The network utilizes the proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism to validate transactions. Moreover, Toncoin is used to reward validators. Nominators can also provide tokens to validators and receive rewards. Validators and nominators are managed with smart contracts, providing the network with extra protection. Smart contracts are executed using TON Virtual Machine (TVM).

As of November 2022, Toncoin (TON) is listed on multiple crypto exchanges like Huobi Global, KuCoin, Uniswap (V3), Gate.io, OKX, LBank, MEXC, EXMO, CoinEx, Biswap, BitMart, Nomiswap, BitoPro, ACE, DigiFinex, Tidex, Unocoin, Bit.com, BingX and HitBTC. Read CoinMarketCap's in-depth guide on tokenomics.

Read about Zilliqa (ZIL) and Harmony (ONE). Follow Toncoin on CMC Community for the latest updates. What is proof-of-stake (PoS)? Learn more with the CMC glossary. What is Web 3.0? Find out more with CMC Alexandria.

Polkadot is an open-source sharded multichain protocol that connects and secures a network of specialized blockchains, facilitating cross-chain transfer of any data or asset types, not just tokens, thereby allowing blockchains to be interoperable with each other. Polkadot was designed to provide a foundation for a decentralized internet of blockchains, also known as Web3. Polkadot is known as a layer-0 metaprotocol because it underlies and describes a format for a network of layer 1 blockchains known as parachains (parallel chains). As a metaprotocol, Polkadot is also capable of autonomously and forklessly updating its own codebase via on-chain governance according to the will of its token holder community. Polkadot provides a foundation to support a decentralized web, controlled by its users, and to simplify the creation of new applications, institutions and services. The Polkadot protocol can connect public and private chains, permissionless networks, oracles and future technologies, allowing these independent blockchains to trustlessly share information and transactions through the Polkadot Relay Chain (explained further down). Polkadot’s native DOT token serves three clear purposes: staking for operations and security, facilitating network governance, and bonding tokens to connect parachains . Polkadot has four core components: Relay Chain: Polkadot’s “heart,” helping to create consensus, interoperability and shared security across the network of different chains; Parachains: independent chains that can have their own tokens and be optimized for specific use cases; Parathreads: similar to parachains but with flexible connectivity based on an economical pay-as-you-go model; Bridges: allow parachains and parathreads to connect and communicate with external blockchains like Ethereum.

Polkadot is the flagship protocol of Web3 Foundation, a Swiss Foundation with a mission to facilitate an open-source, fully functional and user-friendly decentralized web. Polkadot’s founders are Dr. Gavin Wood, Robert Habermeier and Peter Czaban. Wood, Web3 Foundation’s president, is the most well-known of the trio thanks to his industry influence as Ethereum co-founder, Parity Technologies founder and the creator of the smart contract coding language Solidity. Wood is also credited with coining the term Web3. Habermeier is a Thiel Fellow and accomplished blockchain and cryptography researcher and developer. Czaban is the former Technology Director at Web3 Foundation, with a wealth of experience across highly specialized fintech industries.

Polkadot is a sharded multichain network, meaning it can process many transactions on several chains in parallel (“parachains”). This parallel processing power improves scalability. Custom blockchains are quick and easy to develop using the Substrate framework and Substrate blockchains are designed to be easy to connect to Polkadot's network. The network is also highly flexible and adaptive, allowing the sharing of information and functionality between participants. Polkadot can be automatically upgraded without the need for a fork in order to implement new features or remove bugs. The network has a highly sophisticated user-driven governance system where all token holders have a vote in how the network is run. Teams can customize their own blockchain’s governance on Polkadot based on their needs and evolving conditions. Nominators, validators, and collators all fulfil various duties to help secure and maintain the network and eradicate bad behavior. At the end of 2021, Polkadot successfully concluded its first Parachain auctions. The Parachain auctions followed an un-permissioned candle auction system. The winning bid is the highest bid at the random moment the auction ends. Polkadot assigned the first five slots to the following auction winners: Acala, Moonbeam, Astar, Parallel and Clover. These projects will have their parachain slots locked in for 96 weeks, guaranteed by the DOT bidders committed as collateral. As customary on Polkadot, all projects had previously been battle-tested on its de-facto testnet Kusama.

