6 Striking Differences Between Ethereum and Polygon That Developers Must Know

Ethereum and Polygon are two blockchains that have gained a lot of popularity in the cryptocurrency world.

While more people might be familiar with Ethereum, Polygon has also managed to gain a strong foothold and boasts of quite a few benefits – mainly to make up for Ethereum’s drawbacks.

Given below are 6 striking differences between Ethereum and Polygon.

1. Blockchain Type

Ethereum was launched as a leading blockchain platform to enable sharing of digital assets.

On the other hand, Polygon was created to solve some of the issues faced by Ethereum – some of them being high transaction fees and speed.

It is basically a layer 2 solution which means that it is built upon a layer 1 chain like Ethereum, primarily for appeasing layer 1’s issues.

As a developer, it is important to know the primary purpose of each and how they differ in their structural function.

2. Gas Fees

Ethereum is notorious among developers and blockchain users for its high gas fees.

Let us say you are a user who has a small portfolio.

If you want to do a sixty-dollar swap you will have to pay around twenty dollars for gas fees alone!

Because of this many users who start prefer Polygon which was created as a sidechain to Ethereum.

If you compare the gas prices of the two, Polygon is significantly cheaper and this gives it an edge over Ethereum.

3. Transaction Speed

At least a few Ethereum users will admit to having waited for several hours or even days for a transaction to go through.

In fact, if you are an Ethereum user who hasn’t faced this issue, you are one of the very lucky ones!

Although this blockchain can handle more transactions per second compared to the previous years, the number is still less at twenty to thirty per second.

Polygon on the other hand can handle thousands of transactions – potentially up to sixty thousand in a single second!

4. NFTs

NFTs in simple terms refer to any kind of digital asset which holds value. You can sell them in exchange for cryptocurrency. These days NFTs are also making a big buzz in the gaming world.

But a big debate actually revolves around which blockchain network is best for NFTs.

In the battle between Polygon and Ethereum, many developers are of the opinion that Ethereum takes the lead despite high transaction costs and low speeds.

This is attributed to the fact that your NFTs and other digital assets are much more secure with this blockchain network.

And this is one of those situations where the high gas fee can actually be an advantage – scammers are less likely to invade the network.

Users also get to take advantage of auctioning their NFTs and this will enable them to get the highest value.

Polygon isn’t the right choice for auctions as it is of a more recent origin. Users prefer using an older platform with which they’re more familiar.

While the overall blockchain immutability remains the same across the two platforms, the security measures in Polygon are weaker compared to Ethereum.

5. Consensus Mechanism

Ethereum uses a Proof of Work (PoW) mechanism which is more energy exhaustive than the Proof of Stake (PoS) mechanism used by Polygon.

Ethereum 2.0 has made the long-awaited switch to the PoS consensus mechanism which has made it way more efficient.

6. Value

Ethereum’s market value is way higher than Polygon

Its market cap is about $200 billion while Polygon is valued at approximately $6 billion.

This is because it is more established in the market and was one of the first networks to use smart contracts.

Conclusion

While there are differences between the two, Ethereum and Polygon are also similar in a lot of aspects. As a blockchain developer, understanding the differences between the two and analyzing them can help you educate users and help them decide which blockchain will work better for their needs.

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