tenth most valuable cryptocurrency by market capitalization. A whopping total value of $10.6 billion.
Polygon is a sidechain that operates in tandem with Ethereum and aims to outperform its rival by providing faster transactions, reducing transaction costs, and serving as a platform for interoperable blockchains.
During the token’s persistent uptrend, the pseudonymous Twitter account @lookonchain identified a wallet address that earned substantial returns with MATIC.
In September 2020, the Polygon whale purchased four million MATIC from the cryptocurrency exchange Binance for around $84,000, or two cents per token. According to Etherscan, the wallet exchanged its MATIC holdings for stablecoins worth $5.2 million two days earlier.
Even though the transaction contained more MATIC than the wallet initially purchased from Binance, the trader still received a return of over 50 times the initial price paid for the 4 million MATIC, valued at approximately $4.5 million or $1.14 per token at the time of sale.
However, the recent increase is considerably below the peak price of $2.92 per token in December 2021. The token is still almost 60 percent below its all-time high. The 4 million shares of MATIC purchased in 2020 would have been worth $11.7 million at their peak price.
MATIC’s price movement occurs as Polygon prepares to implement an upgrade announced in July last year. The co-founder of Polygon, Sandeep Nailwal, just sent out a tweet saying that the zkEVM upgrade has an official release date and will be out soon.
Polygon’s zkEVM is a scaling solution compatible with existing Ethereum smart contracts. Leveraging the cryptographic method of zero-knowledge proofs to validate huge batches of transactions—called rollups—more effectively.
In cryptography, zero-knowledge proofs are used to verify the integrity of a statement. Not revealing its contents nor the processes employed to establish its veracity.
When Polygon announced the debut of zkEVM, co-founder, Mihailo Bjelic stated: The update might put Ethereum on par with global payments processor Visa in terms of transaction processing speed.