Following the network’s redenomination after a referendum on Polkadot, DOT balances increased by 100, so one old DOT was equivalent to 100 new DOT. This meant that the initial maximum supply of 10 million old DOT in August 2020 became 1 billion new DOT tokens. The redenomination was undertaken purely to avoid the use of small decimals and make calculation easier. While all balances were increased by a factor of one hundred, this did not impact the distribution of DOT or holders’ proportional share. Polkadot’s first initial coin offering (ICO) was held in October 2017, and the Polkadot price was $0.29, with 2.24 million tokens offered. The second ICO was held in July 2020, and the Polkadot price offered was $1.25, and 342,080 DOT tokens were sold.

The network uses an NPoS (nominated proof-of-stake) mechanism with validators and nominators.Nominators back validators with their tokens. These staked tokens maximize chain security by making it prohibitively expensive to misbehave. Validators are staked on the Relay Chain and confirm transactions coming from the different parachains. This unique validity scheme enables chains to interact with each other securely under the same rules, yet remain independently governed.

The top exchanges for Polkadot (DOT) trading are currently Binance, Huobi Global, OKEx, Coinbase, KuCoin and more. You can find others listed on the Polkadot’s markets page on CoinMarketCap. You can now also buy cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum directly by credit card in the fiat currency of your choice. To find out how, read more here. To check Polkadot price live in the fiat currency of your choice, you can use CoinMarketCap’s converter feature directly on the Polkadot currency page. Here are some other articles that you may be interested in: What Is a Crypto Faucet? What Are Crypto Debit Cards? What Is Web 3.0? What Is Yield Farming? What Is Crypto Lending?

Announced in June 2022, the protocol is set to overhaul the existing framework so that the network will become more entrenched in the decentralization ethos. The team argued that the current governance system has elements of centralization. For example, the Polkadot Council, a body of executives, had sole control over some decision-making processes, including how the network's treasury is spent. To this end, the new development is replacing the existing governance infrastructure with a framework in the form of a "referendum." In other words, the planned upgrade will introduce a voting system allowing anyone to submit proposals and have them approved. Called Governorship version 2 or Gov2, this upgrade allegedly eliminates all forms of preferential first-class citizenry like the Technical Committee and the Polkadot Council. With this, the protocol aims to reduce the concentration of voting power by replacing the Technical Committee with the Polkadot Fellowship, designed to accommodate up to tens of thousands of members and feature a lower barrier for entry. The members are ranked to showcase the degree the protocol expects each participant to make informed decisions and support proposals that are in the best interest of the network. Another core component of the upgrade is the Origins and Tracks system. This mechanism will help grade the importance of a proposal and determine the appropriate way to treat them. As such, the network can implement suitable safeguards to ensure that the decision-making process is decentralized and fair. For instance, proposals tagged as Root Origins are the most sensitive. Such proposals undergo longer and more scrutinized consideration periods, with a higher approval threshold. Also, the system ensures that only one hypersensitive proposal can be deliberated on at a time. On the other hand, proposals with less sensitive Origins have shorter consideration periods with a lower approval threshold. Put simply, the grade of the importance of proposals will determine the type of safeguards assigned to them and the length of the decision-making process they undergo. Gov2 will first be tested on Kusama, an experimental development environment for testing applications, before it goes live on Polkadot. Once the testing and audit phase is complete, the team will submit the proposal to launch Gov2 on the Polkadot network.

Learn more about Cosmos (ATOM). Learn more about Ethereum (ETH). Learn more about Cardano (ADA).. Curious about the crypto space? Read our educational section — Alexandria. Want to convert the Polkadot price today to your desired fiat currency? Check out CoinMarketCap exchange rate calculator. To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Polkadot. Learn more about Parachains and blockchain bridges from the Web3 foundation.

