Polygon’s MATIC is up 40% since the chain announced on Thursday it would partner with Instagram to mint and sell NFTs through its platform, rallying up to US$1.27. MATIC extended its gains on Monday even as the overall crypto market was pressured by an apparent feud between the CEOs of the Binance and FTX crypto exchanges.
PolygonMATIC, which is used to make the EthereumETH blockchain more efficient, has spent the last month partnering with various large businesses seeking to explore decentralized internet functions. Last week, Meta Platforms said it would let users of its Instagram service mint and sell Polygon-powered nonfungible tokens (NFTs) on its platform, effectively creating a marketplace for the crypto products.
The same day, crypto-skeptic JPMorgan used Polygon to execute its first cross-border transaction via decentralized finance on a public blockchain. Less than two months ago, the investment bank’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, called cryptocurrencies “decentralized Ponzi schemes,” and the use of a blockchain tool could be seen as a softening of that position.
Crypto behavior analytics firm Santiment credited the surge in MATIC to the two news developments.
Polygon’s slew of corporate partnerships has led the chain to become the “Web3 on-ramp for millions of users,” according to a report by Bernstein analysts, referring to a decentralized view of the internet. Deals with StarbucksSBUX and Robinhood earlier in the year show the chain winning companies in diverse industries for the Polygon chain.
Network growth has skyrocketed, with Polygon’s Q3 report showing a 60% increase in decentralized apps built on its chain. Unique wallet addresses, a measure of how many individual users have registered wallet address on a single chain, have reached 188 million, only slightly behind Ethereum’s 210 million.
Despite increasing prices, trading volume of MATIC tokens has continued to fall, tumbling to US$1.3 billion from a peak of $2.3 billion last week according to data from CoinMarketCap.
Other layer 2 chains, those used to make Ethereum more efficient for larger transactions, and Polygon’s competitors haven’t done as well. While MATIC’S price has gone up by over 50% in the last month, Immutable X and LoopringLRC have increased 12% and decreased 23%, respectively. Other Ethereum competitions with market capitalizations similar to Polygon’s, including cardano and solana, have decreased around 5%.
The cryptocurrency market is currently at US$1.03 trillion, down 2.7% in the last day, while MATIC’s market went up to $11 billion from US$8.56 billion on Thursday.
This article was first published on forbes.com