Polygon’s [MATIC] price shoots up after recording handsome growth in…

• DeFi protocols powered Polygon’s network growth.
• MATIC’s price rallied by over 10% at press time.

Polygon’s [MATIC] fantastic 2023 continued and investors couldn’t have asked for more. As a crypto market analyst revealed on 26 January, the scaling solution surpassed Ethereum [ETH] in daily active users by blockchain, hitting more than 344k users at press time. 

WOW @0xPolygon just overtook Ethereum in daily active users @sandeepnailwal imagine being bearish on $MATIC 🔥 pic.twitter.com/MgqXDqgK8e

— Zack 🔺 Chief Alpha Officer (@btc_zack) January 26, 2023

Read Polygon’s [MATIC] Price Prediction 2023-2024

A drill down of the data from Token Terminal indicated that Polygon was locked in a close battle with Ethereum over the past week for the second spot at press time, with Binance Chain [BNB] holding on to the first position. 

The increased adoption was reflected in MATIC’s price, which soared by 10% over the past 24 hours at the time of writing. A bullish surge experienced since the start of 2023 saw MATIC almost reversing the FTX-induced losses.

Polygon is ‘DeFi’nitely working

Polygon’s on-chain growth could have got solid impetus from its expanding DeFi protocols. While the total value locked (TVL) of bigger chains fell over the last 24 hours, the TVL across Polygon recorded a jump of 1.13% to hit $1.19 billion. 

Source: DeFiLlama

Alongside this, popular protocols such as Quickswap and Uniswap V3 saw steady growth in unique active wallets (UAW) and transaction volume.

Source: DappRadar/Quickswap

Moreover, as per data from Dapp Radar, Uniswap’s volume surged by 60% over the past week while the number of active users across both the dApps rose marginally. Gains Network, another DeFi protocol built on Polygon, has also created quite a flutter with its performance of late.

Source: DappRadar/Uniswap V3

NFT landscape disappoints

On the flip side, Polygon’s activity in the NFT ecosystem could dampen spirits. The sales volume across the chain declined by 60% over the past 30 days, along with a significant dip in the number of NFT transactions, data from Crypto Slam showed.

Source: CryptoSlam

How much are 1,10,100 MATICs worth today?

However, Polygon’s traction among whales could bring some respite. Per data from Santiment, the number of transactions transferring more than $100k hit a two-month high on 26 January. As large addresses traded MATIC in bulk, the network became profitable after more than two months. This was indicated by the positive MVRV value. 

Source: Santiment

Polygon recently completed a hardfork that was aimed at improving the network’s performance by reducing gas fees and addressing chain reorganization. Polygon saw significant growth in the aforementioned metrics after the hardfork went live.