Summary Polygon added to Disney Accelerator program. Meta Platforms enlists Polygon for Instagram NFTs. Fashion and payments companies add to the recent partnerships. In a recent article , I advised buying Disney for eventual growth in the metaverse. Polygon ( MATIC-USD ) is a crypto project that has been making waves with a series of big-name corporate partnerships, including Disney. The coin would be a good buy after the recent turmoil in the cryptocurrency market. Disney adds Polygon to its accelerator program In my Disney article, I talked about the company’s plans to merge the Disney+ streaming service with its theme parks in the virtual reality world. A recent partnership saw Disney adding the Polygon blockchain to its accelerator program and senior leadership at the entertainment giant will mentor participants. Key to the announcement is that Polygon is a scaling solution and Disney has the brand for scale. Polygon is a decentralized Ethereum-based scaling platform that enables developers to create scalable user-friendly applications with low transaction fees and high security. Over 37,000 decentralized apps have now been built with its suite of products. With its 2022 Accelerator Program, Disney is ramping up its plans for the adoption of Web3 and blockchain technologies. The Accelerator program will work on projects such as NFTs, Augmented Reality, and Artificial Intelligence. Disney’s approach to the metaverse will be leveraging its stories and characters to “develop new technologies and storytelling canvasses to create connected experiences across physical, digital, and virtual worlds”. Meta Platforms adds to the big-name Polygon support Another big news story broke just before the recent carnage in the cryptocurrency market as Meta Platforms ( META ) announced that it would use the Polygon blockchain to let users mint and sell NFTs on the Instagram app. This is the social media platform’s latest Web3 integration amid intense competition with TikTok and Alphabet’s YouTube. “Blockchain has a role in this because it can enable entirely new business models for creators that give them more control over their work and audiences, and how they monetize,” tweeted Stephane Kasriel, Meta’s Head of Commerce and Fintech. “We believe Web3 tech, like blockchain, will positively enhance the economic model for creators by giving them the ability to create new types of digital assets to monetize,” he said. In Disney and Meta Platforms, Polygon has some serious potential for tapping into big user bases. It is still early days for the metaverse and mass adoption of NFTs, but Polygon will remain in demand with other projects and use cases. Yet another social media platform enlisted the help of Polygon’s blockchain as Reddit launched its hugely popular Collectible Avatar NFTs. The first Reddit NFT collection of 40,000 avatars sold out after the creation of 2.5 million Reddit Vault wallets, which exceeds the estimated 2.3 million active users on OpenSea, the largest NFT marketplace. Polygon has closed around $800 million in all-time sales on OpenSea compared to the $32 billion of Ethereum. Another benefit for MATIC investors is that the project committed $20 million to offset its carbon-dioxide emissions in April this year. Sandeep Nailwal, the project's founder, said more efforts need to be made by blockchain companies to form a “united front” to fund and “leverage technology that helps heal the earth -- rather than destroy it.” That can help to keep the project relevant after previous criticism of the energy-intensive nature of cryptocurrency. Fashion and payments also want a piece of Polygon Two of the world’s best-known fashion brands also collaborated with Polygon Studios to build a new collection on the blockchain. The two brands unveiled the Adidas for Prada re-source project which was with digital artist Zach Lieberman. The ambitious first-of-a-kind collaboration will combine user-generated and creator-owned art. The goal is to create a large-scale digital artwork inspired by the Re-Nylon collection. The two companies will invite their followers to contribute unique photographs to the open-Metaverse NFT project. Three thousand of these community-sourced artworks will be minted as NFTs and added as tiles in a large NFT mosaic designed by Lieberman. In the payments world, Stripe said in April 2022 that it will use Polygon to enable Stripe’s customers to pay sellers, freelancers, creators, and service providers in crypto. The first stage of payouts will be done using USDC stablecoins native to the Polygon blockchain and will be done via Polygon-compatible wallets. Twitter ( TWTR ) announced that it would be the first company to try out the new feature by allowing earnings to be paid out to content creators for users of the company’s monetization products such as “Ticketed Spaces” and “Super Follows.” However, that collaboration may have hit a roadblock with the arrival of Elon Musk after his Twitter acquisition. At the time of writing, Polygon’s MATIC token was trading at $0.92 after a drop from around $1.28 ahead of the FTX exchange fallout. That puts the coin at number 10 in the list of projects by market cap with a valuation of $8 billion. The all-time high in MATIC is near the $2.75 price level. Conclusion Ahead of the recent cryptocurrency market turmoil, the Polygon blockchain was signed up to some big partnerships. Disney wants to use the company's scalable solution for its metaverse entrance, while Meta Platforms is using the project to add NFTs to its Instagram app. We have also seen fashion brands and payments companies use the chain in a growing vote of confidence for the project. Investors looking for a solid cryptocurrency investment should be rewarded in Polygon with the coin currently trading beneath $1.00.
