• Polygon’s market cap is now a few hundred million dollars larger than that of Dogecoin.

  • MATIC has become the ninth largest cryptocurrency in the market.

  • Polygon’s recent success might be related to the hype surrounding its zkEVM launch in the near future.

Polygon (MATIC) is continuing to increase in value despite the ongoing crypto bear market. The project’s native token MATIC has surpassed Dogecoin (DOGE) in terms of market cap and is now the ninth largest crypto token.

MATIC’s market capitalization is currently $11.52 billion, according to data from CoinGecko. That’s higher than Dogecoin’s (DOGE) $11.33 billion market cap. That’s the highest market capitalization MATIC has seen since March of last year.

Polygon is also not far away from taking over Cardano (ADA), which currently has a $12.72 billion market cap.

MATIC’s all-time high market capitalization is almost $19 billion, which it reached at the height of the last crypto bull market in December of 2021. Despite the harsh crypto winter that saw multiple tokens reach their all-time lows, MATIC is still up over 40,000% from its all-time low of $0.003 and is currently trading at $1.28.

While there are lots of reasons why MATIC has been so successful in holding its value over the past year, the rumors of its zkEVM scaling solution launching soon on Ethereum mainnet have probably contributed to Polygon’s recent success the most.

Polygon zkEVM Hype Intensifies

Polygon has been recently hyping up its zkEVM scaling solution, something that very few teams are currently working on.

That’s because zkEVMs are notoriously hard to develop. A zkEVM stands for zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine and is considered to be the holy grail of Ethereum scaling. zkEVMs improve throughput and decrease gas prices by computation and storage off-chain and generating zero-knowledge proofs to verify the validity of off-chain transaction batches.

           

Just came out of a high level zkEVM Mainnet launch committeeCant keep calm folksWE HAVE A DATE for mainnet launch!And its SOOON!

— Sandeep | Polygon            Top 3 by impact (@sandeepnailwal)           January 16, 2023          

There are currently no zkEVMs that are deployed on Ethereum mainnet but Polygon’s co-founder Sandeep Nailwal tweeted on January 17 that the team developing Polygon’s zkEVM has set a launch date and that it’s “soon.”

On top of that, Eduardo Antuña, Polygon zkEVM’s core developer, tweeted on Thursday that Polygon has managed to increase its zkEVM’s proving time and costs. 

           

Really excited about our results on the @0xPolygon zkEVM Prover! Batchproof 2:30 (2min soon) ~500 or ~250 ERC20 tx/batchOn a spot m6id.metal prover's cost: $0.064/proof ($0.0001/tx) The fastest ZK tech and the first production-ready zkEVMThe prover is no longer a bottleneck

— Eduardo Antuña                      (@eduadiez)           February 9, 2023          

All of this indicates that Polygon’s zkEVM, at least in theory, will soon be deployed on Ethereum mainnet. That would be an achievement like none other and potentially take MATIC to new highs.

On the Flipside

  • “Soon” might mean different things to different people. It stays unclear when Polygon is planning to launch its zkEVM.

  • If Polygon fails to launch its zkEVM this year, the price of MATIC might react accordingly.

  • It remains unclear what role MATIC will play in Polygon’s zkEVM.

Why You Should Care

Polygon is one of the most active teams working to scale Ethereum. The price action of MATIC shows that investors and users believe in Polygon and its ability to ship products that can scale Ethereum to billions of people.

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Polygon (MATIC) Sets Date for Highly-Anticipated zkEVM Launch