Polygon (previously Matic Network) is the first well-structured, easy-to-use platform for Ethereum scaling and infrastructure development. Its core component is Polygon SDK, a modular, flexible framework that supports building multiple types of applications. To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Polygon Matic. Using Polygon, one can create optimistic rollup chains, ZK rollup chains, stand alone chains or any other kind of infra required by the developer. Polygon effectively transforms Ethereum into a full-fledged multi-chain system (aka Internet of Blockchains). This multi-chain system is akin to other ones such as Polkadot, Cosmos, Avalanche etc. with the advantages of Ethereum’s security, vibrant ecosystem and openness. The $MATIC token will continue to exist and will play an increasingly important role, securing the system and enabling governance. Polygon (formerly Matic Network) is a Layer 2 scaling solution backed by Binance and Coinbase. The project seeks to stimulate mass adoption of cryptocurrencies by resolving the problems of scalability on many blockchains. Polygon combines the Plasma Framework and the proof-of-stake blockchain architecture. The Plasma framework used by Polygon as proposed by the co-founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, allows for the easy execution of scalable and autonomous smart contracts. Nothing will change for the existing ecosystem built on the Plasma-POS chain. With Polygon, new features are being built around the existing proven technology to expand the ability to cater to diverse needs from the developer ecosystem. Polygon will continue to develop the core technology so that it can scale to a larger ecosystem. Polygon boasts of up to 65,000 transactions per second on a single side chain, along with a respectable block confirmation time of less than two seconds. The framework also allows for the creation of globally available decentralized financial applications on a single foundational blockchain. The Plasma framework gives Polygon the potential of housing an unlimited number of decentralized applications on their infrastructure without experiencing the normal drawbacks common on proof-of-work blockchains. So far, Polygon has attracted more than 50 DApps to its PoS-secured Ethereum sidechain. MATIC, the native tokens of Polygon, is an ERC-20 token running on the Ethereum blockchain. The tokens are used for payment services on Polygon and as a settlement currency between users who operate within the Polygon ecosystem. The transaction fees on Polygon sidechains are also paid in MATIC tokens.

Polygon (formerly Matic Network) was launched in October 2017. Polygon was co-founded by Jaynti Kanani, Sandeep Nailwal and Anurag Arjun, two experienced blockchain developers and a business consultant. Before moving to its network in 2019, the Polygon team was a huge contributor in the Ethereum ecosystem. The team worked on implementing the Plasma MVP, the WalletConnect protocol and the widely-used Dagger event notification engine on Ethereum. The team included co-founder of Polygon, Jaynti Kanani. Jaynti, a full-stack developer and blockchain engineer currently serves as the CEO of Polygon. Jaynti played an integral role in implementing Web3, Plasma and the WalletConnect protocol on Ethereum. Prior to his blockchain involvement, Jaynti worked as a data scientist with Housing.com. Co-founder and chief operations officer of Polygon, Sandeep Nailwal is a blockchain programmer and entrepreneur. Before jointly starting Polygon (formerly Matic), Sandeep had served as the CEO of Scopeweaver, and the chief technical officer of Welspun Group. Anurag Arjun is the only non-programming co-founder of Polygon. As a product manager, he has had stints with IRIS Business, SNL Financial, Dexter Consultancy and Cognizant Technologies.

