Polymarket plans to migrate from Polygon and launch an Ethereum Layer 2 network called POLY, which is currently the project's top priority.
Article author: Azuma
Source: Odaily Planet Daily
On December 22, news about the leading prediction market Polymarket attracted 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 named POLY, which is currently the project's top priority.
An unexpected 'breakup'
It is not surprising that Polymarket chose to exit Polygon; one is a hot application layer representative, and the other is an increasingly weak old underlying layer, with a mismatch in market heat and value expectations between the two. As Polymarket gradually grows into a new giant, Polygon's unstable network performance (the last failure occurred on December 18) and relatively weak ecosystem objectively limit the former.
For Polymarket, building its own portal means a win-win choice in both product and economic dimensions.
In terms of products, aside from seeking a more stable operating environment, building its own Layer 2 network can help Polymarket customize underlying features according to its platform needs, thus adapting more flexibly to future upgrades and iterations of the platform.
The more important significance lies in the economic dimension. Building its own network means Polymarket can consolidate the economic activities and peripheral services derived from its platform into its own system, preventing related value from spilling over to external networks and instead gradually solidifying into its own systemic advantages.
Explicit and implicit economic contributions
As an application layer, Polymarket's explosive growth has brought objective direct economic contributions to Polygon. Data analyst dash's historical data compiled on Dune shows that:
· The number of active users on Polymarket this month is 419,309, and the historical total number of users is 1,766,193;
· The total number of transactions this month is 19.63 million, and the historical total number of transactions is 115 million;
· The total transaction volume this month is $1.538 billion, and the historical total transaction volume is $14.3 billion.
As for how to assess the contribution ratio of Polymarket to the economic contributions of the Polygon ecosystem, Odaily Planet Daily found a rather coincidental ratio while organizing data for both.
· Firstly, regarding the capital accumulation, Defillama data shows that the total position value of Polymarket across all platforms is approximately $326 million, accounting for about a quarter of the total locked value of $1.19 billion on Polygon;
· Secondly, regarding gas consumption, Coin Metrics reported last October that transactions related to Polymarket were expected to consume 25% of the total gas on the Polygon network;
· Considering that this data is somewhat outdated, we also checked recent changes. Data analyst petertherock's statistics on Dune show that transactions related to Polymarket in November consumed approximately $216,000 in gas, while Token Terminal's statistics indicate that the total gas consumption on Polygon for the month was approximately $939,000, with a similar proportion of nearly a quarter (around 23%).
While there may be coincidences due to statistical criteria and time windows, similar results across dimensions can also serve as a reference for estimating Polymarket's economic significance to Polygon.
In addition to active users, capital accumulation, transaction volume, gas contributions, and other quantifiable indicators, Polymarket's economic significance to Polygon is also reflected in a series of more difficult-to-measure but equally real implicit contributions.
Firstly, it revitalizes the liquidity of stablecoins. All transactions on Polymarket are settled in USDC, and its high-frequency, continuous trading behavior significantly enhances the demand and use cases for USDC on the Polygon network; secondly, there is the incidental behavioral value of retaining users. Beyond the prediction market itself, these users may also turn to use DeFi and other products in the Polygon ecosystem for convenience, thereby enhancing the overall ecological value of the Polygon network. These contributions can be quantified with specific data but constitute the 'real demand' that the underlying network values most and is most scarce.
Why now? The answer is not hard to guess.
In fact, from the perspective of user scale, data performance, and market presence, Polymarket has already fully demonstrated the confidence to establish its own portal. This is no longer a question of 'whether to leave', but rather 'when to leave'.
The core reason for choosing to start the migration at this point in time is likely due to the impending Polymarket TGE. On one hand, once Polymarket completes its token issuance, its governance structure, incentive system, and economic model will become relatively fixed, making the costs and complexities of subsequent underlying migrations significantly higher; on the other hand, upgrading from a 'single application' to a 'full-stack system' that includes both 'applications + underlying layers' inherently means a change in valuation logic. Building its own Layer 2 undoubtedly opens up a higher ceiling for Polymarket in terms of narrative and capital.
In summary, Polymarket's departure from Polygon is essentially not just a simple underlying migration, but a reflection of structural changes in the cryptocurrency industry. When top applications begin to possess the ability to independently carry users, traffic, and economic activities, if the underlying network cannot provide additional value, it will inevitably be 'backstabbed'.
Nothing more than the pursuit of profit.
