MATIC

Critical_Coconut_69

No but if any of my alt coins do, ADA, MATIC, XRP and gala do I’ll certainly be loving comfortable

moonwalker9977

This article is missing mine 65$ transaction 2 weeks ago, bought some MATIC. Whale alert

OisinT

I have both, but more ADA than MATIC at the moment. I was trying to buy some MATIC today but put in an order right before the green started and I missed out.

saksit13429

Yeah MATIC is not moving at all I feel like it will turn into stable coin lmao

SimpleReindeer221B

I'm so envious of people who bought MATIC under a dollar

nik5016

MATIC is a great choice, always!

superberde

I bought a bag of MATIC

Katsura9000

Both BTC and ETH are here to stay in their positions. If we are imagining a list without BTC and ETC I would say : 1. XMR 2. DOT 3. MATIC

DMugre

I wouldn't be surprised if this is just a plot to doxx crypto holders dumb enough to link their main wallets to this, our goverment is scummy like that and frankly they lack the ability to explore the blockchain. First thing you get after receiving your NFT ticket is you got an AFIP invoice demanding 30% tax from your 10 bucks of MATIC.

Miljenko-i-Manjina

Buy MATIC or NEAR and forget about it. Set alerts for MATIC at 1.5$ or NEAR at 2.7$. You should wait for year at most, probably a lot sooner than that, but let’s be conservative. Happy trading!

CointestMod

#Ethereum Con-Arguments Below is an argument written by Maleficent_Plankton which won 1st place in the Ethereum Con-Arguments topic for a prior [Cointest](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_policy) round. Submit an argument in the Cointest yourself and earn Moons if you win. Moon prizes are: 1st - 600, 2nd - 300, 3rd - 150, and Best Analysis - 500. > Ethereum has drastically changed in the past year now that it has rebranded itself as **Consensus/Settlement layer** for other Layer 2 Execution/Rollup networks. It is no longer trying to be a monolithic blockchain by itself. Because of this shift in design, many of its former CONs are no longer major issues. And many of the CONs that still exist often have a beneficial sides. > > I discuss the CONs of Ethereum and their impact on its users here: > > ## CONs > > **Gas Fees** (major): > > The biggest complaint for Ethereum is its network gas fees. Every transaction needs gas to pay for storage and processing power, and gas prices vary based on demand. Gas price is very volatile and often changes 2-5x in magnitude within the same day. ERC20 transfers are used for a large percentage of cryptocurrencies, and it's the reason much of DeFi is extremely expensive. If I wanted to send ERC20 tokens between exchanges, it's often cheaper to trade for XRP, ALGO, or some other microtransaction coin, transfer it using their other coin's native network, and then trade back into the original token. Basically: use a coin on a different network to avoid fees. > > Typical transaction fees for Ethereum were [between $2-10 over the past year](https://etherscan.io/chart/avg-txfee-usd), but they have shot up to $50+ several times in 2021. > > And that's just for basic transactions. Anyone who has tried to use more complex smart contracts like moving MATIC from Polygon mainnet back to ETH L1 mainnet during a time of high gas fees mid-year in 2021 saw $100-$200 gas fees. Transferring ERC-20 tokens (often $20-50) is also more gas expensive because it can't be done through native transfers like on the Cardano network. It's impractical to use swaps like Uniswap for small transactions due to these fees. > > In particular, One/Many-to-many batch transactions are extremely gas-expensive using Ethereum's account-based model compared to Bitcoin's and Cardano's UXTO-based model. [This batch transaction on Ethereum](https://etherscan.io/tx/0x0fe2542079644e107cbf13690eb9c2c65963ccb79089ff96bfaf8dced2331c92) cost over $5000 while [a similar eUXTO transaction on Cardano](https://adapools.org/transactions/e586c6340ee9e60a6c64f447feffe5f89bdabc7741666ecaa681081957938f56) only cost $0.50 in fees. > > On the other hand, these fees provide Ethereum long-term economic sustainability and resilience against DDoS and spam attacks. > > **Competition from other Smart Contract networks** (moderate): > > Ethereum has enjoyed its lead as the smart contract blockchain due to first-mover advantage. But there are now many efficient smart contract competitors like Algorand, Solana, and Cardano. Ethereum is now facing much competition. Who wants to pay $20 gas fees on Ethereum when you can get similar transactions for under $0.01 with Algo and Solana or $0.30 transactions with Cardano? > > Fortunately, the amount of competition is limited because Ethereum is positioning itself as a Settlement layer whereas these other networks are monolithic networks. All monolithic networks will eventually run into scaling issues due to long-term storage and bandwidth limits. It will really depend on how successful Ethereum's Layer 2 rollup solutions will be. > > **Future uncertainty about Layer 2 solutions** (major): > > Ethereum's long-term success is dependent on the success of its Layer 2 solutions. > > These Layer 2 solutions are still extremely early. Even after a year, L2 has a very fragmented adoption. The majority of centralized exchanges currently do not support Layer 2 rollup networks. A few have started to support Polygon, which is more of a Layer 2 side-chain that saves state every 256 blocks than a Layer 2 rollup. Very few CEXs allow for direct fiat on/off-ramping on L2 networks, which puts those networks out of reach of most users. > > Many of these Layer 2 networks (Arbitrum, Optimism, Loopring, ZKSync, etc), are not interoperable with each other. You can store your tokens on any specific L2 network, but they're stuck there. If you want to move your tokens back to Layer 1 or to another L2 network, you have to pay very expensive smart contract gas fees ($50-300). Eventually, there will be bridges between these networks, but we could be years away from widespread adoption. > > Fragmented liquidity is another huge issue. Each of these L2 networks has its own liquidity pool for each token it supports. You can store your token on the the L2 network, but you won't be able to trade or swap much if there are no liquidity pools for that token. Eventually, there will be Dynamic Automated Market Makers (dAMMs) that can share liquidity between networks, but they are complex and introduce their own weaknesses. > > Both Optimistic and ZK Rollups are handled off-chain and require a separate network nodes or smart contracts as infrastructure to validate transactions or generate ZK Proofs. They are very centralized in how they operate, so there's always the risk that their network operators could cheat their customers. By now, the community seems to agree that ZK rollups are the future rollup solution to decentralized L2 networks. There is only 1 notable instance of Plasma (Ethereum to Polygon network conversion), and no one uses it anymore since the Ethereum-Polygon bridge is easier to use. The biggest competitor to ZK rollups are Optimistic rollups, and those take too long to settle back to Layer 1 (1 week) and are still too expensive to use (20-50% of the cost of L1 Ethereum gas fees for transfers). > > **ZK Rollups** require special infrastructure to generate ZK Proofs. These are very computationally-expensive, potentially [thousands of times](https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/01/05/rollup.html) more expensive that just doing the computation directly. To reduce the cost, they are done completely-centralized by specialized servers. Thus the cost of a ZK Rollup is cheap at about [$0.10 to $.30](https://l2fees.info/). But even at $0.10 per transfer and $0.50 per swap, these are still at least 10x more expensive than costs on Algorand and Solana. Users will have to decide whether the extra cost and hassle of using an L2 platform is worth the extra security of settling on the more-decentralized and secure Ethereum L1 network. > > **Ethereum Proof-of-Stake merge is arriving later than competitors** (moderate): > > The ETH PoS Beacon chain has been released, it's a completely separate blockchain from ETH and won't merge with the main blockchain [until later this year](https://decrypt.co/78690/ethereum-2-staking-tops-21-billion-merge-horizon), giving its competitors plenty of time to provide FUD. We still don't know how successful the merge will be. Currently, stakes are locked, preventing investors from selling. We don't know what will happen to the price once staking unlocks. > > **MEV and Dark Forest attacks** (minor): > > [MEV](https://np.reddit.com/r/MPlankton/comments/rs4wp2/the_dark_forest_of_cryptocurrency/) is actually a pretty big issue for networks with high gas arbitrage and mempools like Ethereum, but most casual users will never notice hostile arbitrage. When you broadcast your transaction to the network, there are armies of bots and automated miners that analyze your transaction to see if they can perform arbitrage strategies on your transaction such as front-running, sandwiching, excluding transactions, stealing/replaying transactions, and other pure-profit plays. "Dark Forest" attacks have reveled that bots are constantly monitoring the network, and they can front-run you unless you have your own private army of miners. > > **Final Word** > > Overall, I still think the PROs outweigh the CONs for Ethereum in the long-run due to its first-mover advantage and the long-term sustainability of the Ethereum network. ***** Would you like to learn more? [Click here](/r/CointestOfficial/comments/ru2luf/top_10_ethereum_conarguments_january_2022/) to be taken to the original topic-thread or you can scan through the [Cointest Archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_Ethereum) to find arguments on this topic in other rounds. Pros and cons per topic will likely change for every new post. Since this is a con-argument, what could be a better time to promote the Skeptics Discussion thread? You can find the latest thread [here](/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/1273rq3/daily_general_discussion_march_31_2023_gmt0/).

