Over the last couple of months, layer-two protocols have seen impressive growth in terms of participation and higher network activity. However, amidst the larger market drama, the tug-of-war between L1 and L2 solutions has also gotten tighter.
Ethereum, at the time of writing, was oscillating above $3,200, noting daily gains of over 5%. On the contrary, L2 protocols like MATIC had gained by 8% in 24 hours at the same time.
That wasn’t it though. The L1 v. L2 debate intensified further as Polygon (MATIC) saw a 330% surge in daily active unique addresses over the last three months, briefly surpassing Ethereum for the first time ever. What did this mean for MATIC though?
More participation, more activity
Polygon co-founder Mihailo Bjelic recently revealed that the number of daily active unique addresses on Polygon surpassed those on Ethereum. He further highlighted that Polygon had 351,000 daily active addresses whereas Ethereum had 326,000 briefly last Monday.
Notably, the number of active addresses on Polygon has surged by 330% over the last three months, whereas Ethereum’s has declined by 12%
As per data from Polygonscan, MATIC’s active addresses reached the highest number of 423,586 addresses on Monday, 27 September. At the time of writing, however, Ethereum was ahead of MATIC in the count and was up by almost 54k addresses.
The continuing NFT mania has also been a contributing factor to MATIC’s activity growth. In fact, on 30 September, Dolce & Gabbana’s inaugural non-fungible token (NFT) collection, the Collezione Genesi, fetched approximately $5.65 million in a sale.
The group of nine NFTs was launched on the luxury marketplace UNXD, which is built on the Polygon network.
What do the metrics say?
After the two major market crashes in September, Polygon initially seemed to struggle to keep up with the consolidating market. However, in relative terms, the altcoin was holding up well. MATIC didn’t fall below the crucial $1.05-mark and made higher lows on the 12-hour chart over the last week of September.
The MVRV 30-day for MATIC highlighted a return from the negative zone for the asset. However, its MVRV still noted a reading of -8.8%.
Seemed like while the recovery was in place, it was comparatively slower as the asset’s MVRV was still down 26% from its high point on 4 September. What’s more, MATIC’s network growth also saw the low levels of June-July on 29 September. However, that too seemed to be picking up at a slow pace.
Source: Sanbase
Additionally, while MATIC’s total value locked has almost halved since its mid-June all-time high of $10.54 billion, it did see a slight uptick, with the same having figures of $4.27 billion, at press time.
While the surge in activity on Polygon can largely be credited to Ethereum’s transaction fees which skyrocketed again in recent days, other metrics for Polygon showed no major signs of a price hike in the mid-short term.
Ergo, even though recovery is in play, MATIC needs to flip its immediate resistance levels into support and sustain a position above the same for decent gains.