- Polygon tried the popular Optimistic rollup in advertising.
- The ad received mixed reviews.
- This is the latest salvo in the fight for Ethereum Layer 2 dominance.
Driven by the desire to leverage Ethereum’s abundant liquidity, interest in layer 2 chain launches shows no signs of slowing down. Amid this high demand, competition is heating up among Ethereum scaling solution providers who offer gold rush era shovels – a technology stack that projects can use to decouple layer 2 chains. So far, the main contenders in this battle for dominance appear to be Polygon and Optimism.
In the latest coup in the growing competition, Polygon filmed its popular rollup built with Optimism’s OP Stack in an ad to promote its zero-knowledge approach and interoperability layer.
“Suffering builds character, but it doesn’t have to be that way.”
Polygon takes no prisoners in its AggLayer campaigns. In the ’90s-style ad shared on Thursday, June 20, the project team tapped into the Optimistic roll-up experience, specifically the names Blast and Base.
The 1 minute and 14 second video begins with a satirical jab at Ethereum maximalists.
“As Ethereum Maxi, we don’t like to do things the easy way. Because we know that suffering builds character.” The video’s narrator quips before leading a character named Timmy through the costly and time-consuming process of connecting from the Ethereum mainnet to Blast and then to Base.
"Take little Timmy here. He's bridging from mainnet to Blast to buy a cute NFT. Sure, it will cost him $150 and take 25 minutes. But that's a small price to pay for the warm feeling of decentralization. Oh, did I say Blast? I meant Base. Sorry, Timmy. Time to bridge again. Don't frown. It's good for you," the narrator chides.
After purchasing an NFT from Base, Timmy receives a notification that he is eligible for an airdrop on a layer 3 chain, which Polygon is trying to mark as a duplicate.
"That's one beautiful NFT looks like it qualifies you for an airdrop on that hot new L3 that just launched? What's an L3 you ask? Well, it's like an L2 on an L2. Make sense?"
As highlighted in the video, Timmy must reconnect to receive the airdrop.
"Now come Timmy. It's time to bridge again. You don't want to? Where's your Cypherpunk ethos, son? You don't want the other kids to think you're an alt L1 user, do you?" The narrator chides again in the face of Timmy's reluctance to bridge again.
“Remember, if it’s not hard, it’s not real cryptocurrency,” the narrator concludes before a final scene promoting AggLayer, Polygon’s interoperability protocol that promises near-instantaneous, atomic transactions between connected chains. How to integrate Ethereum.
Surprisingly, this video garnered a lot of attention online.
“Roughly tone deaf” or a genius?
The Polygon ad received mixed reviews. Reacting to the clip, Cinneamhain Ventures partner Adam Cochran criticized the Polygon AggLayer ad: “Very tone deaf.”
"Polygon spends years pretending to be an ETH L2, then in a commercial shits on L2s, and reduces decentralization to 'a warm fuzzy feeling.' If that's all you think of decentralization, you could run a really fast SQL server," he retorted.
Cochran wasn’t the only one perplexed by the Polygon ad. BetHog CEO Nigel Eccles wrote: “A strange development is causing polygon gibberish on Ethereum.”
Nonetheless, not all reactions were negative. Many people shared their favorite quotes from the ad. “If it’s not difficult, it’s not a real cryptocurrency.”
“Polygons are amazing. Whoever made this deserves a medal,” one user said.
On the flipside
- Many of AggLayer’s highly promoted features are not yet in production, but will be released in a second version of the protocol expected in late 2024.
- Base, Optimism, and Blast take second, third, and fourth places. L2Beat‘s ranking Layer 2 chain by TVL (back only) decision. In contrast, Polygon zkEVM It ranks 17th.
Why This Matters
Polygon and Optimism are among the leaders in the Ethereum Layer 2 technology stack battle. A recent Polygon ad highlights the increasingly intense rivalry, mirroring similar tactics used by big tech rivals such as Apple and Samsung.
To learn more about the competition in the ETH Layer 2 space, read:
Polygon (MATIC), Celo’s L2 Bid Loses on Other Optimism
Has cryptocurrency culture changed? See Vitalik Buterin’s thoughts:
Vitalik on Crypto’s “idealistic hippies”: “We’re still here!”