CointestMod

#Polygon Con-Arguments Below is an argument written by MalletSwinging which won 2nd place in the Polygon Con-Arguments topic for a prior [Cointest](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_policy) round. Submit an argument in the Cointest yourself and earn Moons if you win. Moon prizes are: 2nd - 600, 2nd - 300, 3rd - 150, and Best Analysis - 500. > Polygon is a layer 2 scaling solution for Ethereum that grossly reduces gas prices. It does so, however, at some costs which I believe will not make it a good long term play. > > The first issue with MATIC is ease of use. There is one CEX (gate.io) that allows MATIC withdrawals onto the Polygon network. I actually think binance.com might allow this too, but as an American I can only use binance.us which does NOT allow Polygon withdrawals. Gate.io is not a user friendly exchange which means that anyone using it is likely experienced in crypto. > > New users or first time Metamask users will need to learn to navigate the Plasma bridge which can be both daunting and expensive if you make mistakes. For this reason adoption will stagnate. > > The second issue with MATIC is centralization. According to this article ([https://gettotext.com/polygon-centralized-the-largest-wallets-hold-the-majority-of-the-matic-supply/](https://gettotext.com/polygon-centralized-the-largest-wallets-hold-the-majority-of-the-matic-supply/)) the top 10 addresses hold over 75% of the total supply. That is truly shocking. Is it worth giving up the decentralized aspect of crypto for some gas savings on a poorly designed layer 1 network with bad scalability (Ethereum)? I argue that it is not. > > The final argument against MATIC is more of an argument against its parent chain, Ethereum. Ethereum is currently the most integrated solution in terms of quantity of dapps and DAOs but that is not guaranteed to last forever. In fact, many other networks currently available put most of Ethereum's features to shame. This is simply because Ethereum is a second gen blockchain and newer chains have had ample time and opportunity to address Ethereum's shortcomings. However, Polygon is a scaling solution for Ethereum only and if Ethereum loses market share (which it will regardless of its status as the most adopted smart contract-enabled layer one blockchain) Polygon's usefulness and value will decline. There are too many good alternatives for an expensive and slow chain like Ethereum to maintain its dominance. > > Disclosure: I hold quite a bit of MATIC. Not enough to put me in the top 10, but close (ok not close but I hold a non-zero amount.) I also hold a decent amount of Ethereum which probably makes zero sense to someone reading this argument. I am short term bullish on the usefulness of both networks but I believe they will be replaced long term by more efficient and less expensive networks. ***** Would you like to learn more? [Click here](/r/CointestOfficial/comments/qk4yk4/coin_inquiries_round_polygon_conarguments_november/) to be taken to the original topic-thread or you can scan through the [Cointest Archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_Polygon) to find arguments on this topic in other rounds. Pros and cons per topic will likely change for every new post. Since this is a con-argument, what could be a better time to promote the Skeptics Discussion thread? You can find the latest thread [here](/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/1273rq3/daily_general_discussion_march_31_2023_gmt0/).

CointestMod

#Polygon Pro-Arguments Below is an argument written by Maleficent_Plankton which won 1st place in the Polygon Pro-Arguments topic for a prior [Cointest](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_policy) round. Submit an argument in the Cointest yourself and earn Moons if you win. Moon prizes are: 1st - 600, 2nd - 300, 3rd - 150, and Best Analysis - 500. > **Background - Polygon is many-sided**. There's the main Polygon PoS network that acts as a sidechain to Ethereum, and then there are so many side projects, many of which deal with Layer 2: > > - MATIC: The main Polygon token, which is present on multiple networks > - Polygon PoS: The main Ethereum side-chain network that most are familiar with. It saves checkpoint state on the Ethereum network every [256 blocks (5 minutes)](https://research.binance.com/en/projects/matic-network). > - Polygon [Hermez](https://docs.hermez.io/#start-here-for-hermez-10-documentation): ZK-rollup Ethereum Layer 2 > - Polygon [Zero](https://blog.polygon.technology/introducing-plonky2/): A fast ZK-stark/ZK-snark hybrid solution built on the Plonky2 protocol. It proofs are theoretically [100x faster than current ZK proof calculations](https://blog.polygon.technology/zkverse-polygons-zero-knowledge-strategy-explained/). > - Polygon [Miden](https://blog.polygon.technology/polygon-announces-polygon-miden-a-stark-based-ethereum-compatible-rollup/): Stark-based ZK-rollup Ethereum layer 2 > - Polygon [Nightfall](https://blog.polygon.technology/zk-proofs-protocol-polygon-nightfall-launches-on-testnet-to-provide-low-cost-private-ethereum-transaction/): Enterprise version of Polygon that uses "ZK-Optimistic Rollups" (ZK proof for privacy and optimistic-rollup for scalability) > - Polygon Avail: Standalone network or side-chain solution > - Polygon Plasma Bridge: A legacy bridge that shouldn't be used anymore. > > This post will mainly focus on the Polygon PoS network. > > ------------------ > > **PROs** > > **Much faster and cheaper to use than Layer 1 Ethereum** > > The main benefit of using the Polygon PoS network is that it's an Ethereum side chain that provides faster and cheapers transactions for Ethereum tokens. It can process 1K-10K TPS with a [2-second average block time](https://polygonscan.com/chart/blocktime), which also has deterministic finality. The base fee is only 30 Gwei, and the total transaction fees hovers between [$0.1 to $0.5 USD](https://polygonscan.com/chart/transactionfee) (~4M transactions, ~30k total MATIC fees per day). > > This is also much cheaper than [optimistic rollups](https://l2fees.info/). > > **Largest Layer 2 network adoption** > > Among all the Layer 2 Ethereum solutions, Polygon PoS is completely ahead of every other competitor in terms total locked value with a [$4.8B USD market cap](https://defillama.com/chain/Polygon) (Jan 2021), compared to [$5.4 USD **Combined** Total Locked Value (TLV)](https://l2beat.com/) for the next 10 largest Layer 2 rollup solutions. Note that this does not include the $12B market cap of the MATIC token since that's a coin/token on multiple networks. DeFi support for Polygon is massive. > > One of the main issues with Layer 2 is that most are currently walled gardens with lackluster CEX/CeFi support for on/offramps. After all, the main benefit of lower fees on Layer 2 is lost if you can't on/offramp directly. Polygon is also ahead of competition here with support from Crypto_dot_com, Nexo, Binance (international), and Kucoin. Celsius Network will also have support mid-February. > > Polygon PoS is the only other large network besides Ethereum currently [https://support.opensea.io/hc/en-us/articles/4404027708051-Which-blockchains-does-OpenSea-support-](supported on OpenSea). > > **Weak competition** > > There are so many Ethereum Layer 2 competitors, but nearly all of them are rollups. Polygon PoS works differently in that it's a separate network where the state of the network is stored on Ethereum every 256 blocks. Thus, it doesn't directly compete with them. > > In addition, it also doesn't compete directly with Ethereum killers (ALGO, SOL, ETH, ADA, EGLD, etc.) in that it's designed as a side chain specifically for Ethereum. It shares popularity and as Ethereum grows. > > **Shares Ethereum developer tools** > > Polygon and Ethereum share similar EVM development tools (including Solidity and Vyper), so it's easy for Ethereum's large number of devs to develop for Polygon. > > Many Layer 2 rollups have yet to roll out EVM support while Polygon PoS is already battle-tested. > > **Abundance of research** > > For better or worse, Polygon is working on multiple Layer 2 solutions and constantly researching different protocols. Polygon Zero in particular provides [extremely-fast ZK proofs](https://blog.polygon.technology/zkverse-polygons-zero-knowledge-strategy-explained/), and its technology might become the future leader for ZK rollups. > > ------------------ > > Disclaimer: I currently do not own any MATIC. ***** Would you like to learn more? [Click here](/r/CointestOfficial/comments/qk4yjj/coin_inquiries_round_polygon_proarguments_november/) to be taken to the original topic-thread or you can scan through the [Cointest Archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_Polygon) to find arguments on this topic in other rounds. Pros and cons per topic will likely change for every new post.

InsaneMcFries

BAN can be wrapped to wBAN (wrapped Banano) on [wrap.banano.cc](wrap.banano.cc) to various chains (ETH, ARB, FTM, MATIC, BSC)

ElegantShelter7947

I set an goal, as example whe coin / token Hits is 30% in profit, I take some out. Next is at 50%. And it depends on the asset, BTC / ETH I sell only when my saving plan buys at this day, I sell the same amount I buy. Alts like DOT / ATOM / MATIC I have my goals, when I reach them I take some profits. When it goes up to 80 - 100% profit I sell my initial investment.

Da_Notorious_HAM

That’s not too bad for fees. MATIC fees still are supreme. I need to learn more about zk

Catalan_Hari_Seldon

Buying early MATIC was quite nice for a beginner experience

ucfpws

I have a modest ADA bag, but think MATIC is gonna be the real beast this next bull run.

noontch5678

MATIC is so impressive. It’s only a matter of time before it really takes off. Outside of BTC and ETH, MATIC is where I’m looking.

