Polygon Flips Ethereum on Active User Addresses

Polygon’s count of unique daily addresses active either as sender or receiver rose to a record high of 566,516 on Saturday, surpassing Ethereum for the first time, according to data provided by polygonscan. Ethereum’s tally stood at 527,158 on Oct. 2.

The number of active addresses on Polygon has grown by 168% in the past 30 days, while Ethereum’s count has gone up by a meager 0.6%, data from etherscan shows.

Non-fungible tokens (NFT) adoption and gaming have fueled the growth in Polygon’s user base, according to Spencer Noon, an investor in Variant, a cryptocurrency venture capital fund.

“Since July, traders on Polygon OpenSea [the NFT marketplace] have multiplied 45.5x, and NFTs sold by 17.5x,” Spencer said in the Network report published Oct. 2.

“Second, gaming is taking off. Arc8 is one example, achieving 104K DAU [daily active users] days after launch,” Spencer added.

Increased network usage often translates into higher demand for the native token and an increase in its price

However, the spike in active addresses has yet to give Polygon’s MATIC token a meaningful lift. While the token has risen 12% to $1.27 in the first four days of October, it is still down considerably from September’s high of $1.80.

Polygon facilitates faster and cheaper transactions by running sidechains, or tangential networks, alongside the main Ethereum blockchain.