Why Polygon?
When a team starts building an idea into a working product in web3 space, the first and the most important question that they have to tackle is “Which blockchain to build on?” and this determines the future growth of the project. The Sagaverse team encountered the same question and we set the seal on “Polygon” as the best choice. Why? Let us brief it below.
Blockchain is like a shared database, anything that happens in a blockchain is counted as a transaction. Blockchains store data in blocks that are then linked together and these blocks are created by validators who validate each transaction in the block for which they get paid in the native currency.
Ethereum is a Layer 1 blockchain and one of the most popular blockchains on which a decentralized application(DApp), in our case a game can be deployed. There is no other Layer 1 solution which is as decentralized and secure as Ethereum is.
Despite the fact Ethereum is very secure and decentralized, it is slow compared to other Layer 1 blockchains, and its gas fee is very high. The gas fee is the fee that is paid to the validator to include a transaction into the block created, and as many people try to include their transaction in the nearest block this creates congestion in the chain resulting in very high fees. All this makes the retail investors stay away from the Ethereum mainnet.
Ethereum works on Ethereum Virtual Machine(EVM) which is basically the network of computers or Nodes that facilitate and execute the smart contracts. EVM makes the whole system secure but due to certain characteristics of Ethereum, that makes it very slow. The solutions like Polygon works on EVM but attain faster transactions.
Several blockchains offer low gas fees and much higher Transactions Per Second(TPS), but they all compromise on the Blockchain Trilemma- which is the balance of Security, Decentralization, and Speed. A perfect balance must be maintained between these aspects else it breaks the system. The answer to this problem is using a Layer 2 blockchain. Layer 2 blockchain lets the developer offload some work from the Ethereum Mainnet(Layer 1) to the Sidechain(Layer 2).
Even though there are many Layer 2(L2) solutions available, Polygon can outperform most of them. Polygon is a Plasma enabled sidechain. It means Polygon can work as an L2 network and the root of each plasma chain block created in the Polygon is published into the Ethereum network as finality. This enables the Polygon network to achieve low latency, transaction speed of ~10000 TPS, very high compared to ~30 TPS of Ethereum, and a gas fee of $0.01 per transaction, very low compared to $15+ of Ethereum. Polygon works on Proof of Stake Consensus which is more energy-efficient than the Proof of Work Consensus. Polygon works on EVM, allowing users to experience the efficiency of EVM by overcoming the limitations of Ethereum.
All these metrics are achieved without compromising the security that is provided by Ethereum to Polygon. Polygon currently has around 7000 DApp and more than 120 million unique addresses which implies the huge adoption happening. Polygon also has huge backing provided by the top VCs in the world. As the gas fee is very low compared to Ethereum, users can make several transactions at a negligible cost, and especially in a game, frequent transactions are inevitable. Since the base layer is Ethereum, developers can use Solidity for developing apps on Polygon. Polygon also has several updates in its roadmap that it will attain in the near future.
While making a blockchain game, choosing the right blockchain is very important. The blockchain must have a healthy user base and should be easy to use — both financially and technically without compromising security. And Sagaverse chose Polygon because it achieves every requirement. Recently the Gaming and NFT arm of Polygon, Polygon Studios which is led by the former Head of Gaming at YouTube announced $100 Million for expansion in this space. All this makes Polygon the best blockchain for a gaming platform like Sagaverse.
