MATIC Jumps 20% in a Day After Instagram's Polygon NFT Minting Reveal

Polygon, an Ethereum sidechain network, is seeing major price gains for its token MATIC after Meta announced Instagram would be using the Polygon network for its upcoming in-app NFT minting feature earlier this week.

According to CoinGecko data, MATIC is up roughly 20% in the past 24 hours, from approximately $0.94 to $1.13. In the past week, MATIC climbed 25% and has increased a staggering 35% in the past month. 

What’s MATIC for? While Polygon users can pay for many transactions in Ethereum, MATIC is required to pay for the gas fees on the network. (Gas fees are essentially transaction fees that are paid to the network.) Polygon’s gas fees are very low, but still required for transactions. Sometimes, NFTs can be bought with MATIC as well, allowing traders to avoid the process of bridging or wrapping Ethereum or searching for a crypto exchange that will sell Wrapped Ethereum natively on Polygon.

But Instagram’s NFT minting feature is a big deal—last year, CNBC reported that Instagram has over 2 billion monthly users. That means lots of potential traffic for the Polygon network.

“Creators on Instagram having the opportunity to engage with fans and monetize through Polygon-powered digital collectables is a watershed moment for both the creator economy and web3,” Polygon Studios CEO Ryan Wyatt previously told Decrypt, adding that in his view, “Polygon excels at delivering Web3 to the masses.” 

Historically, NFTs—unique blockchain tokens that signify ownership—have been popular on Ethereum with creators earning over $1.8 billion in royalties alone, an October research report from Galaxy Digital revealed. Compared to the Ethereum mainnet, the Polygon NFT economy has been significantly smaller. 

According to a Dune Analytics dashboard, nearly 309,000 Polygon NFTs were sold on OpenSea in October. In contrast, more than 1.1 million NFTs were sold on Ethereum’s mainnet on OpenSea last month. That’s a 112% difference.

But with Reddit users creating over 3 million wallets to mint and trade the platform’s “Collectible Avatars,” nearly 3 million Reddit Polygon NFTs in existence to date per data aggregated on Dune, and Polygon’s massive upcoming partnership with Starbucks, Polygon’s bevy of big-brand partnerships is a sign its proponents are pushing hard toward its vision of mass adoption.