CointestMod

#Ethereum Con-Arguments Below is an argument written by Maleficent_Plankton which won 1st place in the Ethereum Con-Arguments topic for a prior [Cointest](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_policy) round. Submit an argument in the Cointest yourself and earn Moons if you win. Moon prizes are: 1st - 600, 2nd - 300, 3rd - 150, and Best Analysis - 500. > Ethereum has drastically changed in the past year now that it has rebranded itself as **Consensus/Settlement layer** for other Layer 2 Execution/Rollup networks. It is no longer trying to be a monolithic blockchain by itself. Because of this shift in design, many of its former CONs are no longer major issues. And many of the CONs that still exist often have a beneficial sides. > > I discuss the CONs of Ethereum and their impact on its users here: > > ## CONs > > **Gas Fees** (major): > > The biggest complaint for Ethereum is its network gas fees. Every transaction needs gas to pay for storage and processing power, and gas prices vary based on demand. Gas price is very volatile and often changes 2-5x in magnitude within the same day. ERC20 transfers are used for a large percentage of cryptocurrencies, and it's the reason much of DeFi is extremely expensive. If I wanted to send ERC20 tokens between exchanges, it's often cheaper to trade for XRP, ALGO, or some other microtransaction coin, transfer it using their other coin's native network, and then trade back into the original token. Basically: use a coin on a different network to avoid fees. > > Typical transaction fees for Ethereum were [between $2-10 over the past year](https://etherscan.io/chart/avg-txfee-usd), but they have shot up to $50+ several times in 2021. > > And that's just for basic transactions. Anyone who has tried to use more complex smart contracts like moving MATIC from Polygon mainnet back to ETH L1 mainnet during a time of high gas fees mid-year in 2021 saw $100-$200 gas fees. Transferring ERC-20 tokens (often $20-50) is also more gas expensive because it can't be done through native transfers like on the Cardano network. It's impractical to use swaps like Uniswap for small transactions due to these fees. > > In particular, One/Many-to-many batch transactions are extremely gas-expensive using Ethereum's account-based model compared to Bitcoin's and Cardano's UXTO-based model. [This batch transaction on Ethereum](https://etherscan.io/tx/0x0fe2542079644e107cbf13690eb9c2c65963ccb79089ff96bfaf8dced2331c92) cost over $5000 while [a similar eUXTO transaction on Cardano](https://adapools.org/transactions/e586c6340ee9e60a6c64f447feffe5f89bdabc7741666ecaa681081957938f56) only cost $0.50 in fees. > > On the other hand, these fees provide Ethereum long-term economic sustainability and resilience against DDoS and spam attacks. > > **Competition from other Smart Contract networks** (moderate): > > Ethereum has enjoyed its lead as the smart contract blockchain due to first-mover advantage. But there are now many efficient smart contract competitors like Algorand, Solana, and Cardano. Ethereum is now facing much competition. Who wants to pay $20 gas fees on Ethereum when you can get similar transactions for under $0.01 with Algo and Solana or $0.30 transactions with Cardano? > > Fortunately, the amount of competition is limited because Ethereum is positioning itself as a Settlement layer whereas these other networks are monolithic networks. All monolithic networks will eventually run into scaling issues due to long-term storage and bandwidth limits. It will really depend on how successful Ethereum's Layer 2 rollup solutions will be. > > **Future uncertainty about Layer 2 solutions** (major): > > Ethereum's long-term success is dependent on the success of its Layer 2 solutions. > > These Layer 2 solutions are still extremely early. Even after a year, L2 has a very fragmented adoption. The majority of centralized exchanges currently do not support Layer 2 rollup networks. A few have started to support Polygon, which is more of a Layer 2 side-chain that saves state every 256 blocks than a Layer 2 rollup. Very few CEXs allow for direct fiat on/off-ramping on L2 networks, which puts those networks out of reach of most users. > > Many of these Layer 2 networks (Arbitrum, Optimism, Loopring, ZKSync, etc), are not interoperable with each other. You can store your tokens on any specific L2 network, but they're stuck there. If you want to move your tokens back to Layer 1 or to another L2 network, you have to pay very expensive smart contract gas fees ($50-300). Eventually, there will be bridges between these networks, but we could be years away from widespread adoption. > > Fragmented liquidity is another huge issue. Each of these L2 networks has its own liquidity pool for each token it supports. You can store your token on the the L2 network, but you won't be able to trade or swap much if there are no liquidity pools for that token. Eventually, there will be Dynamic Automated Market Makers (dAMMs) that can share liquidity between networks, but they are complex and introduce their own weaknesses. > > Both Optimistic and ZK Rollups are handled off-chain and require a separate network nodes or smart contracts as infrastructure to validate transactions or generate ZK Proofs. They are very centralized in how they operate, so there's always the risk that their network operators could cheat their customers. By now, the community seems to agree that ZK rollups are the future rollup solution to decentralized L2 networks. There is only 1 notable instance of Plasma (Ethereum to Polygon network conversion), and no one uses it anymore since the Ethereum-Polygon bridge is easier to use. The biggest competitor to ZK rollups are Optimistic rollups, and those take too long to settle back to Layer 1 (1 week) and are still too expensive to use (20-50% of the cost of L1 Ethereum gas fees for transfers). > > **ZK Rollups** require special infrastructure to generate ZK Proofs. These are very computationally-expensive, potentially [thousands of times](https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/01/05/rollup.html) more expensive that just doing the computation directly. To reduce the cost, they are done completely-centralized by specialized servers. Thus the cost of a ZK Rollup is cheap at about [$0.10 to $.30](https://l2fees.info/). But even at $0.10 per transfer and $0.50 per swap, these are still at least 10x more expensive than costs on Algorand and Solana. Users will have to decide whether the extra cost and hassle of using an L2 platform is worth the extra security of settling on the more-decentralized and secure Ethereum L1 network. > > **Ethereum Proof-of-Stake merge is arriving later than competitors** (moderate): > > The ETH PoS Beacon chain has been released, it's a completely separate blockchain from ETH and won't merge with the main blockchain [until later this year](https://decrypt.co/78690/ethereum-2-staking-tops-21-billion-merge-horizon), giving its competitors plenty of time to provide FUD. We still don't know how successful the merge will be. Currently, stakes are locked, preventing investors from selling. We don't know what will happen to the price once staking unlocks. > > **MEV and Dark Forest attacks** (minor): > > [MEV](https://np.reddit.com/r/MPlankton/comments/rs4wp2/the_dark_forest_of_cryptocurrency/) is actually a pretty big issue for networks with high gas arbitrage and mempools like Ethereum, but most casual users will never notice hostile arbitrage. When you broadcast your transaction to the network, there are armies of bots and automated miners that analyze your transaction to see if they can perform arbitrage strategies on your transaction such as front-running, sandwiching, excluding transactions, stealing/replaying transactions, and other pure-profit plays. "Dark Forest" attacks have reveled that bots are constantly monitoring the network, and they can front-run you unless you have your own private army of miners. > > **Final Word** > > Overall, I still think the PROs outweigh the CONs for Ethereum in the long-run due to its first-mover advantage and the long-term sustainability of the Ethereum network. ***** Would you like to learn more? [Click here](/r/CointestOfficial/comments/ru2luf/top_10_ethereum_conarguments_january_2022/) to be taken to the original topic-thread or you can scan through the [Cointest Archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_Ethereum) to find arguments on this topic in other rounds. Pros and cons per topic will likely change for every new post. Since this is a con-argument, what could be a better time to promote the Skeptics Discussion thread? You can find the latest thread [here](/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/12658yj/daily_general_discussion_march_30_2023_gmt0/).

thestonkinator

Somewhat depends on the average transaction size. BTC is generally the way to go. The most recognized, commonly held, trusted etc. For cheaper and faster I like Polygon, either using ETH on the polygon chain or MATIC. It's just faster and cheaper than ETH.

Raysti

Last few purchases have been ADA, MATIC, and TEZOS for me. No clue what me next will be, just wait and see when I get paid again.

SP32880

I'm holding ADA, MATIC, XTZ, and ALGO. They won't succeed for the same reason cause I'm holding..

unitys2011

MATIC is doing a great job during this bear market. Many projects are built on Polygon lately

Wonzky

Love MATIC and how every few months there seems to be a major player building on Polygon

w_savage

TLDR: Shiba Inu’s (SHIB) highly anticipated new layer-2 project Shibarium is experiencing an early wave of adoption as new users experiment with its testnet. Shibarium is the Shiba Inu ecosystem’s new layer-2 protocol built on top of Ethereum (ETH), similar to Polygon (MATIC). According to blockchain explorer PuppyScan.Shib, Shibarium’s beta version has already completed over 193,000 transactions.

