Author: OurNetwork
Compiled by: TechFlow
Background
Welcome to the latest installment in our larger series on ecosystems, where we present the overall health and growth of emerging ecosystems through data.
Today we focus on Polygon, a network well known in the crypto world, but with on-chain data we can gain a deeper understanding. Since launching on mainnet in 2017, the Polygon protocol has experienced three market cycles, grown significantly, and remains a technological pioneer in the field. Polygon's technology stack is composed of multiple layers, supports mature decentralized finance (DeFi), games, decentralized Internet of Things (DePIN) and mainstream consumer ecosystems, and contains key technologies to solve the deep fragmentation problem in the web3 field. .
Polygon PoS: This is an EVM-compatible Proof-of-Stake Layer 2 that serves as the primary platform for dApp developers and users in the Polygon ecosystem.
Polygon zkEVM: An EVM-compatible zero-knowledge Layer 2 designed to enable lower cost, higher throughput, and more secure transactions.
Polygon CDK: The Chain Development Kit (CDK) provides developers with the ability to build custom zero-knowledge-driven Layer 2s.
AggLayer: Helps solve the blockchain fragmentation problem by allowing any sovereign L1/L2 to connect to the network and securely share liquidity, users, and state.
Next, let’s dive into the on-chain data to reveal the story behind Polygon and its ecosystem!
User trend analysis
spaceharpoon | Website | Dashboard
Polygon continues to grow: two-thirds of MATIC has been upgraded to POL, and the stablecoin market value has increased by $389 million
In the first 10 days of September, Polygon averaged 660,000 active addresses (DAA) per day and 3 million daily transactions. On September 4, the migration of MATIC to POL began - within 6 days, users upgraded more than 66% of MATIC to POL. As an alternative to MATIC, POL introduces the concept of "super-productive tokens" that can provide valuable services to any chain in the Polygon network, including AggLayer itself.
Artemis
Over the past 10 months, Polygon’s stablecoin market cap has nearly doubled, from $1.1 billion to $2.1 billion. This growth is primarily attributed to the rise in the market caps of USDC and USDT. In particular, Polygon’s USDT market cap has doubled from $473 million to $945 million during this time.
Dune - @datawarlock
Polygon has achieved more than $7.8 billion in NFT sales through 28 million transactions. In 2024, NFT sales in July and August reached $1.3 billion and $1.2 billion respectively, setting annual records.
Dune - @spaceharpoon
So far this year, Polygon has attracted $2.8 billion in inflows, of which 92% ($2.57 billion) came from the Ethereum mainnet, 1.77% ($49.34 million) from Arbitrum, and 1.36% ($37.79 million) from Solana. At the same time, Polygon also experienced $2.5 billion in outflows, bringing the net inflow this year to $300 million. This continued net positive inflow strongly indicates the real market demand for Polygon ecosystem services.
Artemis
Infrastructure
spaceharpoon | Website | Dashboard
Polygon infrastructure supports 22 DePIN projects, including Fox (with over 600,000 pieces of content) and Immutable zkEVM (with over 74 million transactions)
Polygon has become a major platform for infrastructure projects such as DePIN and AI. Its DePIN ecosystem covers 19 different categories of projects with a total market value of US$432 million. The DePIN projects on Polygon are diverse, including 7 projects in the sensor field, 3 projects in the wireless field, and 3 projects in the energy field. From May 2023 to May 2024, DePIN's transaction volume increased by more than 500%.
Dune - @spaceharpoon
An important infrastructure on Polygon PoS is Fox Verify, a search engine that helps users verify the ownership of content on the Internet. Fox currently stores more than 670,000 pieces of content in its protocol and has completed more than 1.1 million uniform resource identifier (URI) updates.
Dune - @spaceharpoon
Immutable zkEVM is a dedicated gaming blockchain powered by Polygon technology and an important infrastructure in the Web3 gaming ecosystem. Since its launch, it has attracted 6.8 million active wallets and completed 73 million transactions. Its total locked value (TVL) has increased to $14.3 million, an increase of 178% in the past 90 days.
