Ethereum vs Polygon - Which is Better For NFTs? - GeeksforGeeks (2024)

This article focuses on discussing the difference between Ethereum and Polygon. Let’s start discussing each of these topics in detail.

1. What is Ethereum?
2. What is Polygon?
3. What is NFT?
4. Ethereum vs Polygon.
5. Should I Use Ethereum or Polygon on OpenSea?

Let’s start discussing each of these topics in detail.

What is Ethereum?

Ethereum is a community-run technology based on blockchain technology powering cryptocurrency Ether(ETH) and thousands of decentralized applications. It can establish a secure network for the verification of application code also known as smart contracts. Ethereum provides visibility of transactions and full ownership of them and also gives verifiable and secure transactions. Ethereum account must be set up for the transactions, the transaction is done in terms of ether which is Ethereum’s native currency.

Advantages:

1. Ethereum provides the best security for selling or purchasing NFT. In the Ethereum blockchain, it uses gas fees for approving a transaction which provides a secure network to the user.
2. Ethereum has gained familiarity in the blockchain and NFT market.
3. Ethereum supports auctions, which can be helpful for a seller as they can sell their NFT collection to the highest bidder and also set a minimum amount for an NFT.

Disadvantages:

1. Ethereum charges high gas fees for approving a transaction. The gas fees oscillate between 50-200 $.
2. Ethereum has a slow speed in transactions.

What is Polygon?

Polygon is Ethereum-based blockchain technology that provides more scalability platforms. It is a layer 2 aggregator which aims at creating a multichain Ethereum ecosystem. Polygon leverages Ethereum security. The primary aim of the polygon is to expand usage of the Defi (Decentralized finance) tools and applications. Polygon’s network is presently hosting around 3000 decentralized applications also more than 80 big-name companies have drifted toward polygon from the Ethereum main chain. Developers find polygon very similar to Ethereum which makes them migrate from Ethereum to other EVM(Ethereum virtual machine) blockchain-like polygon where they can find reach and increase usage.

Advantages:

1. Polygon does not require any gas fees on its blockchain network. It is easy to sell or buy NFT on polygon as it is gas fees-free, but one needs to pay a very small amount of gas fees when they convert Ethereum ETH to Polygon ETH.
2. Polygon is a very scalable platform.
3. Polygon is built on the Ethereum blockchain to increase the volume of transactions.

Disadvantages:

1. Polygon is less secured when it comes to security.
2. Polygon has less familiarity with the NFT market.
3. Polygon blockchain does not support an auction facility on its platform.

NFT

Non-fungible token creates a unique digital signature of digital assets, this signature describes the ownership of your assets which can be bought and sold for real money or any other asset like NFT. An NFT is not interchangeable and every NFT speaks for a unique resource owned by a specific person. Every NFT consists of distinguishable details like the owner of the digital resource and who sold it to whom, making NFT verifiable and well defined. It is impossible to forge or copy NFTs as it is impossible to forge digital certificates hence NFTs provide the best security to one’s assets and resources.

Ethereum vs Polygon

1. Consensus: Ethereum uses a consensus technique known as PoW(Proof of Work). The issue with Ethereum is that it necessitates a lot of processing power. Ethereum requires a significant amount of energy and It results in decreasing participation of users. This mechanism increases security to some extent. In polygon consensus is achieved by the mechanism based on PoS(Proof of stake), If a user joins the Polygon network, they would be rewarded in the form of points. Consensus is achieved faster in the Polygon blockchain.

2. Architecture: Ethereum offers the best architecture for the NFT market. Whenever a transaction happens on the Ethereum blockchain, all transactions are validated in their present state, and clones of the most transactions made are promptly minted to replicate the most recent transactions. Whereas Polygon is based on the mechanism of PoS. In polygon blockchain transactions are arranged into nodes.

3. Transaction Speed: Ethereum provides the slowest transaction speed to its users. Due to the higher number of transactions on the Ethereum blockchain and as all the transactions must be fully validated and approved it reduces the time efficiency of the Ethereum platform, Ethereum can perform only 13-15 transactions per second which is very less than it has a huge load of the users.
In the case of the Polygon, the transaction can go up to 50000-60000 transactions per second which are way higher than Ethereum. As Polygon has a hybrid nature it performs transactions extremely fast.