CointestMod

#Ethereum Con-Arguments Below is an argument written by Maleficent_Plankton which won 1st place in the Ethereum Con-Arguments topic for a prior [Cointest](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_policy) round. Submit an argument in the Cointest yourself and earn Moons if you win. Moon prizes are: 1st - 600, 2nd - 300, 3rd - 150, and Best Analysis - 500. > Ethereum has drastically changed in the past year now that it has rebranded itself as **Consensus/Settlement layer** for other Layer 2 Execution/Rollup networks. It is no longer trying to be a monolithic blockchain by itself. Because of this shift in design, many of its former CONs are no longer major issues. And many of the CONs that still exist often have a beneficial sides. > > I discuss the CONs of Ethereum and their impact on its users here: > > ## CONs > > **Gas Fees** (major): > > The biggest complaint for Ethereum is its network gas fees. Every transaction needs gas to pay for storage and processing power, and gas prices vary based on demand. Gas price is very volatile and often changes 2-5x in magnitude within the same day. ERC20 transfers are used for a large percentage of cryptocurrencies, and it's the reason much of DeFi is extremely expensive. If I wanted to send ERC20 tokens between exchanges, it's often cheaper to trade for XRP, ALGO, or some other microtransaction coin, transfer it using their other coin's native network, and then trade back into the original token. Basically: use a coin on a different network to avoid fees. > > Typical transaction fees for Ethereum were [between $2-10 over the past year](https://etherscan.io/chart/avg-txfee-usd), but they have shot up to $50+ several times in 2021. > > And that's just for basic transactions. Anyone who has tried to use more complex smart contracts like moving MATIC from Polygon mainnet back to ETH L1 mainnet during a time of high gas fees mid-year in 2021 saw $100-$200 gas fees. Transferring ERC-20 tokens (often $20-50) is also more gas expensive because it can't be done through native transfers like on the Cardano network. It's impractical to use swaps like Uniswap for small transactions due to these fees. > > In particular, One/Many-to-many batch transactions are extremely gas-expensive using Ethereum's account-based model compared to Bitcoin's and Cardano's UXTO-based model. [This batch transaction on Ethereum](https://etherscan.io/tx/0x0fe2542079644e107cbf13690eb9c2c65963ccb79089ff96bfaf8dced2331c92) cost over $5000 while [a similar eUXTO transaction on Cardano](https://adapools.org/transactions/e586c6340ee9e60a6c64f447feffe5f89bdabc7741666ecaa681081957938f56) only cost $0.50 in fees. > > On the other hand, these fees provide Ethereum long-term economic sustainability and resilience against DDoS and spam attacks. > > **Competition from other Smart Contract networks** (moderate): > > Ethereum has enjoyed its lead as the smart contract blockchain due to first-mover advantage. But there are now many efficient smart contract competitors like Algorand, Solana, and Cardano. Ethereum is now facing much competition. Who wants to pay $20 gas fees on Ethereum when you can get similar transactions for under $0.01 with Algo and Solana or $0.30 transactions with Cardano? > > Fortunately, the amount of competition is limited because Ethereum is positioning itself as a Settlement layer whereas these other networks are monolithic networks. All monolithic networks will eventually run into scaling issues due to long-term storage and bandwidth limits. It will really depend on how successful Ethereum's Layer 2 rollup solutions will be. > > **Future uncertainty about Layer 2 solutions** (major): > > Ethereum's long-term success is dependent on the success of its Layer 2 solutions. > > These Layer 2 solutions are still extremely early. Even after a year, L2 has a very fragmented adoption. The majority of centralized exchanges currently do not support Layer 2 rollup networks. A few have started to support Polygon, which is more of a Layer 2 side-chain that saves state every 256 blocks than a Layer 2 rollup. Very few CEXs allow for direct fiat on/off-ramping on L2 networks, which puts those networks out of reach of most users. > > Many of these Layer 2 networks (Arbitrum, Optimism, Loopring, ZKSync, etc), are not interoperable with each other. You can store your tokens on any specific L2 network, but they're stuck there. If you want to move your tokens back to Layer 1 or to another L2 network, you have to pay very expensive smart contract gas fees ($50-300). Eventually, there will be bridges between these networks, but we could be years away from widespread adoption. > > Fragmented liquidity is another huge issue. Each of these L2 networks has its own liquidity pool for each token it supports. You can store your token on the the L2 network, but you won't be able to trade or swap much if there are no liquidity pools for that token. Eventually, there will be Dynamic Automated Market Makers (dAMMs) that can share liquidity between networks, but they are complex and introduce their own weaknesses. > > Both Optimistic and ZK Rollups are handled off-chain and require a separate network nodes or smart contracts as infrastructure to validate transactions or generate ZK Proofs. They are very centralized in how they operate, so there's always the risk that their network operators could cheat their customers. By now, the community seems to agree that ZK rollups are the future rollup solution to decentralized L2 networks. There is only 1 notable instance of Plasma (Ethereum to Polygon network conversion), and no one uses it anymore since the Ethereum-Polygon bridge is easier to use. The biggest competitor to ZK rollups are Optimistic rollups, and those take too long to settle back to Layer 1 (1 week) and are still too expensive to use (20-50% of the cost of L1 Ethereum gas fees for transfers). > > **ZK Rollups** require special infrastructure to generate ZK Proofs. These are very computationally-expensive, potentially [thousands of times](https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/01/05/rollup.html) more expensive that just doing the computation directly. To reduce the cost, they are done completely-centralized by specialized servers. Thus the cost of a ZK Rollup is cheap at about [$0.10 to $.30](https://l2fees.info/). But even at $0.10 per transfer and $0.50 per swap, these are still at least 10x more expensive than costs on Algorand and Solana. Users will have to decide whether the extra cost and hassle of using an L2 platform is worth the extra security of settling on the more-decentralized and secure Ethereum L1 network. > > **Ethereum Proof-of-Stake merge is arriving later than competitors** (moderate): > > The ETH PoS Beacon chain has been released, it's a completely separate blockchain from ETH and won't merge with the main blockchain [until later this year](https://decrypt.co/78690/ethereum-2-staking-tops-21-billion-merge-horizon), giving its competitors plenty of time to provide FUD. We still don't know how successful the merge will be. Currently, stakes are locked, preventing investors from selling. We don't know what will happen to the price once staking unlocks. > > **MEV and Dark Forest attacks** (minor): > > [MEV](https://np.reddit.com/r/MPlankton/comments/rs4wp2/the_dark_forest_of_cryptocurrency/) is actually a pretty big issue for networks with high gas arbitrage and mempools like Ethereum, but most casual users will never notice hostile arbitrage. When you broadcast your transaction to the network, there are armies of bots and automated miners that analyze your transaction to see if they can perform arbitrage strategies on your transaction such as front-running, sandwiching, excluding transactions, stealing/replaying transactions, and other pure-profit plays. "Dark Forest" attacks have reveled that bots are constantly monitoring the network, and they can front-run you unless you have your own private army of miners. > > **Final Word** > > Overall, I still think the PROs outweigh the CONs for Ethereum in the long-run due to its first-mover advantage and the long-term sustainability of the Ethereum network. ***** Would you like to learn more? [Click here](/r/CointestOfficial/comments/ru2luf/top_10_ethereum_conarguments_january_2022/) to be taken to the original topic-thread or you can scan through the [Cointest Archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_Ethereum) to find arguments on this topic in other rounds. Pros and cons per topic will likely change for every new post. Since this is a con-argument, what could be a better time to promote the Skeptics Discussion thread? You can find the latest thread [here](/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/12658yj/daily_general_discussion_march_30_2023_gmt0/).

areyoueatingthis

I'm into BTC/ETH/XRP/MATIC/BNB My biggest bag is BTC with about half of my total portfolio. I'm stable financially except for my mortgage that keeps going up, of course. The only big expense short term is to buy a new car, cause mine is 12 years old. (I'm trying to make it last though)

Temporary_Meal_2706

Wanted to buy one ETH when it was around $170 but was too scared to invest. Started in early 2020 with some BTC and ETH, not too much maybe $100 worth. But have been DCAing since then and adding MATIC.

homrqt

A nice spread 10% BTC, 10% ETH, 10% ADA, 10% ANKR, 10% ERG, 10 % MATIC, 10% ALGO, 10% XMR, 10% ARB, 10% ONE

