Picture this, you’re playing your favorite blockchain game. The game allows you to do a specific action on the blockchain such as create an NFT token or put something up for auction. You’ve spent several hours preparing to perform the action and are ready to take the plunge. Beginning the act, you find transaction prices are outrageous and waiting times unbearable. So, instead of having fun, you decide to wait until “prices go down” or “speeds are better”. Sound familiar?
What if I told you there was something to fight against this? Maybe something built for public blockchains like Ethereum, that allows for faster and cheaper transactions? Well, there is, and it is called Matic Network.
At its core Matic Network is a scaling solution for public blockchains. It is based on the “Plasma” framework, which in a nutshell is a series of secondary chains that can interact with the main chain. By reducing the need to talk with the main chain constantly, it basically unclogs the drain so to speak, allowing the main chain to function more efficiently. Additionally, this type of layer two solution sitting on top of layer one allows for developers to build decentralized applications that don’t rely completely on the main chain for everything but can communicate with it when it counts. Translation – It gets to use all the Ethereum goodies such as security, but also provide faster and cheaper transactions.
Sure, this concept is nice in theory, but where is the working proof? Well, a few days ago, Blockchain Cuties went live using a Matic version of the game, so I dove in. Being your guinea pig, here are the statistics:
Current Matic Network Price = 0.02 USD per Token
1 GWEI = 0.00000030 USD
Transaction #1: Breeding
Analysis Breeding:
- Price - Cost of the breed action was 16 Matic x 0.02 equaling a total of 0.32 cents USD. 1 GWEI is the gas price.
- Speed - Looking at the activity log you can see the transaction starts at 22:03 on 7/25/2020 and completes within the same minute.
Transaction #2: Auction Listing
Analysis Auction Listing:
- Cost - 0.000126 Matic which is several fractions of a cent in USD and again 1 GWEI for blockchain logging.
- Speed -Same as above, less than a minute.
Transaction #3: Item Purchase
Analysis Buying Item:
- Cost – The item was listed for 22 Matic on the item store and 1 GWEI.
- Speed -Same as above, less than a minute.
In conclusion, so far, I have over 40 transactions with similar results. I’ve bought, sold, and breed swiftly with low costs. Writing to the Matic blockchain is insanely fast, secure, and stable. I am extremely impressed.
Ethereum Comparison
Now, to compare with the Main chain, Ethereum, here is an auction I began while gas was low:
Also, moving an NFT from one wallet to another:
As you can see from the examples, there is a noticeable difference in GWEI price and transaction speeds. The first example shows a cost of 40 GWEI, and the second took 23 minutes to confirm. As we compare these statistics to the Matic performance it begs the question: Could Matic Network side chains change Blockchain Gaming forever?
For more information about Matic:
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