Low gas fees and aligning with real-world demand are very important.
Written by: Haotian
I see many people discussing whether @Polymarket belongs to the Ethereum ecosystem. In fact, this is not important at all. Many people are just frustrated that such a breakout super application during the Trump election did not stimulate or catalyze Ethereum. We are too eager for a phenomenal application to revitalize the entire Ethereum ecosystem! Next, let me share my thoughts:
1) @VitalikButerin has praised Polymarket multiple times. Given his anxiety about the over-financialization of DeFi, it’s hard not to like an application like Polymarket that connects on-chain capital betting with real-world prediction scenarios.
To be precise, Polymarket is also a "super casino," but it essentially caters to the prediction needs of the real world in areas such as sports, politics, entertainment, policy, and science. Polymarket does not provide such "gambling" scenarios; these huge demands can also be accessed offline through entertainment methods like betting, gambling, futures, and quiz games.
Polymarket integrates these dispersed prediction needs and connects them to crypto assets, using blockchain technology's fairness, transparency, and verifiability to construct a brand new platform for these "demands." Doesn’t this align perfectly with the vision of blockchain technology empowering the real world?
This is fundamentally different from the yield models that have been popular in DeFi for some time, such as "mining, issuing tokens, liquidity pools, arbitrage, staking, restaking, and governance."
Although there are elements of "gambling" in both, the consumption scenarios provided by Polymarket are broader, the user base is larger, and the sources and sustainability of resources are stronger.
How much Vitalik hopes that DeFi in the Ethereum ecosystem can break the pure on-chain PVP cycle and connect real-world capital and users like Polymarket does.
2) As for whether Polymarket belongs to the Ethereum ecosystem, I don’t want to draw a conclusion. From a perspective of technical neutrality, Polymarket is built on the Polygon chain, consuming gas in Matic ($POL), and it doesn’t even use the Polygon zkEVM, which is considered an Ethereum layer 2. Calling it a super application of the Ethereum ecosystem seems a bit off. In the context of the overall underperformance of applications in the Ethereum ecosystem, such a connection feels too forced and somewhat "sycophantic."
However, that being said, Polymarket was launched as early as 2020, when mainstream L2 solutions like Arbitrum, Optimism, and Starknet were still in their infancy, and with Ethereum DeFi and NFTs exploding, Ethereum gas fees were consistently congested. If Polymarket had truly chosen Ethereum, it might have ended up like Augur, remaining lukewarm. The facts show that Ethereum's basic infrastructure at that time could not support a super application like Polymarket.
3) In my view, Polymarket's explosive growth at least provides some inspiration for the Ethereum ecosystem:
Low gas fees are very important. The overall direction of Ethereum's layer 2 strategy is correct, but it lacks applications like Polymarket being born on layer 2;
Aligning with real-world demand is very important. The pure on-chain DeFi model in crypto has completed a cycle, and it has been proven difficult to create a breakout super application. How Ethereum can break through the pure on-chain dilemma and connect to larger and broader off-chain demands and scenarios is a challenge that must be overcome. Success comes from DeFi, but it cannot be limited to DeFi;
Tokenomics that can stimulate token prices are also very important. It seems that Polymarket's breakout did not bring significant benefits to Polygon, as seen in the price of $POL. Although it is harsh, this is indeed a fact. If the design of the super application model does not put enough effort into Tokenomics design, even if such applications emerge on Ethereum layer 2, they may not have a direct relationship with Ethereum's token price.
4) Many people complain that the issue of Ethereum's infrastructure being greater than its applications is a problem, but in fact, the issue is not the abundance of Ethereum's infrastructure, but rather that it has not transitioned from quantitative change to qualitative change. When an infrastructure that can accommodate more applications in traditional internet business scenarios appears, that is when TPS, parallel processing, large-scale handling, and low gas fees will become common capabilities of the infrastructure. Only then will the infrastructure truly mature and pave the way for the birth of potential "super applications."
"Applications" are not lacking either; it can only be said that applications like "x to Earn" are all short-term experimental applications built based on the current limitations of the infrastructure. The emergence of such applications is destined to have a short lifecycle. In fact, such applications have never been in short supply. To attract larger-scale and more real-world connected super applications, modularization, chain abstraction, and other infrastructures will likely need to continue to be built and developed. This may seem counterintuitive, but it is indeed the case.
Fortunately, Polymarket's success has provided a successful model for the crypto ecosystem market. Its success in application has not been reflected in token prices, which has taught the crypto world a valuable lesson. Coupled with Trump's election providing a huge boost to the crypto market, in this context, we should remain optimistic, give the market more time to brew and cultivate, and believe that everything will turn out well.
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