If you didn’t know, Polygon has its very own Polygon Academy. It is a free course with everything you need to know to be a Web 3.0 developer.

There are 4 levels in this learning journey, and it gets progressively harder through the course.  The course is accompanied by assignments and quizzes along the way.

The four different levels are:

1.       Apprentice

2.       Developer

3.       Warrior

4.       Wizard

After you successfully complete a level, you will receive a limited edition NFT that shows your achievement.  

By the end of the course, you will be able to build your very own Web 3.0 application. 

There’s a grand total of 9 Polygon Solutions:

1.       Polygon PoS

2.       Polygon Edge

3.       Polygon Avail

4.       Polygon Zero

5.       Polygon Miden

6.       Polygon Hermez (zk-Rollup)

7.       Polygon Nightfall

8.       Polygon Supernets

9.       Polygon ID

1. Polygon PoS

Scale and Power

Polygon PoS is a Layer 2 scaling solution that achieves unprecedented transaction speed and cost savings by utilizing side-chains for transaction processing. At the same time, POS ensures asset security using the robust Plasma bridging framework and a decentralized network of Proof-of-Stake (PoS) validators.

Speed 

• Intuitive, efficient bridging, deposit, and withdrawals
• Transaction speeds of up to 65,000 tx/s mean exponentially faster performance than Ethereum at 15 tx/s
• Non-custodial architecture means users have control of their keys
• Rely on the shared security of Ethereum with the benefit of Polygon’s speed

Scalability

• Compatible with major ERC standards
• Secured by validators and checkpoints submitted to Ethereum
• Minimal downtime over the course of 1.3B recorded transactions
• A powerful and engaged community driving adoption and user engagement

Flexibility

• Full EVM compatibility means deploying your smart contracts directly on the Polygon chain
• A composable blockchain means you’ve got a wide variety of apps to build on
• Easy transfer to and from Polygon and Ethereum
• Easy-to-use wallet on web and mobile

Cost

• Fractional costs per transaction powered by Polygon’s proof-of-stake architecture
• Approximately ~10,000x lower costs per transaction than Ethereum
• More predictable gas fees and deflationary token economics with EIP 1559 token burns

Built for flexibility and security

Polygon’s scalable proof-of-stake architecture complements Ethereum’s decentralized security, ensuring you have the ability to create apps that can appeal to the masses while maintaining the power of decentralization.

2. Polygon Edge

A modular and extensible framework for building private or public Ethereum-compatible blockchain networks.

Deploy your own blockchain networks with ease

Polygon Edge enables you to run your own blockchain network with customizable features. It is guided by the principles of modular architecture and provides Ethereum compatibility to your network.

Bring your Ethereum Smart Contracts with you

• Users able to interact with industry-standard wallets through JSON-RPC
• Develop with Solidity/Vyper, full EVM support
• Build using widely-adopted Ethereum tooling, libraries, and development tools
• Streamlined UX when doing cross-chain operations

Custom features

• Build by developing plugins, not by forking
• Developer-friendly plugin system
• Change the core functionalities with Consensus plugins
• Go beyond Ethereum’s Smart Contracts with Runtime plugins

Cross-chain communication

• Completely trustless and decentralized built-in Ethereum Bridge solution
• Transfer assets to and from any EVM compatible network, most notably Polygon and Ethereum mainnets
• Transfer ERC-20 tokens, NFTs, or wrapped native currencies
• Customize the bridge functionality using Bridge plugins

3. Polygon Avail

Scalable data availability focused blockchain

A core component of the modular blockchain movement coming in the near future. Targeted towards off-chain scaling solutions and standalone chains.

Modular Blockchain Paradigm

Avail aims to facilitate a complete change in how we approach the design of blockchain systems. Avail enables modular chain design where various execution environments can use Avail for data ordering and availability. Avail is agnostic to the execution layer, which can be the standalone chains or off-chain scaling solutions that use Avail. The applications hosted on these execution layers enjoy the full security of Avail.

Decoupling execution from data availability

Off-chain scaling solutions can unlock their full potential by offloading data availability to Avail. Standalone chains can bootstrap validator security by using Avail for data availability.

Data Redundancy

• Every piece of data is erasure-coded using polynomial interpolation
• Redundancy makes it harder to suppress data
• Light clients get ~100% confidence in data availability by performing a constant number of queries

Low Resource Requirement

• Hosting a full node isn’t needed to get an availability guarantee
• Application clients can query data only relevant to application of their interest, without downloading the entire block
• System scales up as the number of users increases, increasing the availability of data

Polynomial Commitments

• Avail avoids fraud proofs using KZG polynomial commitments
• The data of each block is committed to the headers
• Light clients sample data and verify using commitment openings
• Batch openings help us optimize verification and proof size

4. Polygon Hermez

Scalable payments, with Zero-Knowledge Rollups.

Hermez is an open-source zk-Rollup optimised for secure, low-cost, and usable token transfers on the wings of Ethereum.

