Polymarket Announces In-House L2, Is Polygon's Ace Up?

Original Title: "The Economic Account Behind Polymarket's Exodus from Polygon"

Original Author: Azuma, Odaily Planet Daily

On December 22, a piece of news about the leading prediction market Polymarket sparked widespread market attention. Polymarket team member Mustafa confirmed in the Discord community that Polymarket plans to migrate from Polygon and launch an Ethereum Layer 2 network called POLY, which is the project's current top priority.

An Not-so-Surprising "Breakup"

Polymarket's decision to leave Polygon is not particularly surprising. One is a leading application layer representative, and the other is a fading old base layer. The mismatch between the market heat and expected value of the two has existed. As Polymarket gradually grows into a new giant, Polygon's unstable network performance (the most recent failure occurred on December 18) and relatively weak ecosystem have objectively restricted the former.

For Polymarket, building its own gateway means a win-win choice in both product and economic dimensions.

On the product side, in addition to seeking a more stable operating environment, building a Layer 2 network can help Polymarket customize the underlying features based on its platform needs, making it more flexible to adapt to future platform upgrades and iterations.

The more important significance lies in the economic aspect. Building its network means that Polymarket can consolidate the economic activities derived from its platform and peripheral services into its own system, preventing related value from spilling over to external networks, and gradually solidifying into its own systemic advantage.

Explicit and Implicit Economic Contributions

As an application layer, Polymarket's skyrocketing popularity once brought Polygon objective direct economic contributions. Data analyst dash's data history compiled by Dune shows:

· Polymarket has 419,309 active users this month and a total of 1,766,193 historical users;

· This month's total number of transactions is 19.63 million, with a total historical number of transactions of 115 million;

· This month's total transaction volume is $15.38 billion, with a total historical transaction volume of $14.3 billion.

As for how to evaluate Polymarket's contribution to the Polygon ecosystem, Odaily Star Daily found a coincidental ratio when compiling data on the two.

· First, in terms of TVL, Defillama data shows that the current total value locked across all Polymarket is approximately $326 million, representing about a quarter of Polygon's total locked value of $1.19 billion;

· Secondly, in terms of gas consumption, Coin Metrics previously reported that transactions related to Polymarket were estimated to have consumed 25% of Polygon's total gas last October;

· Considering the potentially outdated nature of the data, we examined recent changes, data analyst petertherock's analysis on Dune showed that Polymarket-related transactions in November consumed approximately $216,000 in gas, while Token Terminal statistics indicated that the total gas consumption on the Polygon network that month was around $939,000, a proportion also close to a quarter (approximately 23%).

While there may be coincidences due to statistical methodologies and timeframes, similar results across dimensions can also serve as a reference for estimating Polymarket's significance to the Polygon economy.

In addition to quantifiable metrics such as active users, total value locked, trading volume, and gas contribution, Polymarket's economic significance to Polygon is also reflected in a series of more difficult-to-measure yet equally real implicit contributions.

First is the activation of stablecoin liquidity. All of Polymarket's transactions are settled in USDC, and its high-frequency, continuous trading activity objectively enhances the circulation demand and use cases of USDC on the Polygon network; second is the ancillary value of retained users. Aside from the prediction market itself, these users may also potentially switch to using other DeFi products in the Polygon ecosystem out of convenience, thereby enhancing the overall ecosystem value of the Polygon network. These contributions, although challenging to quantify with specific data, constitute the most highly valued and scarce "real demand" at the base layer of the network.

Why Now? The Answer Isn't Hard to Guess

In fact, simply from the perspective of user base, data performance, and market presence, Polymarket has fully demonstrated the confidence to stand alone. It is no longer a question of "whether to leave," but a question of "when to leave."

The reason for choosing to start the migration at this particular moment lies in the proximity of the Polymarket TGE. On the one hand, once Polymarket completes its token launch, its governance structure, incentive system, and economic model will relatively solidify, and the cost and complexity of subsequent underlying migrations will significantly increase; on the other hand, upgrading from a "single application" to a "full-stack system of application + underlying layer" itself implies a change in valuation logic, and building a Layer 2 undoubtedly opens up a higher ceiling for Polymarket in terms of narrative and capital.

Overall, Polymarket's departure to Polygon is essentially not just a simple underlying migration, but a microcosm of a structural change in the crypto industry. When top-level applications begin to have the ability to independently support users, traffic, and economic activity, if the underlying network cannot provide additional value, it will inevitably be "betrayed."

Nothing else, just for profit.

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