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Partnerships and Polygon Studios

Polygon is crypto’s most active business development team, with a seemingly new major partner or integration every week. Polygon formed Polygon Studios in 2021, led by the former head of gaming at Google and YouTube, Ryan Wyatt, to push blockchain gaming and NFT initiatives on Polygon. Polygon Studios also collaborates with NFT marketplaces and NFT projects on the Polygon blockchain. More than 100k gamers and over 500 apps have been onboarded into Polygon Studios thus far, with additional partnerships announced with major crypto projects, such as The Sandbox, Decentraland, and OpenSea, as well as with legacy gaming brands, such as Electronic Arts, Atari, and DraftKings. 

However, Polygon Labs, the organization responsible for the PoS chain and scaling solutions, underwent a corporate reorganization in January 2023 and established the Polygon Foundation, which will support both Polygon and Polygon Labs. Polygon Foundation and Polygon Labs do not manage Polygon's blockchain protocol suite, but they do promote its ecosystem.

While the restructuring had no effect on protocols, staff, or day-to-day operations, the firm was eager to inform the public that the Polygon Studios brand will be retired in favor of Polygon Labs.

Some of Web2 and retail’s biggest names have decided to attach their names to Polygon. Presumably, many businesses pick Polygon as a business partner due to its technology, reputation, and close ties with Ethereum. Security is a crucial aspect of blockchain adoption for large corporations and, to many, Polygon appears to be the safest bet, while Ethereum looks to increase its own scalability over the next couple of years. Below are samples of representative partnerships with brief explanations:

• Instagram users can share their NFTs on the Ethereum and Polygon networks
• Starbucks has collaborated with Polygon to develop its Web3 experience, Starbucks Odyssey
• Polygon has been selected as one of six businesses to join Disney's 2022 Accelerator program
• Mercedes-parent Benz's firm, Daimler Group, has teamed with Polygon to develop a blockchain-based data-sharing system
• Polygon and DraftKings have entered into a strategic partnership. DraftKings will use its digital sports expertise to introduce NFTs to an entirely new audience. DraftKings operates the 12th-largest validating node on Polygon, having invested slightly under 55 million MATIC 
• In January 2023, Polygon and MasterCard teamed up to create an artist incubator that'll use blockchain and NFTs
• The global payment gateway service Stripe has embraced Polygon as its cryptocurrency service network
• Adobe will incorporate Polygon into its Behance social media platform
• Smartphone manufacturer Nothing will introduce applications based on Polygon
• Reddit, the largest social networking community, has successfully onboarded over 4 million users to Web3 with the debut of Collectible Avatars on the Polygon network

Top-tier Brands Building on Polygon's Layer 2 Solution

Polygon also has established the following partnerships with credible crypto-native entities:

• Wintermute, a leading global crypto market maker, partnered with a $20 million fund to support project liquidity, business development, and token exchange
• 776 (Seven Seven Six), a venture capital firm, collaborated with a $200 million general purpose fund for investing in Web3 and other crypto applications
• Outlier Ventures, a venture capital firm, created an accelerator to foster mentorship and collaboration
• StableNode, a node validator and venture capital fund, partnered with a blockchain node management operator 

Robinhood, the uber-popular retail stock trading app, added a new Web3 self-custody wallet for some iOS users in Q2 2022. The new product is called Robinhood Wallet and its first supported blockchain will be Polygon's PoS chain.

"We chose Polygon because of its scalability, speed, low network fees, and strong developer ecosystem," Robinhood wrote in a blog post on September 27, 2022. "This will give our customers one of the best trading experiences."

Additionally, in Q2 2022, Polygon became the first EVM blockchain after Ethereum to be supported by Coinbase for withdrawals and deposits of ether, Polygon's native token MATIC, and the USDC stablecoin.

Polygon follows a corporate development strategy focused on leveraging partnerships with venture funds and managing its own NFT and gaming ecosystem. 

Polygon Ecosystem Fund

Polygon also operates its own internal $100 million investment fund called the Polygon Ecosystem Fund to invest in crypto projects and further Polygon’s NFT and gaming goals. The Ecosystem Fund, unlike the collaborations discussed previously, is Polygon's own internal investment fund. Decisions regarding capital distribution are made with a strategic eye toward promoting the adoption of Polygon's blockchains. Investment decisions in this fund are designed to boost the adoption of Polygon’s blockchains. At the time of writing, ~$15 million of this fund has been deployed across 50 projects. 

Developer Activity

The PoS chain has maintained healthy levels of development as can be seen by the 250+ full-time developers, 4,000+ Polygon repos, and steady unique contracts deployed over the past year.

Developers, Source: Developer Report Unique contracts deployed per week in 2022, Source: Artemis

As seen below, weekly commits to the PoS chain have declined over 2022. This can most likely be attributed to the 2022 bear market the chain maturing, and requiring fewer changes and upgrades. The same phenomenon can't be observed in the Hermez GitHub repository (second image). Despite the bear market, developer count and weekly commits have remained consistent as the rollup solution is still a work in progress.

Polygon PoS chain GitHub commit activity, Source: Artemis Polygon Hermez GitHub commit activity, Source: Artemis

Polygon Hermez GitHub commit activity. Source

Additionally, Polygon has created several developer-focused initiatives to continue promoting development including:

• Polygon Guilds - A platform that helps developers to organize monthly meetings, cooperate with other developers, hold workshops, and facilitate a variety of other activities.
• Polygon Academy - Free online school devoted to developer onboarding.
• Polygon Village - Full-stack developer-centric ecosystem that produces grants and applications.

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