DeFiLlama
Polygon PoS Overview
The Polygon PoS (Proof of Stake) chain remains the platform of choice for developers and users in the Polygon ecosystem, with over 2 million weekly active addresses, 20 million weekly transactions, and $887 million in total locked value (TVL).
Polygon PoS is also home to the most used applications across many industries, including DePIN (DIMO), gaming (Anichess), entertainment (Fox Verify, Courtyard), and prediction markets (Polymarket, Azuro), which are among the few mainstream breakout use cases in the industry this year, which we will explore further below.
Last week, Polygon PoS’ native token began migrating from MATIC to POL. As of September 4, more than 66.8% of MATIC has completed the migration.
Polymarket
spaceharpoon | Website | Dashboard
Polymarket exploded: trading volume reached $859 million in July and August 2024, and TVL exceeded $100 million in August
Polymarket is a decentralized platform based on Polygon that focuses on betting on real-life events. In July and August, Polymarket's trading volume soared to $859 million, a 44x increase compared to the average level before 2024. As political tensions rise and a major moment for cryptocurrencies approaches, users have flocked to the betting platform. In August, Polymarket's total locked value (TVL) broke the $100 million threshold and reached $103.9 million on August 22, an increase of $32 million in just 12 days. Polymarket's TVL accounts for 83% of the total TVL of the entire prediction market.
Dune - @petertherock
The “2024 Presidential Election Winner” market dominated the prediction markets, attracting $84.1 million in bets in August alone and a staggering $606.1 million in total bets. Clearly, politics dominates the 2024 prediction markets, with both recent and long-term data showing that this area is extremely popular among bettors.
Dune - @rchen8
Polymarket has seen explosive growth in users in 2024. The number of new users has soared from 646 in the first week of January to 5,200 in mid-August. Total users have increased from 42,445 to 128,393 in just over 7 months, a 202% increase. Although Polymarket is one of the most popular platforms, it is just one of many emerging prediction markets running on Polygon PoS.
Dune - @cryptokoryo_research
Trading highlights: On Polymarket, the largest single bet amounted to $1.44 million. The bet was on the question of "whether RFK Jr will withdraw by Friday." The bettor successfully predicted the result and received a bonus of $1.78 million, netting $340,000. The conditional tokens used in these transactions show how the prediction market determines the results and pays the funds to the correct wallet.
Courtyard
spaceharpoon | Website | Dashboard
Courtyard NFT surge: Daily trading volume surges, with 116,000 NFTs minted in August 2024
Courtyard is an on-chain collectibles trading platform. By mid-2024, daily transactions surged to over 3,000, peaking at 9,509 on August 7. Starting in December 2023, this exponential growth began to show, with the number of NFTs minted increasing from about 2,700 per month to over 30,000 in July. Pokémon cards dominated the trading, with 33,000 transactions completed in August alone, with a transaction volume of $1.6 million, bringing the cumulative sales of Pokémon cards to over $6.1 million.
Dune - @spaceharpoon
Courtyard’s cumulative user count now exceeds 6,200. Even more significantly, the platform attracted 14,601 unique minters (creators) as of the latest data. Significant growth in overall users and content creators demonstrates Courtyard’s strong appeal to collectors and artists.
Dune - @subinium
With Pokémon accounting for 71% of traded assets, these collectible “Pokémon” items dominate Courtyard’s marketplace. While Pokémon cards are the primary traded item, other sports collectibles such as basketballs are also available on the platform. Secondary market activity reached $80,000 in trading volume on the peak day, showing the strengthening of market liquidity.
Dune - @denze
Transaction highlights: The highest price paid for a Pokémon card was $17,800. In this transaction, account abstraction technology was used, and the transaction fee was paid by the platform rather than the buyer and seller, thus eliminating the burden of gas fees for users. The transaction highlights Courtyard's progress in connecting traditional collectibles, especially in the field of Pokémon and sports memorabilia, which attracts more than just cryptocurrency enthusiasts.