Polygon is self-described as a Layer 2 scaling solution, which means that the project doesn’t seek to upgrade its current basic blockchain layer any time soon. The project focuses on reducing the complexity of scalability and instant blockchain transactions. Polygon uses a customized version of the Plasma framework which is built on proof-of-stake checkpoints that run through the Ethereum main-chain. This unique technology allows each sidechain on Polygon to achieve up to 65,536 transactions per block. Commercially, the sidechains of Polygon are structurally designed to support a variety of decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols available in the Ethereum ecosystem. While Polygon currently supports only Ethereum basechain, the network intends to extend support for additional basechains, based on community suggestions and consensus. This would make Polygon an interoperable decentralized Layer 2 blockchain platform

How Many Polygon (MATIC) Tokens Are There in Circulation? MATIC tokens are released on a monthly basis. MATIC currently has a circulating supply of 4,877,830,774 MATIC tokens and a max supply of 10,000,000,000 MATIC tokens. At its initial private sale in 2017, 3.8 percent of MATIC’s max supply was issued. In the April 2019 launchpad sale, another 19 percent of the total supply was sold. The MATIC price was $0.00263 per token, and $5 million was generated. The remaining MATIC tokens are distributed as follows: Team tokens: 16 percent of the total supply. Advisors tokens: 4 percent of the total supply. Network Operations tokens: 12 percent of the total supply. Foundation tokens: 21.86 percent of the total supply. Ecosystem tokens: 23.33 percent of the total supply. According to the release schedule, all the tokens will be released by December 2022.

As a Layer 2 solution utilizing a network of proof-of-stake validators for asset security, staking is an integral part of the Polygon ecosystem. Validators on the network will stake their MATIC tokens as collateral to become part of the network’s PoS consensus mechanism and will receive MATIC tokens in return. Members of the network who do not wish to become validators can delegate their MATIC tokens to another validator, but will still take part in their staking process and earn staking rewards. In addition to the proof-of-stake checkpointing, Polygon uses block producers at the block producer layer to achieve a higher degree of decentralization. These block producers give finality to the main chains using checkpoints and fraud-proof mechanisms.

Being one of the projects that contributed a lot to the development of the Ethereum ecosystem, MATIC is popular among online exchanges focused on DeFi. The top exchanges where you can buy, sell, and trade MATIC currently are: Binance Coinbase Pro Huobi Global KuCoin To check Polygon price live in the fiat currency of your choice, you can use CoinMarketCap’s converter feature directly on the Polygon price page. Alternatively, use the dedicated exchange rate converter page. Popular MATIC price pairs include: MATIC/USD, MATIC/GBP, MATIC/AUD, MATIC/EUR and MATIC/JPY. If you are new, you can find our simplified guide for purchasing crypto, project deep dives and more educational content on CoinMarketCap Alexandria.

Polygon announced the much-anticipated London Hard Fork and Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 1559 upgrade will go live on the mainnet on Jan. 18, 2022. The upgrade will completely change the way the fee mechanism works on the Ethereum network — it eliminates first-price auction as the main fee calculation mechanism and instead uses a base fee that is burned, instead of sent to miners. Although it does not lower transaction fees, it makes it more stable, allowing users to estimate costs better and reduce overpayment. However, as MATIC tokens are burned as base fees — and MATIC has a fixed supply of 10 billion tokens — it will have a deflationary effect on the digital asset. Polygon’s core team projected an annual burn of MATIC amounting to 0.27% of the token’s total supply — around 27 million tokens. This deflationary pressure will most likely benefit validators and delegators the most, as rewards for processing transactions on Polygon are denominated in MATIC. Furthermore, base fee will increase automatically once the block is filled up, resulting in fewer spam transactions and less network congestion. Ethereum mainnet’s London Hard Fork went live on Aug. 5, 2021.

