Ever since Blockchain has existed, scalability has been a prominent issue. For mainstream adoption, scalability is imperative. However, as the Blockchain trilemma exists, scalability has always been one of the trade-offs to get more decentralisation instead.
Essentially, in order for a Blockchain platform to efficiently implement a consensus algorithm, it needs to follow the decentralisation principles which means that more validating nodes have to be present on the Blockchain network. Due to the presence of more validating nodes, the transactions happening on the Blockchain take more time to get validated and even more time to get added as a block in the Blockchain as they have to be added on a greater number of users.
Hence, scalability suffers. Moreover, according to the third issue of the Blockchain trilemma, security of a Blockchain platform also becomes a crucial aspect that can not be achieved without sacrificing either decentralisation or scalability. For instance, a Blockchain platform may not need that much decentralisation if it has better security with a less number of nodes. However, better security means that more encryption and decryption techniques have to be used which will take more time to create the cryptographic links on which the whole Blockchain ecosystem is built on. Therefore, the scalability of the platform suffers greatly.
If we take a closer look at the existing Blockchains, they might be secured or they might be decentralised to an extent, but their scalability has been one of the major reasons why their mainstream adoption has been so slow. Therefore, the need for scalability can not be stressed enough.
However, an interesting viewpoint here is, if the existing Blockchains can not accommodate the scalability needs of the world, does that mean we need new Blockchains? Or is there any other way to reach this goal?
Well, if we consider the already established market of the existing Blockchains such as Ethereum, creating a new Blockchain with a new community and then redefining the existing use cases or decentralised applications according to the architecture of the new Blockchain seems like a hefty task. What if there was a way around this?
The answer lies with new innovative Blockchain protocols such as Matic.
What is Matic (Matic explorer)
Matic is a decentralised platform which has been built specifically to combat the potential catastrophe in the near future of Blockchain. With the current growth of Blockchain further accelerated by the pandemic, scalability remains a major threat which has already been recognized by the Blockchain experts. Matic network solves the scalability issue along with several other issues by leveraging an adapted version of the Plasma framework. The inclusion of this Plasma framework allows Matic users to experience faster transactions with extremely low cost. Therefore, Matic provides an alternative to the biggest concern for the Blockchain and DeFi users regarding the high transaction fee.
To solve the scalability issue and provide better transaction throughput, Matic leverages a Block Producer layer. This layer results in the faster block creation which in turn means that the transactions are added at a faster rate and the scalability is increased beyond imagination. It connects with the Ethereum Mainchain and ensures that the basic principles of the Blockchain are maintained.
For instance, it leverages Proof-of-Stake checkpoints to ensure that decentralisation is maintained when pushing to the Ethereum Blockchain. As a result of this innovative approach, Matic can achieve 2¹⁶ transactions on a single side chain in theory.
Another pain point for the users in this ecosystem is the lack of user experience as the complexity of the decentralised services leaves them astray. Matic is focused on building an ecosystem which will be customer-centric and provide user-friendly interfaces for mobile applications, desktop wallets, and browser extensions. Through these interfaces, the complex DeFi services will become a piece of cake for the new users.
But the end-users are not the only group of people who need to keep an eye out for Matic. Even for the developers, Matic is creating a complete suite of developer tools to streamline the process of application development on the Matic platform. Tools like real-time notification engine for Ethereum events, Dagger, and a scalable, modular and realtime Ethereum data processor, Hermione, are already a part of this ecosystem.
How does it actually work?
As of now, the transfer of tokens or ethers on the Ethereum Blockchain takes around 14 to 20 seconds for just the confirmation. Even after that, the transaction or the Block addition is not deemed as complete unless and until there are at least 12 block confirmations after your block has been added.
This points out the lack of finality and speed in the transaction completed on the Ethereum Blockchain. Another concern among the crypto users is the high transaction fee which has been increasing tremendously with the growth of the Ethereum Blockchain. While Ethereum 2.0 is expected to provide significant enhancements to this ecosystem, it is going to take a considerable amount of time before it becomes mainstream. Therefore, it is the need of the hour to address these problems.
Essentially, Matic provides a solution to this problem in the following way:
Currently, Matic supports only Ethereum Blockchain but will support other prominent Blockchains in the future too. User can deposit the asset in the Matic contract present on the main Ethereum chain. Once the asset is validated and confirmed on the Ethereum network, the user can perform various functionalities on the corresponding asset on the Matic chain.
For instance, user deposits 100 ethers on the Matic contract and these ethers are now transferable on the Matic chain. The user can transfer these ethers on the Matic chain which will be significantly faster than the Ethereum main chain. The block will be validated in 1 second or less and the transfer will be done almost instantly.
After the tasks have been completed by the user, they can withdraw the remaining token from the Ethereum chain only. This can be done by syncing the root contract of Matic on the Ethereum Blockchain with the activities done on the Matic chain.
In this way, the Matic platform provides unprecedented scalability and lower transaction fee without sacrificing the decentralisation or security.
How to build apps on Matic
The amazing thing about Matic is that it requires no special knowledge to start developing your decentralised applications on Matic. If you have been developing on Ethereum, you can start on Matic in just a few mins. All the tools that an Ethereum developer is familiar with, are supported by the Matic platform too. The test net of Matic is called Mumbai and connects with the Goerli testnet of Ethereum.
The documentation is well-drafted and is quite easy to understand. You can directly go to the get started page to start your Matic development in no time.
All you need to do is set up a wallet like Metamask or Arkane and then deploy your contract. You can deploy the contract using Remix or Truffle. Even connecting to the Matic chain through RPC is quite similar to Ethereum.
The documentation has been segregated into sections defining specific use-cases. For instance, if you already own a DApp on the Ethereum Blockchain or any EVM based chain, you can directly migrate to Matic. Any EVM compatible code can be directly migrated to Matic chain with ease.
Similarly, if you want to leverage Matic Blockchain to accommodate faster transactions on your DApp with a lower fee, there is a dedicated section for that too. Another section which holds significance is the tutorial for a full-stack DApp development that can be found here.
The tutorials available in the documentation are well written and explained properly. If you have Ethereum development experience, building advanced use-cases on Matic will be relatively easier for you. The tutorials are also divided into sub-sections such as beginner and advanced. From developing a hello world contract to adding custom restrictions to your ERC20 token on Matic Network, all you need can be easily found in the tutorials.
Conclusion
Matic Blockchain is the perfect example of how innovation will shape the future of Blockchain. Blockchain has already transformed our lives and instilled new hope among the people for a better and transparent system.
However, even Blockchain has its shortcomings and new innovative platforms such as Matic are leading the Blockchain world towards the mainstream adoption it deserves.
Reach out to QuillHash
With an industry presence of years, QuillHash has delivered enterprise solutions across the globe. QuillHash with a team of experts is a leading blockchain development company providing various industry solutions including DeFi enterprise, If you need any assistance for dapp development, feel free to reach out to our experts here!
Follow QuillHash for more updates