CointestMod

#Ethereum Con-Arguments Below is an argument written by Maleficent_Plankton which won 1st place in the Ethereum Con-Arguments topic for a prior [Cointest](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_policy) round. Submit an argument in the Cointest yourself and earn Moons if you win. Moon prizes are: 1st - 600, 2nd - 300, 3rd - 150, and Best Analysis - 500. > Ethereum has drastically changed in the past year now that it has rebranded itself as **Consensus/Settlement layer** for other Layer 2 Execution/Rollup networks. It is no longer trying to be a monolithic blockchain by itself. Because of this shift in design, many of its former CONs are no longer major issues. And many of the CONs that still exist often have a beneficial sides. > > I discuss the CONs of Ethereum and their impact on its users here: > > ## CONs > > **Gas Fees** (major): > > The biggest complaint for Ethereum is its network gas fees. Every transaction needs gas to pay for storage and processing power, and gas prices vary based on demand. Gas price is very volatile and often changes 2-5x in magnitude within the same day. ERC20 transfers are used for a large percentage of cryptocurrencies, and it's the reason much of DeFi is extremely expensive. If I wanted to send ERC20 tokens between exchanges, it's often cheaper to trade for XRP, ALGO, or some other microtransaction coin, transfer it using their other coin's native network, and then trade back into the original token. Basically: use a coin on a different network to avoid fees. > > Typical transaction fees for Ethereum were [between $2-10 over the past year](https://etherscan.io/chart/avg-txfee-usd), but they have shot up to $50+ several times in 2021. > > And that's just for basic transactions. Anyone who has tried to use more complex smart contracts like moving MATIC from Polygon mainnet back to ETH L1 mainnet during a time of high gas fees mid-year in 2021 saw $100-$200 gas fees. Transferring ERC-20 tokens (often $20-50) is also more gas expensive because it can't be done through native transfers like on the Cardano network. It's impractical to use swaps like Uniswap for small transactions due to these fees. > > In particular, One/Many-to-many batch transactions are extremely gas-expensive using Ethereum's account-based model compared to Bitcoin's and Cardano's UXTO-based model. [This batch transaction on Ethereum](https://etherscan.io/tx/0x0fe2542079644e107cbf13690eb9c2c65963ccb79089ff96bfaf8dced2331c92) cost over $5000 while [a similar eUXTO transaction on Cardano](https://adapools.org/transactions/e586c6340ee9e60a6c64f447feffe5f89bdabc7741666ecaa681081957938f56) only cost $0.50 in fees. > > On the other hand, these fees provide Ethereum long-term economic sustainability and resilience against DDoS and spam attacks. > > **Competition from other Smart Contract networks** (moderate): > > Ethereum has enjoyed its lead as the smart contract blockchain due to first-mover advantage. But there are now many efficient smart contract competitors like Algorand, Solana, and Cardano. Ethereum is now facing much competition. Who wants to pay $20 gas fees on Ethereum when you can get similar transactions for under $0.01 with Algo and Solana or $0.30 transactions with Cardano? > > Fortunately, the amount of competition is limited because Ethereum is positioning itself as a Settlement layer whereas these other networks are monolithic networks. All monolithic networks will eventually run into scaling issues due to long-term storage and bandwidth limits. It will really depend on how successful Ethereum's Layer 2 rollup solutions will be. > > **Future uncertainty about Layer 2 solutions** (major): > > Ethereum's long-term success is dependent on the success of its Layer 2 solutions. > > These Layer 2 solutions are still extremely early. Even after a year, L2 has a very fragmented adoption. The majority of centralized exchanges currently do not support Layer 2 rollup networks. A few have started to support Polygon, which is more of a Layer 2 side-chain that saves state every 256 blocks than a Layer 2 rollup. Very few CEXs allow for direct fiat on/off-ramping on L2 networks, which puts those networks out of reach of most users. > > Many of these Layer 2 networks (Arbitrum, Optimism, Loopring, ZKSync, etc), are not interoperable with each other. You can store your tokens on any specific L2 network, but they're stuck there. If you want to move your tokens back to Layer 1 or to another L2 network, you have to pay very expensive smart contract gas fees ($50-300). Eventually, there will be bridges between these networks, but we could be years away from widespread adoption. > > Fragmented liquidity is another huge issue. Each of these L2 networks has its own liquidity pool for each token it supports. You can store your token on the the L2 network, but you won't be able to trade or swap much if there are no liquidity pools for that token. Eventually, there will be Dynamic Automated Market Makers (dAMMs) that can share liquidity between networks, but they are complex and introduce their own weaknesses. > > Both Optimistic and ZK Rollups are handled off-chain and require a separate network nodes or smart contracts as infrastructure to validate transactions or generate ZK Proofs. They are very centralized in how they operate, so there's always the risk that their network operators could cheat their customers. By now, the community seems to agree that ZK rollups are the future rollup solution to decentralized L2 networks. There is only 1 notable instance of Plasma (Ethereum to Polygon network conversion), and no one uses it anymore since the Ethereum-Polygon bridge is easier to use. The biggest competitor to ZK rollups are Optimistic rollups, and those take too long to settle back to Layer 1 (1 week) and are still too expensive to use (20-50% of the cost of L1 Ethereum gas fees for transfers). > > **ZK Rollups** require special infrastructure to generate ZK Proofs. These are very computationally-expensive, potentially [thousands of times](https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/01/05/rollup.html) more expensive that just doing the computation directly. To reduce the cost, they are done completely-centralized by specialized servers. Thus the cost of a ZK Rollup is cheap at about [$0.10 to $.30](https://l2fees.info/). But even at $0.10 per transfer and $0.50 per swap, these are still at least 10x more expensive than costs on Algorand and Solana. Users will have to decide whether the extra cost and hassle of using an L2 platform is worth the extra security of settling on the more-decentralized and secure Ethereum L1 network. > > **Ethereum Proof-of-Stake merge is arriving later than competitors** (moderate): > > The ETH PoS Beacon chain has been released, it's a completely separate blockchain from ETH and won't merge with the main blockchain [until later this year](https://decrypt.co/78690/ethereum-2-staking-tops-21-billion-merge-horizon), giving its competitors plenty of time to provide FUD. We still don't know how successful the merge will be. Currently, stakes are locked, preventing investors from selling. We don't know what will happen to the price once staking unlocks. > > **MEV and Dark Forest attacks** (minor): > > [MEV](https://np.reddit.com/r/MPlankton/comments/rs4wp2/the_dark_forest_of_cryptocurrency/) is actually a pretty big issue for networks with high gas arbitrage and mempools like Ethereum, but most casual users will never notice hostile arbitrage. When you broadcast your transaction to the network, there are armies of bots and automated miners that analyze your transaction to see if they can perform arbitrage strategies on your transaction such as front-running, sandwiching, excluding transactions, stealing/replaying transactions, and other pure-profit plays. "Dark Forest" attacks have reveled that bots are constantly monitoring the network, and they can front-run you unless you have your own private army of miners. > > **Final Word** > > Overall, I still think the PROs outweigh the CONs for Ethereum in the long-run due to its first-mover advantage and the long-term sustainability of the Ethereum network. ***** Would you like to learn more? [Click here](/r/CointestOfficial/comments/ru2luf/top_10_ethereum_conarguments_january_2022/) to be taken to the original topic-thread or you can scan through the [Cointest Archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_Ethereum) to find arguments on this topic in other rounds. Pros and cons per topic will likely change for every new post. Since this is a con-argument, what could be a better time to promote the Skeptics Discussion thread? You can find the latest thread [here](/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/12658yj/daily_general_discussion_march_30_2023_gmt0/).

Plasticites

I love MATIC. Polygon is on fire right now

lucamila5

Got convinced by some users here and traded a bit of my ETH for ADA & MATIC. Lets see :D

DBRiMatt

oof. Maybe I can still sell my Superbowl Avatar for 1 MATIC then xD

DBRiMatt

>They might be hyped a bit but there will be a lot of them and they don’t have good tokenomics Agree, but thats also why they'll be the next flavour alts. Personally, OP, ARB etc... i'm not buying governance tokens. Sure the Arbitrum network is cool, but the token isn't for investors. Thats where I think MATIC is atleast somewhat useful as it's used on GAS, whereas on say Arbitrum and ZKSYNC its simply costs ETH

StygianFuhrer

About 4 hours ago I had my break at work so grabbed my regular BTC, ETH, MATIC, HBAR, VRA and GALA. Things should be on the steady decline for a while now until the next buying day. You’re welcome

Umarzy

The first coin I bought was BTC. I remember it was a $30 purchase then, made on the Luno platform. I learnt to make more gains, one needs to take some risks in altcoins. I bought OCEAN, then FRM, MATIC, and MITX a few months later.

Stunning-Ask3032

MATIC

greenpeppers100

The only good pick I see out of these comments is MATIC lmao.

Alphius247

MATIC ALGO DOT LINK LTC ADA ATOM UNI AVAX XLM mostly

bigherb33

MATIC and DOT seem to be dominating this post. I have quite a bit of MATIC and some DOT

