

Project Summary

Project Name

Matic Network

Link to your asset page on Binance Chain

https://explorer.binance.org/asset/MATIC-84A

Your name and position

Chandresh Aharwar, VP - Marketing & Operations

A one-sentence pitch about your Project

Matic Network is a Layer-2 scaling solution that utilizes sidechains for off-chain computation, while ensuring asset security using the Plasma framework and a decentralized network of Proof-of-Stake (PoS) validators.

What are you planning to achieve with your project?

Blockchains are experiencing what Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin describes as the ‘scalability trilemma’. The thesis dictates that of the three foundations of a public blockchain, ( decentralization, security, and scalability), only two can be effectively prioritized. As the longest-standing and most developed platform, Ethereum represents the most decentralized and secure smart contract platform in existence, but is notoriously lagging behind on transaction throughput due to infrastructural limitations.

Whereas some major credit cards providers can process up to 45,000 transactions per second, Ethereum can currently only manage 15 per second. Unable to facilitate mass adoption, many blockchains protocols exist primarily as proof of concept.

Matic believes the answer to enabling widespread adoption of blockchain technology lies with second-layer solutions focused on scalability. In this way, Matic provides massive scaling capabilities whilst leveraging the security and decentralization of the mainchain.

Matic therefore aims to be the de-facto platform on which developers will deploy and run decentralized applications. Though we are beginning our journey by scaling Ethereum, our infrastructure is blockchain agnostic- meaning it can be used to scale any Layer 1 blockchain which comes to prove itself as a key player in the decentralized movement.

Matic’s key strengths are :

L2 transactions secured by Plasma

Zero effort deployment for existing Ethereum programmers

Extremely low-cost transactions

High throughput

Fast (~1second) confirmation times

What is the team size now? Please list each core member of the Project team and outline their role and responsibilities. If any project member is involved in other projects, please clearly state their commitment and how they avoid conflict of interest.

We currently have 15 team members and are hiring more as we continuously expand. Here is an overview of our core team:

Jaynti Kanani- Co-founder & CEO

Laying out vision for Matic. Leading tech and research. Wears many hats to push Matic forward the goal of making it best scalability solution for blockchains

Contributor to Web3.js, Plasma, WalletConnect

Sandeep Nailwal- Co-founder & COO

Leading Marketing, Branding, Adoption and Operations at Matic

Partnering with key stakeholders to push Matic

Leading community interfacing for Matic

Anurag Arjun- Co-founder & CPO

Leading products at Matic

Laying out long term vision for Matic products

Managing product development and roll outs

More information about the wider team, including social profile links, can be found here: https://matic.network/about

Project Website

https://matic.network/

Share a link to your project’s whitepaper

https://whitepaper.matic.network/

Share a link or image of your roadmap

Where are you right now in your roadmap?

We are thrilled to have recently launched our Alpha-Mainnet! Alongside constant onboarding of dApps, the team is currently working hard to release the Wallet app on both iOS and Android which supports the Alpha-Mainnet. We are working relentlessly to deliver on all elements of our roadmap whilst ensuring a thorough development process.

What is the potential user base and market opportunity?

Market Opportunity:

In their current form, blockchains are simply not able to process mainstream-level applications. Scalability limitations, poor user experience, slow block confirmations and high transaction fees are all major roadblocks for the mass adoption of decentralized applications. Severely limited by the constraints of their chosen blockchain’s architecture, current dApps unable to provide streamlined user experiences (a huge hurdle for consumer adoption of dapps).

Although Ethereum captured a significant market share, along with the imaginations of many blockchain enthusiasts, it suffers from crippling scalability issues. The network is consistently congested and the transaction processes are too lengthy to be realistically usable for high-user-volume dApps. Any dApps on the network which do manage to gain significant traction are quickly faced with Ethereum’s scaling issues.

When CryptoKitties overloaded the Ethereum blockchain in December of 2017, the problem was caused primarily by the activity of the DApp’s meagre 14,000 daily users which it had at its peak- a drop in the ocean compared to mass adoption levels. The congestion didn’t just affect users of the dApp; the event impacted the whole Ethereum ecosystem and firmly exposed the scalability limitations of Ethereum 1.0.

Even since the CryptoKitties episode, no effective solution has been proposed which can reliably solve Ethereum’s scalability trilemma. Proposed scaling solutions suffer from their own inherent drawbacks in the way of user experience and centralization. It’s clear that Ethereum needs a novel approach if it is to become the reliably fast and scalable smart contract system it was intended to be. Without the Ethereum Foundation building their own, it is the responsibility of open source teams like Matic to facilitate Ethereum’s Layer 2 scaling.

New blockchain platforms are frequently emerging in an attempt to provide an answer to Ethereum’s scalability issues, but carry their own burdens in their trade-off of decentralization and security for the sake of solving the problem of scalability.

Potential User Base:

As we are a Layer 2 scaling solution, our user base is technically the combination of the user bases of all dApps which decide to join the Matic ecosystem by utilizing our sidechains to improve performance and scalability.