4. Gas fees: OpenSea consists of the whole host of gas fees related to using Ethereum, and these distinct fees are one-time fees and recurring fees. The two One-time fees connected with Ethereum are:

• Initialization fees: Initialization fees come at the place where one decides to trade an NFT on Ethereum on OpenSea one needs to pay Initialization fees for setting up the account. This fee does not oscillate with the gas price.
• Auction approval fees: If one seller wants to auction their collection of NFT in place of selling and listing for a fixed price, they first need to mandate the use of a token called WETH. WETH means Wrapped Eth and have the same value as ETH. One can interchange ETH for WETH on OpenSea. WETH will be used to buy and sell NFT on the OpenSea auction and after you mandate for WETH to be used once, you don’t have to pay for approval ever again.
  Talking about polygon, there are no gas fees connected with a polygon on OpenSea, But concerning buying NFT on Polygon blockchain one needs to pay gas fees secondarily. While purchasing an NFT on OpenSea we can see two kinds of ETH, Ethereum ETH, and Polygon ETH. NFT on polygon blockchain can only be acquired by Polygon ETH. To get Polygon ETH you need to bridge Ethereum ETH to Polygon ETH which can be done directly on OpenSea but this transaction requires gas fees. So there exist gas fees related to Polygon but it is very smaller in value when compared to Ethereum.

5. Auction: One trait of the Ethereum blockchain is that it supports an Auction mechanism. So rather than selling NFT for a fixed price one can just auction it off to the highest bidder also minimum bid value can be set on OpenSea which guarantees the offers you come by are above a certain value. This auction feature is not available on Polygon blockchain but maybe in the future Polygon will start supporting auctions on its blockchain network.

6. Security: Due to gas fees in the Ethereum blockchain network it tends to have a well-secured network for buying or selling NFT but it is the main concern in Polygon. Polygon has a less secure network when compared to Ethereum. It does not mean that all your assets and resources will get lost, it’s just less secure. So if one chooses Polygon, they need to have a little extra trust that Polygon is not going to lose their NFTs and funds.

7. Familiarity: Over these years Ethereum has gained familiarity in the Crypto market whereas on the other side people are less familiar with a polygon. Maximum people who are interested in purchasing NFT have mostly heard of Ethereum than Polygon. So if any interested person lands on the Polygon platform they need to perform some extra steps. Firstly they have to configure Matic Network onto their crypto wallet and secondly they have to bridge Ethereum ETH to Polygon ETH, buyers who are not familiar with this procedure might give up before even purchasing NFT.

Should We Use Ethereum or Polygon On OpenSea?

NFT gets minted onto a blockchain and the most regular chain used is Ethereum.

• When any transaction takes place on the Ethereum blockchain such as NFT getting purchased or minted, the transaction should be approved.
• If a transaction is getting approved, it requires energy and if you use the Ethereum blockchain you recompense for this energy through a system called Gas.
• Gas fees oscillate with demand so the higher the demand higher the gas fees.
• Ethereum blockchain doesn’t presently have come back for congestion and a high number transaction being submitted at the same time, transaction done on Ethereum blockchain tend to be slow and high priced.

Polygon does not require any gas fees, it almost resembles an add-on to the Ethereum blockchain.

• Polygon uses side chains so rather than expanding the capacity on the block of the original Ethereum blockchain polygon utilizes its own block to assist to allocate the load so we have the main Ethereum blockchain and side chain polygon and there two chains separate, but there is something called as a bridge which tie up them.
• The bridge converts assets or resources from one chain by locking up the assets on one side while unlocking the other side.
• There is reduced congestion on the polygon side chain and there also exists some infrastructure to make the transaction faster and cheaper.

Conclusion

Polygon should be preferred to originate an NFT project with a high number frequency and fewer value transactions. On the other side, Ethereum must be considered for the NFT projects with lower frequencies and Higher values.

If one is pretty sure for their NFTs will get purchased even if coming in the higher range, one may choose Ethereum. But If one is thinking about saving money then Polygon It is. Polygon has certified that low prices paired with Higher transaction speed on the Ethereum blockchain are within reach. Polygon has already made its space in this market and is moving towards its bright future and can survive in long run.