CointestMod

#Ethereum Con-Arguments Below is an argument written by Maleficent_Plankton which won 1st place in the Ethereum Con-Arguments topic for a prior [Cointest](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_policy) round. Submit an argument in the Cointest yourself and earn Moons if you win. Moon prizes are: 1st - 600, 2nd - 300, 3rd - 150, and Best Analysis - 500. > Ethereum has drastically changed in the past year now that it has rebranded itself as **Consensus/Settlement layer** for other Layer 2 Execution/Rollup networks. It is no longer trying to be a monolithic blockchain by itself. Because of this shift in design, many of its former CONs are no longer major issues. And many of the CONs that still exist often have a beneficial sides. > > I discuss the CONs of Ethereum and their impact on its users here: > > ## CONs > > **Gas Fees** (major): > > The biggest complaint for Ethereum is its network gas fees. Every transaction needs gas to pay for storage and processing power, and gas prices vary based on demand. Gas price is very volatile and often changes 2-5x in magnitude within the same day. ERC20 transfers are used for a large percentage of cryptocurrencies, and it's the reason much of DeFi is extremely expensive. If I wanted to send ERC20 tokens between exchanges, it's often cheaper to trade for XRP, ALGO, or some other microtransaction coin, transfer it using their other coin's native network, and then trade back into the original token. Basically: use a coin on a different network to avoid fees. > > Typical transaction fees for Ethereum were [between $2-10 over the past year](https://etherscan.io/chart/avg-txfee-usd), but they have shot up to $50+ several times in 2021. > > And that's just for basic transactions. Anyone who has tried to use more complex smart contracts like moving MATIC from Polygon mainnet back to ETH L1 mainnet during a time of high gas fees mid-year in 2021 saw $100-$200 gas fees. Transferring ERC-20 tokens (often $20-50) is also more gas expensive because it can't be done through native transfers like on the Cardano network. It's impractical to use swaps like Uniswap for small transactions due to these fees. > > In particular, One/Many-to-many batch transactions are extremely gas-expensive using Ethereum's account-based model compared to Bitcoin's and Cardano's UXTO-based model. [This batch transaction on Ethereum](https://etherscan.io/tx/0x0fe2542079644e107cbf13690eb9c2c65963ccb79089ff96bfaf8dced2331c92) cost over $5000 while [a similar eUXTO transaction on Cardano](https://adapools.org/transactions/e586c6340ee9e60a6c64f447feffe5f89bdabc7741666ecaa681081957938f56) only cost $0.50 in fees. > > On the other hand, these fees provide Ethereum long-term economic sustainability and resilience against DDoS and spam attacks. > > **Competition from other Smart Contract networks** (moderate): > > Ethereum has enjoyed its lead as the smart contract blockchain due to first-mover advantage. But there are now many efficient smart contract competitors like Algorand, Solana, and Cardano. Ethereum is now facing much competition. Who wants to pay $20 gas fees on Ethereum when you can get similar transactions for under $0.01 with Algo and Solana or $0.30 transactions with Cardano? > > Fortunately, the amount of competition is limited because Ethereum is positioning itself as a Settlement layer whereas these other networks are monolithic networks. All monolithic networks will eventually run into scaling issues due to long-term storage and bandwidth limits. It will really depend on how successful Ethereum's Layer 2 rollup solutions will be. > > **Future uncertainty about Layer 2 solutions** (major): > > Ethereum's long-term success is dependent on the success of its Layer 2 solutions. > > These Layer 2 solutions are still extremely early. Even after a year, L2 has a very fragmented adoption. The majority of centralized exchanges currently do not support Layer 2 rollup networks. A few have started to support Polygon, which is more of a Layer 2 side-chain that saves state every 256 blocks than a Layer 2 rollup. Very few CEXs allow for direct fiat on/off-ramping on L2 networks, which puts those networks out of reach of most users. > > Many of these Layer 2 networks (Arbitrum, Optimism, Loopring, ZKSync, etc), are not interoperable with each other. You can store your tokens on any specific L2 network, but they're stuck there. If you want to move your tokens back to Layer 1 or to another L2 network, you have to pay very expensive smart contract gas fees ($50-300). Eventually, there will be bridges between these networks, but we could be years away from widespread adoption. > > Fragmented liquidity is another huge issue. Each of these L2 networks has its own liquidity pool for each token it supports. You can store your token on the the L2 network, but you won't be able to trade or swap much if there are no liquidity pools for that token. Eventually, there will be Dynamic Automated Market Makers (dAMMs) that can share liquidity between networks, but they are complex and introduce their own weaknesses. > > Both Optimistic and ZK Rollups are handled off-chain and require a separate network nodes or smart contracts as infrastructure to validate transactions or generate ZK Proofs. They are very centralized in how they operate, so there's always the risk that their network operators could cheat their customers. By now, the community seems to agree that ZK rollups are the future rollup solution to decentralized L2 networks. There is only 1 notable instance of Plasma (Ethereum to Polygon network conversion), and no one uses it anymore since the Ethereum-Polygon bridge is easier to use. The biggest competitor to ZK rollups are Optimistic rollups, and those take too long to settle back to Layer 1 (1 week) and are still too expensive to use (20-50% of the cost of L1 Ethereum gas fees for transfers). > > **ZK Rollups** require special infrastructure to generate ZK Proofs. These are very computationally-expensive, potentially [thousands of times](https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/01/05/rollup.html) more expensive that just doing the computation directly. To reduce the cost, they are done completely-centralized by specialized servers. Thus the cost of a ZK Rollup is cheap at about [$0.10 to $.30](https://l2fees.info/). But even at $0.10 per transfer and $0.50 per swap, these are still at least 10x more expensive than costs on Algorand and Solana. Users will have to decide whether the extra cost and hassle of using an L2 platform is worth the extra security of settling on the more-decentralized and secure Ethereum L1 network. > > **Ethereum Proof-of-Stake merge is arriving later than competitors** (moderate): > > The ETH PoS Beacon chain has been released, it's a completely separate blockchain from ETH and won't merge with the main blockchain [until later this year](https://decrypt.co/78690/ethereum-2-staking-tops-21-billion-merge-horizon), giving its competitors plenty of time to provide FUD. We still don't know how successful the merge will be. Currently, stakes are locked, preventing investors from selling. We don't know what will happen to the price once staking unlocks. > > **MEV and Dark Forest attacks** (minor): > > [MEV](https://np.reddit.com/r/MPlankton/comments/rs4wp2/the_dark_forest_of_cryptocurrency/) is actually a pretty big issue for networks with high gas arbitrage and mempools like Ethereum, but most casual users will never notice hostile arbitrage. When you broadcast your transaction to the network, there are armies of bots and automated miners that analyze your transaction to see if they can perform arbitrage strategies on your transaction such as front-running, sandwiching, excluding transactions, stealing/replaying transactions, and other pure-profit plays. "Dark Forest" attacks have reveled that bots are constantly monitoring the network, and they can front-run you unless you have your own private army of miners. > > **Final Word** > > Overall, I still think the PROs outweigh the CONs for Ethereum in the long-run due to its first-mover advantage and the long-term sustainability of the Ethereum network. ***** Would you like to learn more? [Click here](/r/CointestOfficial/comments/ru2luf/top_10_ethereum_conarguments_january_2022/) to be taken to the original topic-thread or you can scan through the [Cointest Archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_Ethereum) to find arguments on this topic in other rounds. Pros and cons per topic will likely change for every new post. Since this is a con-argument, what could be a better time to promote the Skeptics Discussion thread? You can find the latest thread [here](/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/12658yj/daily_general_discussion_march_30_2023_gmt0/).

bigherb33

MATIC

elysiansaurus

Is there a MATIC faucet? I've never used polygon before and thinking of dabbling in avatar sales.