Anichess
spaceharpoon | Website | Dashboard
The number of Anichess users exceeded 283,800, with significant growth in the third quarter
Anichess, a strategy game that combines traditional chess gameplay with magic elements, has reached a total of 283,800 users and is showing a cyclical growth trend. The platform's weekly active wallets surged 700% in the third quarter of 2024 to more than 120,000, with a 5.6% increase in new users and 3.2% in daily active users. In addition, transaction volume has also surged 5 to 8 times. This volatility, coupled with a 28-fold increase in daily transaction volume from $50 to $1,400, shows the powerful role of game design in driving cyclical user engagement.
Footprint - @RimingPeng
Anichess has a diverse and engaged user base: of 484,000 unique holders, 22.7% of wallets hold more than 20 NFTs, 5.9% hold between 11 and 20, and 5.4% hold between 7 and 10. Notably, 22% of holders own exactly 3 Anichess NFTs. This distribution shows a mix of strong and new users, and that cyclical factors drive large-scale participation.
Dune - @delflora
Anichess has continued to grow despite fluctuating transaction fees: despite the spike in fees, the platform has grown to 283,800 total users, 5.59% new users, and 3.189% daily active users, suggesting that its value proposition outweighs network costs, likely due to its unique gaming mechanics.
Dune - @deflora
Transaction highlights: This transaction involved the minting and claiming of ORB tokens (NFTs) associated with in-game achievements (0 XP, nonce 16), with a handling fee of 0.0023553 MATIC on Polygon. This shows that the platform has built a gamified ecosystem through NFT rewards and progress systems to stimulate user participation.
GOD
spaceharpoon | Website | Dashboard
DIMO connects 107,000 cars: Tesla leads with 20.2% market share
DIMO, an open connected vehicle platform that provides driver convenience through data, has attracted more than 20 automotive brands. Tesla ranks first with a market share of 20.2%, becoming the first automaker to officially support DIMO and achieve direct integration. It is followed by Kia (15.6%), Chevrolet (10.0%) and Ford (9.7%). DIMO's broad appeal across various automotive segments shows its great potential for widespread adoption and cross-brand data aggregation.
Dune - @olreliable
Revenues vary significantly among manufacturers. Tesla leads the electric vehicle market with 22,700 vehicles and $17.6 million in revenue. Luxury brands like Porsche have high revenue per vehicle ($2,100/vehicle) despite lower sales, while mass-market brands like Kia (17,500 vehicles, $115/vehicle) focus more on volume than profit per vehicle.
Dune - @olreliable
DIMO's reward mechanism highlights Tesla's dominance: up to 353,000 tokens are issued to 4,100 users each week. Economy brands such as Kia and Chevrolet perform well, while niche and luxury brands maintain stable participation. This trend shows that the platform's ecosystem in multiple vehicle segments is growing.
Dune - @dimo_network
Transaction Highlights: This transaction demonstrates DIMO’s innovative reward distribution mechanism. With this batch transfer, the platform demonstrates how to incentivize data sharing through weekly token distribution. Transaction rewards are tailored to individual contributions and may include data quality and consistency factors. This approach not only encourages users to continue to participate, but also ensures fair compensation for valuable car data, which is consistent with DIMO’s goal of empowering car owners in the connected car ecosystem.
Polygon RWAs
spaceharpoon | Website | Dashboard
Polygon PoS ranks second in tokenized assets, with 23 real-world assets (RWA) worth $531.58 million
Polygon has become the second-largest blockchain for tokenized real-world assets, with 23 assets behind only Ethereum’s 62. This makes Polygon a significant player in the space, with the total market value of RWAs on its platform reaching $531.58 million.
Dune - @21co
In the real world asset (RWA) ecosystem, sector preferences are evident: real estate accounts for 56.9% of the total tokenized value, followed by private equity (30%), commodities (7.3%), and government securities (5.7%). Notable tokens include HLEOVUS in private equity ($6 million) and BENJI in government securities ($2.14 million).
Dune - @21co
At the protocol level, Tangible RWA has significant influence, with $41 million in total value locked (TVL) and 218 tokenized properties, accounting for 43% of Polygon’s total RWA value. Following closely behind is Spiko, valued at $36 million, and Klima DAO, valued at $10 million, further demonstrating the development of a diverse ecosystem on the Polygon blockchain.
