Ai16z DAO among contributors to Polygon’s Community Grants Program Season 2
Polygon Weekly Overview - January 15, 2025
Welcome back to the Polygon Weekly Overview. The best place for Polygon community members to get up to speed on the chain’s latest updates, metrics, releases, insights, ecosystem developments and more. All in one place.
New here? Subscribe here to get updates to your inbox. Every Friday.
By The Numbers
Polygon daily active addresses : 551.25K (-7.38%)
Polygon daily txns: 3.46M (+.29%)
Polygon Total Volume Locked (TVL): $917.15M (+6.15%)
NFT weekly sales volume: $5.2M (-29.34%)
Top 3 NFT collections by sales volume:
Courtyard: $2.8M (+9.37%)
LEDNFT: $961.87K (-61.06%)
Voxies: $73.65K (-14.04%)
The percentages and metrics are based on a 7-day timeframe, unless noted otherwise.
AggLayer Spotlight
🟪What happened: Polygon Labs launched Season 2 of its Community Grants Program (CGP), with a total of 35M POL, worth about $16.7 million, in grants to support a diverse range of projects.
🟪Why does it matter: This season introduces a variety of grant allocators, including Eliza Labs by ai16z, Crossmint, IoTeX, and Gitcoin, which will distribute millions in POL to innovative Polygon projects. The key themes that grant allocators will look for include AI, DePIN, and memecoins.
Polygon Labs stated these grants are also being awarded with “long-termism in mind,” so builders can innovate and create projects with a lasting impact, rather than simply following current trends.
Ai16z’s Eliza Labs will lead the AI Agents agnostic track, targeting projects that utilize ElizaOS, an operating system for AI agents, or develop them on Polygon. Crossmint will manage the projects by connecting agents to onchain apps and support teams that bridge AI agents with web3, using Crossmint’s GOAT toolkit. In DePIN, IoTeX will oversee that sector’s grants, funding builders working on decentralized physical infrastructure focused on real-world assets. Additionally, Gitcoin will run the “Ultimate AI Memecoin Battle Royale,” focusing on projects that innovate with AI-driven memecoins.
Furthermore, Eliza Labs has not only joined as a grant allocator, but also went live and integrated on Polygon, further strengthening the ecosystem’s tools. The access to Eliza’s framework combined with Polygon’s ecosystem can help build a new generation of AI agents. The ai16z DAO and ElizaOS have seen massive growth on GitHub with over 11,000 stars, which are similar to favorites or saves, as many open source developers are building and contributing to this project.
The AI agents and other grants projects will have access to the various plugins available on Eliza and can use native frameworks as well as the Polygon CDK, Plonky3 and in the future, Agglayer.
With Plonky3 they have access to its zero-knowledge proving system, which provides faster transaction processing and reduced costs. The upgraded software of Plonky3 and Polygon’s Erigon CDK can enhance the grants projects as well as the current Aggchains on the Agglayer.
🟪The big picture: This program’s Season 2 sets the stage for more developer innovations and the ability to build impactful dApps for the long term in the Polygon ecosystem. There’s been a rising interest in building dApps, especially related to AI, with projects such as Virtuals and ai16z DAO releasing easy-to-use dev kits to launch customizable AI agents.
This has piqued the interest of many software engineers around the world, even outside of crypto. This interest, coupled with the incentives from Polygon to build products on the platform, can lead to major developments in DeFi, web3 gaming, AI and more.
Into the AggLayer
Haust Network, an Agglayer DeFi partner, announced it will launch an upgraded testnet powered by Polygon CDK Erigon
Succinct Labs, an Agglayer partner, announced that it will power the raffles on @Galxe
The Aggchain’s RWA partner, Lumia, revealed a 4x performance boost on its testnet from the Polygon CDK Erigon upgrade
Learn about the Agglayer’s feature to simplify cross-chain processing and improve user experience
Ecosystem Showcase
Polygon Labs partnered with Jio to add web3 capabilities to some of India's largest telecom provider’s services and applications
ICYM: Polygon hosted an X Space for the launch of Season 2 of its Community Grants Program
Indian Railways partnered with Polygon Labs to issue NFT-based tickets for the Maha Kumbh Mela festival
Listen to Polygon Lab’s discussion about RWAs with Lumia and Courtyard at Art Basel Miami
Check out a recent AMA by Polygon’s key researchers and devs on this Reddit thread
Join in the fun
Want to dive into the Polygon ecosystem full-time? Find the latest job postings here.
Dive into the Polygon developer community and join the Discord
Interested in being a leader in the Lumia community? Join the Lumia Champions Program
To get this newsletter delivered to your inbox every week, subscribe here.
This product was built by Token Relations.
This information is for entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial advice, nor should it be used to make investment decisions. Cryptocurrencies are high risk and you should consult a financial professional before making any financial decisions. Make sure you do your own research.