MANA is the in-game currency for Decentraland. It is used to buy in-game assets, land parcels and it’s also the governance token that grants players the right to vote for the future development of the game.
For you to know the context between Polygon and Ethereum MANA, let’s first talk about the Ethereum blockchain and how transactions take place to understand the underlying problem with its network.
The Ethereum Blockchain
I bet you’re already familiar with the Ethereum blockchain. After all, Ethereum is one of the most popular cryptocurrencies today, second to Bitcoin. Moreover, a lot of decentralized applications (dApps) are built on the Ethereum blockchain, so you can expect that its network is busy and overcrowded.
Trades and transactions take place within the blockchain, and Ethereum’s transaction capabilities are limited. This forces users to compete with other users and pay higher gas fees, otherwise, their transactions would take forever.
So, the more traffic the Ethereum blockchain gets, the higher the fees will be, which is unfortunate and very inconvenient. Thankfully, a solution to tackle this was created.
The Layer 2 Solution
The Layer 2 scaling solution allows the Ethereum blockchain to link its network with another blockchain that can perform faster and more transactions per second. And this is when the Polygon blockchain comes in.
By utilizing Polygon’s blockchain, the pressure and traffic on the Ethereum blockchain will be divided and shared by this sidechain. Therefore, traffic will be fewer and the fees are reduced significantly.
What Exactly is a Sidechain?
A sidechain such as Polygon is a separate side blockchain that is linked to the main network, referred to as the main chain. In this case, Ethereum is the main chain.
Instead of performing transactions within the Ethereum blockchain that’s already congested, it’s done on the sidechain, which is faster and more efficient than Ethereum’s network, and with little to almost non-existent fees.
How Does It Work?
Players will be able to take advantage of this by transferring their assets from Ethereum to Polygon when doing transactions, allowing them to freely move their assets around. After that, they can just reverse the process to return their assets to the Ethereum blockchain.
Keep in mind that transferring assets from one blockchain to another takes time. It could take around 10 minutes to transfer MANA from Ethereum to Polygon, and around 30 minutes to return those assets from Polygon to Ethereum.
This is done to verify the authenticity and ensure security for all transactions that take place on these blockchains.
Also, some assets on Decentraland can only be bought with MANA from Ethereum, like LAND for example. So this does not apply to all transactions.
Conclusion
The question isn’t about what the difference is, it’s basically the same MANA coin that can be transferred from the Ethereum blockchain to Polygon blockchain, and vice versa.
Scalability is the main problem that’s holding back the progress and popularity of blockchain games because not everyone is willing to pay or wait a long time just for doing transactions.
But with the help of other sidechains, combining multiple blockchains to better perform one task is made possible, and it’s the clear solution to solve this problem.