Matic aims to be the de-facto platform on which developers will deploy and run decentralized applications. As a general purpose platform able to theoretically reach infinite scaling through the utilization of multiple sidechains, there is no cap on our potential user base. As our ecosystem as a whole continues to expand, so will our user base.

Token Information & Economics

Token Name and Symbol

Matic Token (MATIC)

What is the primary use case of your token?

The primary use case of the MATIC token is Participating in the Proof of Stake consensus: Matic sidechains enforce consensus using a Proof of Stake (PoS) layer in which network participants stake Matic tokens in order to participate as validators.

Where else can your token be used?

MATIC token is used to pay for the transaction fees in the network. The more users onboard to use the apps on Matic Network, the more the transaction volume and hence the higher the demand for MATIC to pay for transaction fees.

Supporting ecosystem projects: having taken inspiration from Livepeer and its "protocol funding the ecosystem" model, Matic intends to enable a separate staking mechanism for the supporting of the ecosystem projects. This will help create a fund out of the "block rewards" that can help support developers working on features and dApps needed by the network to acquire a part of block rewards. This mechanism is funded by reserving a percentage of the transaction fees in-protocol to support the projects building to enhance the Matic Ecosystem.

Participation in exclusive funding rounds: select projects collaborating with Matic Network will take place exclusively in MATIC tokens. Marlin Protocol was the first project to raise funds on Matic Network, as part of our Matic Ecosystem Initiative, and many more are in the pipeline to do the same.

What is the total supply of your token?

10 Billion

What is the circulating supply of your token?

3,100,000,000 MATIC

Please provide a breakdown of current token allocation.

Please provide all lockups in place for any holders of the token.

There are currently token lockups in place for private sale investors, the Matic team, advisors and Foundation. See the token release schedule below:



Are you compliant in all jurisdictions that you service and operate in?

Yes.

Is the token currently running on any network other than Binance Chain? If yes, what is the swap/migration plan?

Matic token is a native ERC20 as Matic is a Layer2 solution based on Plasma with validators staking tokens on Ethereum mainchain (Ethereum being the first basechain for Matic Layer2 solution) . So Matic token will exist as a dual ERC20 and BEP2 token.

Matic ERC20 token is pegged in 1:1 ratio with Matic BEP2 token. So, total 10 Billion tokens will exist combinely on both chains at any single time. Matic don't plan to migrate a fixed number of tokens rather we expect this to increase as more and more people move their tokens to Binance DEX.

We have implemented 2 way bridge between ERC20 and BEP2 Matic token, which helps swap ERC20 Matic with BEP2 Matic and vice versa. The bridge will be up and running before the listing and Matic will move a certain amount of tokens for initial liquidity.

Is the token currently listed on any other exchange? What are they?

Binance CEX, BitMax, Dcoin, BitForex, Hotbit, TOKOK, Bilaxy, IDEX, WazirX, & BiteBTC.

Funds

Did you conduct an ICO or any type of fundraising? When was it?

We have previously conducted a private sale in the form of a Seed Round and an Early Supporters Sale, which took place in late 2018.

We were also honoured to have conducted an IEO on Binance as a Binance Launchpad Project, in April 2019.

How much in total did you raise?

We raised a total of $600K USD during the private sales, and reached our hardcap of $5m USD during the IEO.

How much have you spent in total thus far? What have you spent these funds on?

We have spent around 12% of our funds. 80% of the funds have been spent on tech and development. 20% of the funds have been spent on Marketing and community efforts

How much runway does your project require to ship the final product?

2 years

What currency/coin/token do you plan to hold your funds in?

BNB/BTC/ETH/MATIC

What’s your coin storage/conversion policy? Do you only convert to fiat when you spend?

We always keep a runway of 1 year with us in fiat. Rest of the funds we hold in crypto assets

How do you plan to publish your spending each month?

Currently we do not public our spending in public domain.

Where are your funds stored? Please provide the addresses for public community tracking.

The community can verify addresses and wallets on this page: https://matic.network/transparency/

Development

What are the technological innovations of the project, if there are any?

Matic Network employs an innovative dual-pronged approach to scaling whilst retaining decentralization through our adapted version of the Plasma framework, by utilizing Proof of Stake (PoS) at the checkpoint level alongside Block Producers at the block production level.

Matic uses Block Producers selected by PoS participants on the base layer, who are responsible for block creation on the Matic sidechains. The system’s checkpointing mechanism ensures that for every few blocks on Matic Network’s block layer, a party will be chosen from the stakeholders to propose a checkpoint on the Ethereum mainchain.

These checkpoints are created after validating all the blocks on the block layer of Matic Network using a Merkle tree of the block hashes from the last checkpoint. The Merkle root is then broadcast to the network of stakers, who will also verify the proof, and approve the proposed block, if valid, by providing their signatures.

