Is Polygon Centralized
Manuel Olumorin
January 18, 2023
GM. Lootbox bringing you a late-night snack. Let's crack open today's Lootbox.
- Decrypt claims it took 13 votes to hard fork Polygon
- Tiny Colony is moving from Solana to Immutable X
- The Sneakies
Is Polygon A Centralized Chain
Last week we let you know Polygon was executing a hard fork on Jan 17. Well, the hard fork was successful.
So why the fuss?
Apparently, the hard fork decision has been controversial. Decrypt even released a piece. In it, they claimed it took 13 votes to push the decision to go ahead with the hard fork proposal and questioned Polygon's commitment to decentralization.
Everything we know about the hard fork
- On Dec 22, Polygon proposed the hard fork on the Polygon Forum to reduce the SprintLength from 64 blocks to 16 blocks and increase the BaseFeeChangeDenominator from 8 to 16.
- These solutions were proposed to reduce exponential gas spikes and improve finality of transactions by reducing reorgs.
- A poll was placed on said forum to gauge sentiment for the changes.
- Only 15 people voted on the poll. Out of that, 13 agreed to make both changes, while 2 voted to make changes to the SprintLength.
- Jan 12 Polygon announced it was going ahead with the hard fork.
- Jan 17, the hard fork was completed as validators upgraded to the new fork.
- Jan 18, changes were made to the forum post to clarify that the poll was to gauge sentiment for the proposal and should not be considered a vote.
What are people saying on Crypto Twitter
Some people in the Solana community seem to be calling out Polygon for being centralized.
@decryptmedia Polygon borrowing its governance playbook from the Federal Reserve and the World Economic Forum
— teemu.pleb (@teemupleb)
Jan 18, 2023
@joemccann@0xPolygon The 75 devs on Solana not looking too bad right now.
— Ryan Negri (@RyanNegri)
Jan 18, 2023
While one of the Cofounders of Polygon, @MihailoBjelic, jumped in to defend Polygon, pointing out that the poll was an informative poll.
This is pure misinformation.
During the process of Polygon PoS upgrade, there is an INFORMATIVE poll where validators simply signal their support. Solana trolls and now Decrypt presented it as the decision mechanism, which has NOTHING to do with reality.
— Mihailo Bjelic (@MihailoBjelic)
Jan 18, 2023
How exactly does Polygon's PoS upgrade work?
Who knows 🤷. We checked their wiki and found no information.
If it works similarly to chains like Bitcoin and Ethereum, the hard fork would proceed once enough validators upgrade before the upgrade block time. For Polygon, the threshold might be 2/3 of the validators.
Tiny Colony Leaves Solana
The exodus of projects from Solana continues following DeGods and y00ts as Tiny Colony joins the fray.
Tinyverse Games, the creator of Tiny Colony, announced that they would move their game from Solana to Immutable X, and it isn't about the money 🤔.
"If our focus were money, then we would go to Polygon or these different blockchains that offer massive dollar incentives for us to switch over.”
Why are projects leaving?
- Network outages - Let's be honest here. Reliability wasn't Solana's strong suit last year. The network was like that friend that keeps passing out after a few drinks, going down at least 7 times. Since no one wants their apps going down, some are making the jump to more reliable chains.
- More money - Chains have upgraded from poaching talent to poaching entire projects. And some projects are getting their heads turned by chains like Polygon, which is offering significant incentives for migrating.
- The FTX disease - It's no secret that FTX nearly took Solana down the tubes with it. This drove fear into the Solana ecosystem, and we know sentiment has always been a powerful force in crypto. It's possible this has got projects considering if Solana would continue to be around.
Is Solana in a decline?
The latest rally of the SOL token would suggest otherwise. It also seems the community is rallying around its ecosystem to keep it alive. It would be interesting to see if projects continue to migrate out - a stream can turn into a river pretty quickly. If Solana weathers this, it will only become more robust.
The Sneakies
- Japan wants to tax player earnings from Web3 games. Although it is yet to be codified into the Japanese tax code, they intend to tax it under miscellaneous earnings, while sales of NFTs would be capital gains.
- China granted publishing licenses to 88 games in January, including titles from Tencent and NetEase, following its license freeze in August 2022.
- Intella X raises $12 million as it plans to launch on Polygon. The platform aims to bridge the gap between Web2 and Web3 through its platform protocols, services and games as it rewards contributors using what it calls 'Proof of Contribution.' Investors include Animoca Brands, Magic Eden, Polygon and more.
- Mobile game publisher, Carry 1st, raises $27 million from Bitkraft Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz to grow its digital content creation platform in Africa. They plan to use the funds to enhance Pay1st, a monetization-as-a-service platform that offers third-party publishers the opportunity to increase revenues in Africa using crypto.
- You can now earn Bitcoins playing chess with Bitcoin Chess after Zebedee and Viker launched two games, Bitcoin Chess and Bitcoin Scratch. Both are available on iOS and Android.
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