Polygon thrives in NFT, but its native coin, MATIC, has struggled with the POL shift, with market value unchanged since the year began.
Although Polygon is continuing making progress in the NFT space, its native coin, MATIC, is still having trouble gaining traction. Despite the fact that the switch from MATIC to POL has already started, the market value is still where it was at the start of the year.
Crypto analysis: Polygon’s NFT growth
In the NFT market, Polygon is starting to show itself as a competitive option to Ethereum.
In fact, it offers significantly lower transaction fees even though it is a Layer-2 of Ethereum, which is quite helpful at this moment when the NFT market is struggling.
Ethereum is still by far the market leader, but most NFTs cannot afford its transaction costs, especially those with very little or even zero market value (not to mention free ones).
Because of this, Polygon is emerging as the NFT industry’s greatest Ethereum substitute, despite the growing popularity of rival chains.
The issue is that Polygon’s entry into this market has no effect on the price of its own coin because the NFT market has been experiencing a sharp fall for more than a year.
Magic and Polygon Eden: the world of NFT and cryptocurrency
Specifically, the Magic Eden marketplace is presently performing the best on Polygon.
Though it was initially a Solana-based NFT marketplace, it is increasingly opening up to Polygon in particular.
For instance, they revealed several new features that will be added to this chain yesterday.
Simplified statistics and analysis, revamped collections and profile pages, tabs for faster order management, easier listing, and improved trait sorting are some of the new features.
Additionally, the Polygon API and an aggregation tool have been included.
All of this is related to the plan to launch a new marketplace where creators can get paid royalties for the usage of their creations in collaboration with Yuga Labs.
CEO and co-founder of Magic Eden Jack Lu claims that they are only “scratching the surface” of what is possible on Polygon.
The NFT industry
This is undoubtedly influenced by potential developments for the NFT market in the upcoming months or years.
It’s true that things are not at all ideal right now.
In terms of NFT volume exchanged over the last 30 days, Magic Eden has been a tiny marketplace, according to DappRadar.
Blur, who has been leading the industry for months, comes in top place with just $218 million in a single month.
For comparison, Blur has seen less than $11 million in spot trade volume over the past 24 hours, compared to almost $8 billion on Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange currently in use. It is nearly a thousand to one.
Furthermore, with a monthly volume of just $70 million, OpenSea is the second most active NFT marketplace during the past 30 days. For instance, Magic Eden hasn’t even hit $1 million in the previous 30 days.
These numbers provide a clear explanation for why Polygon’s native cryptocurrency price is unaffected by favourable news about the company that originates from the NFT marketplace.
POLAR and MATIC
The original native cryptocurrency of Polygon, known as MATIC, is being replaced by POL.
Since making its debut on the cryptocurrency exchanges at the end of October, POL’s price has increased by 20%.
However, if we go further back in time and use the price of MATIC as a benchmark, we can observe that it has risen by 36% over the past 30 days.
Nevertheless, MATIC is essentially flat right now, with its price of roughly $0.77 being precisely the same as it was at the start of the year, whilst other cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin, have increased by more than 100% in 2023 (ETH, for instance, has increased by 60%).
Indeed, there has been some movement in its price in 2023, but not a definite increasing trend.
It reached its annual high of more than $1.5 in February before dropping to less than $0.6 in June. A new downturn started in the second part of July and peaked at roughly $0.5 in mid-September.
The advent of POL as a substitute for MATIC probably helped a cryptocurrency that was about to plummet even further, but let’s not forget that its market heat was as low as $0.02 at the end of 2022, just prior to the commencement of the previous significant upswing.
This final comparison makes it look as though the 2021 boom was overstated, to the point that the $2.92 attained in December 2021 seems nonsensical. Since then, ETH has lost “only” 62 percent from its November 2021 highs, whereas MATIC, now known as POL, has lost seventy-five percent.