The system needs the approval of ⅔ of the stakeholders to propose a header block to the RootContract, and once the checkpoint is proposed on the mainchain, anyone on the Ethereum mainchain can challenge the proposed checkpoint within a specified period of time. If there is no challenge issued, the checkpoint is formally included as a valid checkpoint on the mainchain.

Matic Network also employs Fraud Proofs on the mainchain in order to provide another layer of transactional security, enabling any individual on the mainchain to submit the details of any transactions suspected of being fraudulent. If the challenge is successful, the stakes of the parties involved in the fraud are transferred to the challenger as an incentive for detecting the transaction. This in itself operates as an ongoing community-driven fraud prevention mechanism which also rewards those wishing to contribute their time to upholding the Matic ecosystem.

Where are your code repositories located?

GitHub. You can see our code repositories here: https://github.com/maticnetwork

Do you have any products or UI demos can you share publicly? Are any built by your community, as opposed to being in-house demos?

We already have our Wallet app available on Android and iOS. Please note the Wallet is currently running on the testnet (so do not send mainnet tokens to the wallet at this stage). The team is working hard to soon release a version running on the Alpha-Mainnet which will include a wider variety of features, including PIN functionality. Feel free to test it out for yourself:

Android- https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=network.matic.wallet

iOS- https://apps.apple.com/us/app/matic-wallet/id1441139058

You can also see a live Wallet demo created by one of our community members here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-THCjtEUDOA

Do you plan to release weekly progress updates in this forum?

We provide regular updates of our projects on our official blogs at https://blog.matic.network

Do you plan to host monthly or bi-monthly video AMAs?

Yes, we already host regular AMAs on Telegram and Reddit along with different crypto communities and projects we partner with.

Competitors

Who do you view as your current competitors/peers?

As the most pertinent problem facing blockchain today, it’s no surprise that a plethora of scaling solutions tackle the scalability conundrum each in their own way. Prominent scaling solutions include OmiseGO, Loom Network, Proof of Authority Network, Liquid Network, and Rootstock. There are also a host of projects working on developing state channels to speed up the process of transacting on the blockchain- examples of which include Celer Network and Raiden.

We also view alternative blockchains such as EOS as ‘competitors’ in the sense that they are attempting to provide an answer to Ethereum’s scalability problem.

What is your project’s competitive advantage over existing or potential future solutions?

Current scaling endeavours offer only a partial solution due to limited functionality, poor user experience or their sacrificing of decentralization for the sake of performance. As a similar sidechain approach, let’s take Loom Network as an example. Since Loom has integrated Plasma Cash, there is no fungibility for the assets supported on the sidechains. Everything there is represented as an NFT/ERC721, meaning payments aren’t natively supported. Further, when utilizing an implementation of Plasma Cash block times will always be longer than those of Ethereum, since every block of the sidechain needs to be pushed to the main chain, while Matic uses checkpoints for 1-second block times.

Unlike other scaling solutions, Matic Network is committed to achieving massive scale alongside decentralization by utilizing checkpoints and fraud proofs on its enhanced version of the Plasma framework. Unhindered by functionality limitations and problems of centralization, Matic will be able to house a wide array of DApps on our infrastructure.

Matic chains are based on an account based EVM (inspired by Plasma MoreVP) and support ERC721 in addition to ERC20 tokens, along with asset swaps right out of the box. This makes Matic the go-to platform for deploying Decentralized Finance (DeFi) applications in particular. As a general purpose platform, however, our infrastructure is capable of housing a limitless array of dApp types, and we are keenly focused on gaming as well as welcoming of all dApps which stand to further the decentralized movement.

For a comparison of scaling solutions, we have written a comprehensive article on the topic, which includes a detailed infographic comparing Matic to some L2 solutions alongside a couple of L1 blockchains. You can check it out here:

https://medium.com/matic-network/understanding-ethereum-scaling-categorizing-projects-by-approach-adopted-97c79b25eb55

Beyond our technical advantages over current scaling solutions, Matic aims to differentiate itself from others by taking an active role in assisting in the development of projects within the Matic ecosystem and that of the wider overall space. To this end, we have already laid out our plans to assist up-and-coming blockchain innovators with financial, technical and through our Matic Ecosystem Initiative. High-performance fundraising on Matic Network is one part of the initiative, which Marlin Protocol will be the first to take advantage of.

Moreover, Matic intends to play a key role in the spearheading of India’s decentralized movement. Our efforts to seek out and empower India’s blockchain developers do not stop with our hackathon endeavors, of which we have hosted upwards of 20 in the last year. Through our Developer Support Program, India’s budding blockchain developers will be provided with technical, financial, talent sourcing, and outreach-related support. We believe it’s imperative that we position developers in the best way possible for them to build innovative solutions.

Our goal is to serve as more than simply a scaling solution, but as an entire collaborative ecosystem of dApps running on Matic Network which will become stronger together as the ecosystem expands. To view a more comprehensive recap of all the community engagement initiatives, outreach efforts, conference keynotes, and technical developments, please read more at our official blog at:

https://blog.matic.network/matic-project-updates-technical-and-community-4/