While many cryptocurrencies have performed favorably this month, Polygon’s native token seems poised to end January as a notable highlight.
MATIC is up 19% over the past week to $1.19, according to data from CoinGecko, raising the token gain up to 50% in January. This comes as the value of Bitcoin and Ethereum have increased by almost 44% and 38% respectively in the past 30 days.
At the time of writing, MATIC is the tenth largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, with a total value of $10.6 billion.
Decrypt’s Crypto Project of the Year 2022: Polygon
polygon is a sidechain that runs parallel to Ethereum and seeks to improve its counterpart by providing faster transactions and lower fees, while also serving as the foundation for interoperable blockchains.
When the token undergoes a sustained rally, the Twitter account is nicknamed @lookonchain pointed out a wallet address that has made quite a profit with MATIC.
Polygon Whale received 4 million MATIC from crypto exchange Binance in September 2020 for around $84,000 or just over 2 cents per token. Two days ago, the wallet parted ways with its MATIC holdings for a steady $5.2 million, according to Cointelegraph. Etherscan.
Even though the sale includes more MATIC than the initial purchase of the wallet from Binance, the trader still receives a profit of about 50 times the original price they paid for the 4 million MATIC, which is worth around $4.5 million or $1.14 per token at the time of sale.
However, the recent gains are a far cry from the token’s peak of $2.92 in December 2021. The token is still down nearly 60% from its all-time high. At the top price, the 4 million MATIC units purchased in 2020 will be worth $11.7 million.
Polygon up 8% ahead of zkEVM network update
MATIC’s price action comes as Polygon prepares to do an upgrade that was first announced last July. Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal recently tweeted that Polygon’s zkEVM update has an official date and is coming soon.
Polygon’s ZkEVM is a scaling solution compatible with existing Ethereum smart contracts that uses a zero-knowledge proof encryption method to verify large batches of transactions—called total—more efficient.
Zero-knowledge proofs are used in cryptography to prove a statement to be true without revealing its content or the steps taken to establish a given statement as true.
When the polygon announced While it is launching zkEVM, Mihailo Bjelic, co-founder of Polygon, said the update could put Ethereum on par with global payment processor Visa in terms of transaction processing speed.