Polygon is one of the multiple blockchains achieving carbon neutrality. That initiative is part of Polygon's Green Manifesto, which aims to focus on sustainable development for blockchain. Polygon committed $20 million for various community initiatives to utilize Web3 technology to build a sustainable future for all. That includes focusing on new solutions for on-chain carbon credit retirement. Through a partnership with KlimaDAO, Polygon bought $400,000 worth of carbon credits. Those credits represent nearly 90,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions. The tokens were retired through KlimaDAO's offset aggregator tool, with BCT and MCO2 carbon credits created from offsets certified under the Verified Carbon Standard. KlimaDAO is a decentralized collective of environmentalists, entrepreneurs, and developers looking to modernize the carbon market through on-chain technology. Furthermore, KlimaDAO and Offsetra analyzed Polygon's network energy footprint to determine emission hotspots and figure out a compelling mitigation approach. That includes looking at emissions from staking node hardware, the energy consumption of staking operations and more, Becoming carbon neutral is the first step for Polygon toward sustainability. Even though the network relies on proof-of-stake, far more energy-efficient than proof-of-work, the network continues to impact the environment. That applies to both Polygon-only activity and the native smart contracts interacting with the Ethereum blockchain. Polygon and KlimaDAO have also retired carbon credits from various network-native projects, including Bull Run Forest Conservation Project, the Ghani Solar Power Project, Moss.Earth and the wind power project at Jaibhim, India.

DAI is an Ethereum-based stablecoin (stable-price cryptocurrency) whose issuance and development is managed by the Maker Protocol and the MakerDAO decentralized autonomous organization. The price of DAI is soft-pegged to the U.S. dollar and is collateralized by a mix of other cryptocurrencies that are deposited into smart-contract vaults every time new DAI is minted. It is important to differentiate between Multi-Collateral DAI and Single-Collateral DAI (SAI), an earlier version of the token that could only be collateralized by a single cryptocurrency; SAI also doesn’t support the DAI Savings Rate, which allows users to earn savings by holding DAI tokens. Multi-Collateral DAI was launched in November 2019.

One of the defining features of DAI is that it wasn’t created by any single person or a small group of co-founders. Instead, the development of the software that powers it and the issuance of new tokens is governed by the MakerDAO and Maker Protocol. MakerDAO is a decentralized autonomous organization — a kind of company that runs itself in a decentralized manner via the use of smart contracts — self-enforcing agreements expressed in software code and executed on the Ethereum blockchain. This organization is managed democratically by the holders of its Maker (MKR) governance tokens, which act similarly to a traditional company’s stock; MKR holders can vote on key decisions regarding the development of MakerDAO, Maker Protocol and DAI, with their voting power being proportionate to the amount of Maker tokens they own. MakerDAO itself was originally founded by a Danish entrepreneur Rune Christensen in 2015. Before starting work on the Maker ecosystem, Christensen studied biochemistry and international business in Copenhagen and founded the Try China international recruiting firm.

Dai is the second-largest decentralized stablecoin by market capitalization, having been flipped recently by Terra’s native stablecoin — UST. Both are backed by cryptocurrencies and pegged to the Dollar, while the top stablecoins like USDT, USDC and BUSD are backed by traditional assets such as cash, corporate bonds, U.S. treasuries and commercial papers (which has come under increased scrutiny in the case of USDT). So what exactly is Dai backed by? The Dai stablecoin is a collateral-based cryptocurrency soft-pegged to the U.S. dollar. Users generate Dai by depositing crypto-assets into Maker Vaults on the Maker Protocol. Users can access Maker Protocol and create Vaults through Oasis Borrow or other interfaces built by the community. On Oasis Borrow, users can lock in collateral such as ETH, WBTC, LINK, UNI, YFI, MANA, MATIC and more. Users can then borrow against their collateral in Dai, as long as it is within the collateral ratio, which ranges from 101% to 175%, depending on the risk level of the asset locked.

DAI’s main advantage lies in its soft peg to the price of the U.S. dollar. The crypto market is notorious for its volatility with even the largest, highly-liquid coins such as Bitcoin sometimes experiencing price changes (both up and down) of 10% or more within a single day. Under these circumstances, traders and investors are naturally predisposed to add safe-haven assets to their portfolios, whose stable price might help offset significant market fluctuations. One such kind of asset are stablecoins, of which DAI is one example. These are cryptocurrencies whose price is pegged to assets with a relatively stable value — most commonly traditional fiat currencies, such as USD or EUR. Another key advantage of DAI is the fact that it is managed not by a private company, but rather by a decentralized autonomous organization via a software protocol. As a result, all instances of issuance and burning of tokens are managed and publicly recorded by Ethereum-powered self-enforcing smart-contracts, making the entire system more transparent and less prone to corruption. In addition, the process of developing DAI software is governed in a more democratic way — via direct voting by the regular participants of the token’s ecosystem.