CointestMod

#Ethereum Con-Arguments Below is an argument written by Maleficent_Plankton which won 1st place in the Ethereum Con-Arguments topic for a prior [Cointest](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_policy) round. Submit an argument in the Cointest yourself and earn Moons if you win. Moon prizes are: 1st - 600, 2nd - 300, 3rd - 150, and Best Analysis - 500. > Ethereum has drastically changed in the past year now that it has rebranded itself as **Consensus/Settlement layer** for other Layer 2 Execution/Rollup networks. It is no longer trying to be a monolithic blockchain by itself. Because of this shift in design, many of its former CONs are no longer major issues. And many of the CONs that still exist often have a beneficial sides. > > I discuss the CONs of Ethereum and their impact on its users here: > > ## CONs > > **Gas Fees** (major): > > The biggest complaint for Ethereum is its network gas fees. Every transaction needs gas to pay for storage and processing power, and gas prices vary based on demand. Gas price is very volatile and often changes 2-5x in magnitude within the same day. ERC20 transfers are used for a large percentage of cryptocurrencies, and it's the reason much of DeFi is extremely expensive. If I wanted to send ERC20 tokens between exchanges, it's often cheaper to trade for XRP, ALGO, or some other microtransaction coin, transfer it using their other coin's native network, and then trade back into the original token. Basically: use a coin on a different network to avoid fees. > > Typical transaction fees for Ethereum were [between $2-10 over the past year](https://etherscan.io/chart/avg-txfee-usd), but they have shot up to $50+ several times in 2021. > > And that's just for basic transactions. Anyone who has tried to use more complex smart contracts like moving MATIC from Polygon mainnet back to ETH L1 mainnet during a time of high gas fees mid-year in 2021 saw $100-$200 gas fees. Transferring ERC-20 tokens (often $20-50) is also more gas expensive because it can't be done through native transfers like on the Cardano network. It's impractical to use swaps like Uniswap for small transactions due to these fees. > > In particular, One/Many-to-many batch transactions are extremely gas-expensive using Ethereum's account-based model compared to Bitcoin's and Cardano's UXTO-based model. [This batch transaction on Ethereum](https://etherscan.io/tx/0x0fe2542079644e107cbf13690eb9c2c65963ccb79089ff96bfaf8dced2331c92) cost over $5000 while [a similar eUXTO transaction on Cardano](https://adapools.org/transactions/e586c6340ee9e60a6c64f447feffe5f89bdabc7741666ecaa681081957938f56) only cost $0.50 in fees. > > On the other hand, these fees provide Ethereum long-term economic sustainability and resilience against DDoS and spam attacks. > > **Competition from other Smart Contract networks** (moderate): > > Ethereum has enjoyed its lead as the smart contract blockchain due to first-mover advantage. But there are now many efficient smart contract competitors like Algorand, Solana, and Cardano. Ethereum is now facing much competition. Who wants to pay $20 gas fees on Ethereum when you can get similar transactions for under $0.01 with Algo and Solana or $0.30 transactions with Cardano? > > Fortunately, the amount of competition is limited because Ethereum is positioning itself as a Settlement layer whereas these other networks are monolithic networks. All monolithic networks will eventually run into scaling issues due to long-term storage and bandwidth limits. It will really depend on how successful Ethereum's Layer 2 rollup solutions will be. > > **Future uncertainty about Layer 2 solutions** (major): > > Ethereum's long-term success is dependent on the success of its Layer 2 solutions. > > These Layer 2 solutions are still extremely early. Even after a year, L2 has a very fragmented adoption. The majority of centralized exchanges currently do not support Layer 2 rollup networks. A few have started to support Polygon, which is more of a Layer 2 side-chain that saves state every 256 blocks than a Layer 2 rollup. Very few CEXs allow for direct fiat on/off-ramping on L2 networks, which puts those networks out of reach of most users. > > Many of these Layer 2 networks (Arbitrum, Optimism, Loopring, ZKSync, etc), are not interoperable with each other. You can store your tokens on any specific L2 network, but they're stuck there. If you want to move your tokens back to Layer 1 or to another L2 network, you have to pay very expensive smart contract gas fees ($50-300). Eventually, there will be bridges between these networks, but we could be years away from widespread adoption. > > Fragmented liquidity is another huge issue. Each of these L2 networks has its own liquidity pool for each token it supports. You can store your token on the the L2 network, but you won't be able to trade or swap much if there are no liquidity pools for that token. Eventually, there will be Dynamic Automated Market Makers (dAMMs) that can share liquidity between networks, but they are complex and introduce their own weaknesses. > > Both Optimistic and ZK Rollups are handled off-chain and require a separate network nodes or smart contracts as infrastructure to validate transactions or generate ZK Proofs. They are very centralized in how they operate, so there's always the risk that their network operators could cheat their customers. By now, the community seems to agree that ZK rollups are the future rollup solution to decentralized L2 networks. There is only 1 notable instance of Plasma (Ethereum to Polygon network conversion), and no one uses it anymore since the Ethereum-Polygon bridge is easier to use. The biggest competitor to ZK rollups are Optimistic rollups, and those take too long to settle back to Layer 1 (1 week) and are still too expensive to use (20-50% of the cost of L1 Ethereum gas fees for transfers). > > **ZK Rollups** require special infrastructure to generate ZK Proofs. These are very computationally-expensive, potentially [thousands of times](https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/01/05/rollup.html) more expensive that just doing the computation directly. To reduce the cost, they are done completely-centralized by specialized servers. Thus the cost of a ZK Rollup is cheap at about [$0.10 to $.30](https://l2fees.info/). But even at $0.10 per transfer and $0.50 per swap, these are still at least 10x more expensive than costs on Algorand and Solana. Users will have to decide whether the extra cost and hassle of using an L2 platform is worth the extra security of settling on the more-decentralized and secure Ethereum L1 network. > > **Ethereum Proof-of-Stake merge is arriving later than competitors** (moderate): > > The ETH PoS Beacon chain has been released, it's a completely separate blockchain from ETH and won't merge with the main blockchain [until later this year](https://decrypt.co/78690/ethereum-2-staking-tops-21-billion-merge-horizon), giving its competitors plenty of time to provide FUD. We still don't know how successful the merge will be. Currently, stakes are locked, preventing investors from selling. We don't know what will happen to the price once staking unlocks. > > **MEV and Dark Forest attacks** (minor): > > [MEV](https://np.reddit.com/r/MPlankton/comments/rs4wp2/the_dark_forest_of_cryptocurrency/) is actually a pretty big issue for networks with high gas arbitrage and mempools like Ethereum, but most casual users will never notice hostile arbitrage. When you broadcast your transaction to the network, there are armies of bots and automated miners that analyze your transaction to see if they can perform arbitrage strategies on your transaction such as front-running, sandwiching, excluding transactions, stealing/replaying transactions, and other pure-profit plays. "Dark Forest" attacks have reveled that bots are constantly monitoring the network, and they can front-run you unless you have your own private army of miners. > > **Final Word** > > Overall, I still think the PROs outweigh the CONs for Ethereum in the long-run due to its first-mover advantage and the long-term sustainability of the Ethereum network. ***** Would you like to learn more? [Click here](/r/CointestOfficial/comments/ru2luf/top_10_ethereum_conarguments_january_2022/) to be taken to the original topic-thread or you can scan through the [Cointest Archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_Ethereum) to find arguments on this topic in other rounds. Pros and cons per topic will likely change for every new post. Since this is a con-argument, what could be a better time to promote the Skeptics Discussion thread? You can find the latest thread [here](/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/1256ynn/daily_general_discussion_march_29_2023_gmt0/).

bananafannaphofanna

Great news for AVAX and MATIC

Hfifm4

Look for alts that have shown good relative strength this bear market and rally before BTC goes parabolic. Usually a good sign - something like a FTM or MATIC comes to mind for me

Antique_Veterinarian

I think DOGE has one more big pump left in it. Other than that the only alt coins I’d bet on are MATIC, LTC and ATOM. And Moons, of course.

xangchi

I would put 50% of it in BTC and ETH. 40% in MATIC, ATOM, OCEAN, andFET. 10% will go into Weaver Labs' ADE token which is set to be launched in May but already has serious partners in the telecom space like European Space Agency, Depart for Science Innovation and Technology, Samsung, Nokia, etc.

xangchi

I was introduced to crypto by a family member who gifted me ETH in 2017. Fast forward to 2023, I currently have more than 20 different tokens/coins in my portfolio. ETH and BTC still retains top spot in my bag alongside ATOM, MATIC, OCEAN, FET, ARB (thanks to airdrop), etc.

xangchi

My plan is to continue to DCA into BTC, ETH, ATOM, MATIC, FET, and other altcoins I'm holding. I'm also looking into Weaver Labs, an upcoming project with the aim of making connectivity more accessible.

greysonshreds

AVAX, SOL, MATIC. HBAR, FTM 2nd tier.

GlassBackground4071

No MATIC?

TabletopThirteen

ETH Layer 2s. MATIC, ARB (even though it's new), LRC, LINK, etc

trrrring

I'm missing MATIC, DOT and -this is unpopular- some LRC and LTC.

movebands

Get more BTC in that portfolio. Does your portfolio also contain any MATIC (in the 2%)?

Tygro16

70k ETH 12k BTC 8k LTC 3k ATOM 3k MATIC 1k CKB And the rest would be evenly split between numerous smaller cryptos. Don´t view my choice against a larger bag of BTC as opinion of price development, it´s just my personal preference to have a huge bag of ETH :D

Bunker_Beans

I have some MATIC stuck in my Coinbase wallet because I will not pay half its worth to move it. So that is $25 I will never get back.

masedogg98

so now that you’ve tried your hand with ETH, MATIC, and AVAX what do you prefer, what was smoothest to onboard and transact on/ cheaper etc. I’m interested and curious to hear your thoughts :)

robtimist

That shit is still happening today. I was trying to buy $35 NFT on OpenSea and the fee for swapping that ETH to MATIC was right under $90

robtimist

This is the second post I’ve seen on this topic in the last 24hrs and I AM HERE FOR IT!!!! I used to own 4.5 ETH myself. And honestly I’m not sure why I held it aside from the profitability. It’s use-case creates headaches upon headaches upon anger and confusion. I was trying to use Eth to make some purchases and it was an absolute nightmare. Not enough gas to cover fees!! *transfers more* Network congested, fees increased! *transfers more* Not enough gas to cover fees!! rinse and repeat until I spend $30 just moving money around. And don’t even get me started on bridges and cross-chain swaps. YES, I *would* rather pay 0.02 MATIC than 0.05 ETH ($90 USD!!!!!) but now that I’m trying to swap, I don’t have enough to cover the fees!!!!!! What the fuckkkkkkk We are so early. And if ETH can’t change it will never be “mainstream.” Bitcoin could have done everything I was looking for that day, in a fraction of the time, for a fraction of the cost.

