Polygon’s MATIC is up 19% to $1.19 in the past week as the two popular cryptocurrencies recorded significant gains. Bitcoin and Ethereum have increased 44% and 38%, respectively, in the past 30 days.
At the time of writing this article, MATIC was trading at $1.16. Polygon is described as a sidechain and runs together with Ethereum. The Polygon blockchain aims to improve on its counterpart by offering faster transactions and lower fees. It serves as a platform for interoperable blockchains.
Data suggests that a Polygon whale has been making most of the price surge. The whale received 4 million MATIC from Binance in September 2020 for around $84,000. The wallet, as per Etherscan, let go of its MATIC holdings for $5.2 million two days ago. The sale included more MATIC than the wallet’s initial purchase from the Binance crypto exchange. However, the trader still recorded a return of about 50 times the original price. But the recent uptrend is far from MATIC’s peak of $2.92 in December 2021.
It remains 60% down from its all-time high. MATIC’s recent price action is attributed to Polygon’s preparations for an upgrade that was initially announced in July 2022. Sandeep Nailwal, the Polygon co-founder, tweeted that Polygon’s zkEVM update has an official date and will launch soon. The zkEVM is a scaling solution. It is compatible with existing Ethereum smart contracts. The solution uses the cryptographic method of zero-knowledge proofs to verify large batches of transactions (rollups) more efficiently.
Mihailo Bjelic, the co-founder of Polygon, believes the update could put Ethereum on par with global payments processor Visa in terms of how quickly transactions could be processed.