New DAI tokens are not produced via mining like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH), nor are they minted by a private company according to its own issuance police like Tether (USDT). Instead, new DAI can be minted by any user via the use of Maker Protocol. Maker Protocol, which runs on the Ethereum blockchain, is the software that governs DAI issuance. In order to maintain the soft price peg to the U.S. dollar, Maker Protocol ensures that every DAI token is collateralized by an appropriate amount of other cryptocurrencies. As part of this process, the Protocol allows any user to deposit their crypto into a so-called vault — a smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain — as collateral and mint a corresponding amount of new DAI tokens. There is no upper limit on the total supply of DAI — the supply is dynamic and depends on how much collateral is stored in the vaults at any given moment. As of November 2020, there are around 940 million DAI in circulation.

DAI is an Ethereum-based, ERC-20-compatible token. As such, it is secured by Ethereum’s Ethash algorithm.

The purchase of DAI tokens is available on numerous online platforms. These include Decentralized Finance (DeFi) token swap protocols: Uniswap Compound And traditional cryptocurrency exchanges: Coinbase Pro Binance OKEx HitBTC

Although DAI was the first of its kind, it began to lose market share to emerging alternatives in the last bull market, especially Terra's UST – now called TerraClassicUSD. UST, unlike DAI, is an undercollateralized and algorithmic stablecoin tethered to the U.S. dollar. However, without sufficient collateral and due to the algorithmic design, the stablecoin and underlying Terra, now TerraClassic, token were unable to shield themselves from an aggressive sell-off. In the end, the entire Terra ecosystem caved in, wiping over $18 billion off UST's $18.6 billion market cap after the crash. Read our full breakdown of the Terra crash. Unsurprisingly, the slump of UST had a massive impact on other stablecoins, including DAI. Although DAI managed to maintain its peg to the USD, there was a steep drop in its market capitalization from $8 billion to $6.33 billion. However, once the token found its floor, it began to experience a surge in demand for DAI, which later caused a DAI token to sell for a premium (slightly above $1). While the crash of UST threatened the validity of algorithmic stablecoins, the performance of DAI during this stretch may suggest that not all hope is lost for decentralized stablecoins. It also highlights the importance of the over-collateralization of stablecoins.

Read about Tether (USDT) — another popular stablecoin whose price is pegged to the USD. Read more about the crypto space on CMC Alexandria.

TRON (TRX) is a decentralized blockchain-based operating system developed by the Tron Foundation and launched in 2017. Originally TRX tokens were ERC-20-based tokens deployed on Ethereum, but a year later they were moved to their own network. Initially, the project was created with the aim of providing full ownership rights to makers of digital content. The main goal is to help content creators (who receive only a small part of the income) and encourage them with more rewards for their work. How: invite content consumers to reward content makers directly (without intermediaries like YouTube, Facebook or Apple). The TRON software supports smart contracts, various kinds of blockchain systems, and decentralized applications aka dApps. The cryptocurrency platform uses a transaction model similar to Bitcoin (BTC), namely UTXO. Transactions take place in a public ledger, where users can track the history of operations. Therefore, the platform was built to create a decentralized Internet and serves as a tool for developers to create dApps, acting as an alternative to Ethereum. Anyone can create dApps on the TRON network, offer content, and in return receive digital assets as compensation for their efforts. The ability to create content and share it openly without hesitation regarding transaction fees is an undeniable advantage of TRON.

TRON was founded by Justin Sun, who now serves as CEO. Educated at Peking University and the University of Pennsylvania, he was recognized by Forbes Asia in its 30 Under 30 series for entrepreneurs. Born in 1990, he was also associated with Ripple in the past — serving as its chief representative in the Greater China area.