DeFiLlama
AggLayer Overview
Polygon is becoming an aggregated blockchain network through AggLayer. AggLayer is an interoperability solution that connects independent blockchains into a unified liquidity and shared state network. The solution aims to connect multiple blockchains through zero-knowledge security technology to achieve more scalable cross-chain interoperability. This includes Polygon's PoS chain, which is expected to be connected to AggLayer, enabling its total value locked (TVL) and users to directly interoperate with other connected blockchains.
Currently, AggLayer is in the build phase, with the recent cross-chain demo showcasing inter-chain communication capabilities that the Polygon Labs team and other core contributors plan to accelerate in the coming months.
Teams from across the industry are working to create a win-win chain network, including Espresso Systems, OKX, Irreducible, Gateway, Succinct Labs, Nodekit, Movement Labs, Union, etc.
Next, we’ll explore the data behind some of the popular blockchains built on the Polygon AggLayer.
Ronin
Bailey Tan | Website | Dashboard
Ronin’s daily active addresses reached 2.3 million, a 100-fold increase in one year
Ronin is an EVM-compatible L1 blockchain focused on the gaming industry. It is building a zkEVM L2 using Polygon CDK and will connect to AggLayer. More details can be explored further. As a blockchain designed for games, Ronin is committed to being the best platform for building, growing, and monetizing web3 games. In the Layer 1 category, Ronin is consistently ranked in the top 5 by daily active users, and its market share has grown from 0.6% to 22%, thanks to innovative on-chain mechanism design, such as increasing rewards through daily check-ins. Ronin focuses on high-quality user addresses that consume on-chain. Although we have observed a 2-3x increase since 2023, off-chain consumption has not yet been fully counted - according to Pixels' report, more than 100,000 active VIP users spend $10 per month.
token terminal_
Ronin (internal)
Mavis Market is the leading NFT marketplace on Ronin, supporting both primary sales and secondary peer-to-peer trading. Mavis Market’s trading volume has grown 16 times, with monthly peaks increasing from $368,000 in 2023 to $6.15 million in 2024. Its NFT Launchpad has sold out almost instantly 5 times, raising a total of more than $3 million RON.
Ronin (internal)
Lumiterra, a multiplayer open-world survival crafting game, achieved $810,000 in market volume during its 20-day closed beta through the trading of items critical to player progression. Lumiterra is the latest example of the “Ronin Effect” – Ronin’s curation and promotion of high-quality games has proven to be an effective strategy to drive massive growth.
Ronin (internal)
Transaction Highlights:
On August 29, a rare Mystic Axie — numbered Axie #9, with a limited number of IDs — sold for 6.26 ETH (about $16,100), 84% above the reserve price. Mystic Axies feature the rarest Mystic body parts, with only 1,376 remaining in the world. Since 2018, holders have enjoyed many benefits from Axie Infinity, such as in-game extras and rewards, and from Ronin, such as NFT whitelisting and priority access to games. The purchase was made by a first-time Mystic Axie owner, demonstrating the appeal of collectible Axies and that big players are still bullish on Axie’s intellectual property.
Movement Labs
Pratham Prasoon | Website | Dashboard
Movement Labs achieves over 100 million transactions in its incentivized testnet program
Movement is developing a parallelized Move-EVM Layer 2 solution that will connect with Polygon’s AggLayer. Specifically, this integration will incorporate MoveVM rollups into the AggLayer ecosystem, further expanding its functionality and impact.
Movement (internal data)
During the four weeks of Parthenon, Movement Labs’ incentivized testnet program saw the network process over 100 million transactions and grow to 3.5 million wallets, demonstrating its scalability and effective community participation.
Movement (internal data)
Movement’s flagship projects, such as Echelon, Meridian, and Routex, also continued to grow. Echelon saw 943,900 trades and 923,000 deposits per week, Meridian facilitated 869,000 swaps, and Routex also saw 12,000 trades per week.
