Since The Merge, Ethereum has been inclusively involving layer two blockchains on its ecosystem to help process its transactions. 

Even before that, Ethereum has been known to include other blockchains to help process its transactions, although it just became more popular in the past couple of months. 

One of the later two blockchain that have been known to help Ethereum in its early days of layer two blockchain adoption is Polygon, which has now deviated from being only a layer two blockchain to its one layer one blockchain. 

Because of this, newbie investors sometimes have a hard time differentiating between the two, which is why in this article we will discuss the difference between Ethereum and Polygon while also talking about a little bit of the change that Polygon has had. 

What are The Differences of Ethereum and Polygon?

The first concept to understand is that both of them are blockchains, specifically layer one blockchains. 

Both of them use a Proof of Stake mechanism that requires their validators to stake their native coins and the nodes that have higher amounts of staked coins usually will get more chances to validate more transactions. 

Also, Polygon is an EVM Blockchain, which means that it has the same standards as Ethereum Blockchain so the communication between the two is more achievable compared to communications between Ethereum and other blockchains like Solana that does not implement an EVM standard. 

Also read: Solana Challenges Ethereum's Dominance in Cryptosphere: A Shift in Power?

Looking at it, the two blockchains seem to be the same, but looking deeper, there are a couple of differences that the blockchain have that differentiate their functions and status in the blockchain space. 

Main Function 

The first category is their main function. The function of Ethereum is to act as its own blockchain, which is a layer one blockchain. 

This is because it was created in the early days of crypto where the only prominent blockchain was the Bitcoin Blockchain. 

Back in that era, Bitcoin could not be used to host decentralized applications, so the Ethereum Foundation created Ethereum as a decentralized blockchain that can host decentralized applications. 

Their main function was to be a place where developers could deploy decentralized applications as well as be a place for transactions to occur. 

In that era, there was no talk of scalability, because the main issue was that the Bitcoin Blockchain is so limited that it would hinder the growth of decentralized blockchains. 

This is different from when Polygon was created after it was rebranded from Matic Network. When Polygon was created, the main issue that was being talked about was scalability which is why the main function of Polygon is to be a layer two for Ethereum to help scale its blockchain. 

But after the emergence of new layer two blockchains, Polygon seems to have slowly shifted its focus to being a layer one blockchain with its own ecosystem as evident from the creation of Polygon Ventures a Venture Capital and Accelerator to help grow crypto projects on the Polygon ecosystem. 

Infrastructure 

Polygon can do both because it has a different infrastructure than Ethereum, in the sense that Polygon implements a modular blockchain approach. 

With modular blockchain infrastructure, the blockchain can have multiple layers of networks on it that have different functions. 

Polygon itself has two layers of blockchain, where one is to help Ethereum as a layer two blockchain, and one is to be its own blockchain with its own ecosystem. 

This is why Polygon can have to function and why the blockchain can easily shift from only being a supporter to a main character of its ecosystem. 

Ethereum also implements a modular blockchain but that was after The Merge happened. Prior to that, Ethereum had a Monolithic Infrastructure approach where everything is done in one layer of network. 

The difference between Ethereum’s and Polygon’s Modular Infrastructure is the function of its layers, where Polygon has two layers for its own ecosystem and Ethereum’s while Ethereum’s two layers are only for its own ecosystem. 

But, even though Ethereum has two layers, it still needs help from layer two blockchains because it is not efficient enough compared to other new generation blockchains.  

Scalability 

Talking about the scalability issues, Ethereum’s two layers approach is still not efficient because it still is considered old, and there are only so many upgrades you can do to compete with new generation blockchains, hence why it still needs help from layer two blockchains. 

Ethereum’s scalability is so low that the gas fee is still expensive and the speed is so much slower compared to new generation blockchains.

For comparison, Ethereum’s gas fee still stands around $20 per transaction while its speed still stands around 50 transactions per second. 

This is a huge difference from Polygon which is considered to be a new generation blockchain that has overcome this scalability issue. 

Polygon itself has a maximum speed of 65,000 transactions per second and a transaction fee of less than $0.001 per transaction. 

This is why it helped Ethereum before, but has now shifted due to the fact that there are a lot of new blockchain helping Ethereum which speculations say that it made Polygon feel left out which is why it focused on its own ecosystem. 

Conclusion 

Overall, to summarize the difference, Ethereum is a layer one blockchain and Polygon can be a layer one blockchain and a layer two blockchain. 

Even though it can be a layer two blockchain that helps Ethereum, currently Polygon is focusing on its own ecosystem which might loosens the relationship of the two blockchains.  

Going forward it is better to understand that the two blockchains are totally different so that there is no mix up when transacting on both or when analyzing their coins.

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