CointestMod

#Ethereum Con-Arguments Below is an argument written by Maleficent_Plankton which won 1st place in the Ethereum Con-Arguments topic for a prior [Cointest](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_policy) round. Submit an argument in the Cointest yourself and earn Moons if you win. Moon prizes are: 1st - 600, 2nd - 300, 3rd - 150, and Best Analysis - 500. > Ethereum has drastically changed in the past year now that it has rebranded itself as **Consensus/Settlement layer** for other Layer 2 Execution/Rollup networks. It is no longer trying to be a monolithic blockchain by itself. Because of this shift in design, many of its former CONs are no longer major issues. And many of the CONs that still exist often have a beneficial sides. > > I discuss the CONs of Ethereum and their impact on its users here: > > ## CONs > > **Gas Fees** (major): > > The biggest complaint for Ethereum is its network gas fees. Every transaction needs gas to pay for storage and processing power, and gas prices vary based on demand. Gas price is very volatile and often changes 2-5x in magnitude within the same day. ERC20 transfers are used for a large percentage of cryptocurrencies, and it's the reason much of DeFi is extremely expensive. If I wanted to send ERC20 tokens between exchanges, it's often cheaper to trade for XRP, ALGO, or some other microtransaction coin, transfer it using their other coin's native network, and then trade back into the original token. Basically: use a coin on a different network to avoid fees. > > Typical transaction fees for Ethereum were [between $2-10 over the past year](https://etherscan.io/chart/avg-txfee-usd), but they have shot up to $50+ several times in 2021. > > And that's just for basic transactions. Anyone who has tried to use more complex smart contracts like moving MATIC from Polygon mainnet back to ETH L1 mainnet during a time of high gas fees mid-year in 2021 saw $100-$200 gas fees. Transferring ERC-20 tokens (often $20-50) is also more gas expensive because it can't be done through native transfers like on the Cardano network. It's impractical to use swaps like Uniswap for small transactions due to these fees. > > In particular, One/Many-to-many batch transactions are extremely gas-expensive using Ethereum's account-based model compared to Bitcoin's and Cardano's UXTO-based model. [This batch transaction on Ethereum](https://etherscan.io/tx/0x0fe2542079644e107cbf13690eb9c2c65963ccb79089ff96bfaf8dced2331c92) cost over $5000 while [a similar eUXTO transaction on Cardano](https://adapools.org/transactions/e586c6340ee9e60a6c64f447feffe5f89bdabc7741666ecaa681081957938f56) only cost $0.50 in fees. > > On the other hand, these fees provide Ethereum long-term economic sustainability and resilience against DDoS and spam attacks. > > **Competition from other Smart Contract networks** (moderate): > > Ethereum has enjoyed its lead as the smart contract blockchain due to first-mover advantage. But there are now many efficient smart contract competitors like Algorand, Solana, and Cardano. Ethereum is now facing much competition. Who wants to pay $20 gas fees on Ethereum when you can get similar transactions for under $0.01 with Algo and Solana or $0.30 transactions with Cardano? > > Fortunately, the amount of competition is limited because Ethereum is positioning itself as a Settlement layer whereas these other networks are monolithic networks. All monolithic networks will eventually run into scaling issues due to long-term storage and bandwidth limits. It will really depend on how successful Ethereum's Layer 2 rollup solutions will be. > > **Future uncertainty about Layer 2 solutions** (major): > > Ethereum's long-term success is dependent on the success of its Layer 2 solutions. > > These Layer 2 solutions are still extremely early. Even after a year, L2 has a very fragmented adoption. The majority of centralized exchanges currently do not support Layer 2 rollup networks. A few have started to support Polygon, which is more of a Layer 2 side-chain that saves state every 256 blocks than a Layer 2 rollup. Very few CEXs allow for direct fiat on/off-ramping on L2 networks, which puts those networks out of reach of most users. > > Many of these Layer 2 networks (Arbitrum, Optimism, Loopring, ZKSync, etc), are not interoperable with each other. You can store your tokens on any specific L2 network, but they're stuck there. If you want to move your tokens back to Layer 1 or to another L2 network, you have to pay very expensive smart contract gas fees ($50-300). Eventually, there will be bridges between these networks, but we could be years away from widespread adoption. > > Fragmented liquidity is another huge issue. Each of these L2 networks has its own liquidity pool for each token it supports. You can store your token on the the L2 network, but you won't be able to trade or swap much if there are no liquidity pools for that token. Eventually, there will be Dynamic Automated Market Makers (dAMMs) that can share liquidity between networks, but they are complex and introduce their own weaknesses. > > Both Optimistic and ZK Rollups are handled off-chain and require a separate network nodes or smart contracts as infrastructure to validate transactions or generate ZK Proofs. They are very centralized in how they operate, so there's always the risk that their network operators could cheat their customers. By now, the community seems to agree that ZK rollups are the future rollup solution to decentralized L2 networks. There is only 1 notable instance of Plasma (Ethereum to Polygon network conversion), and no one uses it anymore since the Ethereum-Polygon bridge is easier to use. The biggest competitor to ZK rollups are Optimistic rollups, and those take too long to settle back to Layer 1 (1 week) and are still too expensive to use (20-50% of the cost of L1 Ethereum gas fees for transfers). > > **ZK Rollups** require special infrastructure to generate ZK Proofs. These are very computationally-expensive, potentially [thousands of times](https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/01/05/rollup.html) more expensive that just doing the computation directly. To reduce the cost, they are done completely-centralized by specialized servers. Thus the cost of a ZK Rollup is cheap at about [$0.10 to $.30](https://l2fees.info/). But even at $0.10 per transfer and $0.50 per swap, these are still at least 10x more expensive than costs on Algorand and Solana. Users will have to decide whether the extra cost and hassle of using an L2 platform is worth the extra security of settling on the more-decentralized and secure Ethereum L1 network. > > **Ethereum Proof-of-Stake merge is arriving later than competitors** (moderate): > > The ETH PoS Beacon chain has been released, it's a completely separate blockchain from ETH and won't merge with the main blockchain [until later this year](https://decrypt.co/78690/ethereum-2-staking-tops-21-billion-merge-horizon), giving its competitors plenty of time to provide FUD. We still don't know how successful the merge will be. Currently, stakes are locked, preventing investors from selling. We don't know what will happen to the price once staking unlocks. > > **MEV and Dark Forest attacks** (minor): > > [MEV](https://np.reddit.com/r/MPlankton/comments/rs4wp2/the_dark_forest_of_cryptocurrency/) is actually a pretty big issue for networks with high gas arbitrage and mempools like Ethereum, but most casual users will never notice hostile arbitrage. When you broadcast your transaction to the network, there are armies of bots and automated miners that analyze your transaction to see if they can perform arbitrage strategies on your transaction such as front-running, sandwiching, excluding transactions, stealing/replaying transactions, and other pure-profit plays. "Dark Forest" attacks have reveled that bots are constantly monitoring the network, and they can front-run you unless you have your own private army of miners. > > **Final Word** > > Overall, I still think the PROs outweigh the CONs for Ethereum in the long-run due to its first-mover advantage and the long-term sustainability of the Ethereum network. ***** Would you like to learn more? [Click here](/r/CointestOfficial/comments/ru2luf/top_10_ethereum_conarguments_january_2022/) to be taken to the original topic-thread or you can scan through the [Cointest Archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_Ethereum) to find arguments on this topic in other rounds. Pros and cons per topic will likely change for every new post. Since this is a con-argument, what could be a better time to promote the Skeptics Discussion thread? You can find the latest thread [here](/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/1256ynn/daily_general_discussion_march_29_2023_gmt0/).

emulabilevj

What keeps me going in crypto for now has to be passive income opportunities that some of the project offers. The market hasn't been favorable for a while now so passive income for me. Holding BTC, ETH, MATIC, SOL and staking RIDE

misterjoego

$80k BTC, $10k ETH, $10k MATIC (best historic return for my bags. Polygon has a slew of projects in development and I think they will continue to grow in value over time).

Ricothebuttonpusher

MATIC should be up there

Umarzy

I have 40% exposure to BTC, 20% is ETH, and the rest 40% are altcoins; CTSI, MATIC, ATOM, VRA. I try to diversify. No plans to increase the BTC position for now, cos when I take profits from alts, I put it into Ethereum/Bitcoin.

Primary_Technical

•Started with Doge in 2021 - Down on it like hell but was a small amount. •ETH - Did DYOR and bought it instead of BTC. Still DCAing •Bought some shitcoin, lowcaps from sketchy TG groups , got **rekt but was not more than 100 dollars. •Now portfolio has BTC, ETH , MATIC , MOONS , BRICKS ,DOT , ADA ,ATOM etc ....

DBRiMatt

I think LRC has a place in the long run, but it might be soured a bit by peaking WAYYY too soon from the GME brigade from 12 months ago. LRC and MATIC are the two current complements to ETH I am most bullish on, and looking forward to seeing what Starknet, ZkSYNC and Taiko might offer if/when they develop their token.

Suzxy

Back when I was a newbie, I put some money into Shiba Inu after reading a testimony about how someone turned $10 into a million bucks. Yeah, I know better now. These days, I put my money into projects like ATOM, MATIC, BNB, ETH, and OCEAN, and I'm always on the lookout for new gems. Currently watching and researching some early-stage projects including ChainGPT \[AI\], Venom \[L1\], Taiko \[L2\], and GrabCoinClub \[Metaverse/P2E\]. I think there's a big winner among these. MOONs come freely :)

takemidown

At current prices; 50k BTC 30k ETH 20k for other Alts - 5K each for MATIC, NEAR, CARDANO, UNISWAP or ARBITRUM.