Ethereum Scalability and ZK-Rollups

Hermez zk-rollup is a layer 2 construction on top of Ethereum that solves its scalability through mass transfer processing rolled into a single transaction. The “zero-knowledge proof” (ZK) technology is used to present and publicly record the validity and correctness of the rolled transfers processed on the Ethereum blockchain. By storing just the proof and the compressed data of a batch of transfers, the efficiency and the throughput of the network is multiplied.

Powerful and trustless

• Ethereum-level security guaranteed by zk-SNARKs
• High throughput of 2000 TPS
• Non-custodial architecture
• Full ownership and control of assets (censorship-resistant)
• Data availability on Ethereum mainnet

The only decentralized zk-rollup

• Fully open-source and community-driven
• Seamless integration with Hermez REST API
• Permissionless network of coordinators
• Decentralised auction model with validation reward token
• Strategy towards governance minimisation

Token transfers simplified

• Simple web and mobile app wallet
• Low-cost token transfer
• Atomic swaps
• Fees payable in a single currency
• Fast capital-efficient exit (withdrawal) in a few minutes

Layer 2 scalability solution

Computational integrity and on-chain data availability are guaranteed by zero-knowledge proof technology while preserving the public blockchain properties of Ethereum.

5. Polygon Miden

General purpose zk-rollup

Polygon Miden is a STARK-based, Zero-Knowledge rollup with support for arbitrary smart contracts

STARK-based zk-rollup

Polygon Miden is a Layer 2 scaling solution for Ethereum. Miden relies on zero-knowledge technology (zk-STARKs) to “roll-up” thousands of layer 2 transactions into a single Ethereum transaction, thus, increasing throughput and reducing transaction fees. At the heart of Polygon Miden is Miden VM: a Turing-complete STARK-based virtual machine that provides a level of safety and supports advanced features currently not available on Ethereum.

Secure and scalable

• Ethereum-level security provided by zk-STARKs
• Transparent (no trusted setup) and post-quantum secure
• High throughput of 1,000+ TPS before sharding and 10,000+ TPS after sharding
• Low transaction fees: over 100x lower than fees on Ethereum

Safely programmable

• Arbitrary smart contracts are written in Solidity and other languages
• Account abstractions and other features not yet available on Ethereum
• Simpler formal verification of contracts due to safe VM architecture
• Clear roadmap to privacy-preserving smart contracts

Open and permissionless

• Fully open-source and community-driven development
• Decentralized and permissionless network
• Non-custodial architecture (full ownership of assets)
• Censorship-resistant

6. Polygon Nightfall

A privacy-focused Rollup for Enterprises

Polygon Nightfall is an Optimistic Rollup designed to lower the cost of privately transferring ERC20, ERC721, and ERC1155 tokens. It uses an Optimistic Rollup to reduce transaction fees and zero-knowledge proofs for privacy. The Optimistic Rollup contracts are deployed on Ethereum (Layer 1). Proposers roll-up transactions into blocks and submit them to the Optimistic contracts. Challengers submit fraud proofs for any invalid block to the same contracts. All the information required to perform a private transfer exists with clients and does not rely on any off-chain third party.

Optimistic Rollups with Zero-Knowledge

Polygon Nightfall is an Optimistic Rollup aimed to lower the transaction cost of ERC20, ERC721, and ERC1155 token private transfers. It uses Optimistic Rollup for lowering the costs and the privacy is attained by leveraging zero-knowledge proofs. The optimistic rollup contracts are deployed on Ethereum (layer 1). Proposers will roll up transactions into blocks and submit them to the Optimistic contracts. Challengers will submit fraud proofs for any invalid block to the same contracts. All the information required to perform a private transfer exists with clients and does not rely on any off-chain third party.

Use Cases

• Supply Chain Orchestration
• Private NFT Marketplaces
• Blockchain Mixer

Transactional Benefits

• Efficiency, higher throughput at only 12k gas per tx
• Confidentiality, due to ZK technology
• Credibility, as rooted in the security on Ethereum

Decentralised

• Full ownership and control of assets
• Non-custodial architecture
• Incentivised LPs that provide instant withdrawal of fungible tokens could also satisfy the minimum-one-honest-verifier requirement

Accessibility

• In the public domain and community-driven
• Provides SDK for development
• Provides web wallet through the Polygon website

7. Polygon Zero 

World’s most performant ZK L2

Polygon Zero uses the speed of Plonky2 to enable a more scalable and decentralized ZK L2. It offers both rollup and validium modes, giving users access to higher throughput and lower fees.

Fast ZK proofs validated on Ethereum

Polygon Zero is a Layer 2 scaling solution for Ethereum. What separates Polygon Zero from other ZK scaling solutions is the power of Plonky2, our groundbreaking prover system, which generates ZK proofs faster than any other existing tech. Plonky2 supports efficient recursive proof generation, allowing Polygon Zero to scale horizontally, meaning the throughput of the protocol is limited not by the weakest nodes on the network, but only by the total compute available.

Fast

• Powered by Plonky2, the world’s fastest ZK prover system
• ZK proofs generated in 170 milliseconds on a commodity laptop
• Security of Ethereum without the wait

Light

• Stateless validators can store ~5 bits per active account
• Proof size only 45kb in size-optimized mode
• Execute transactions off-chain, and efficiently prove it to Ethereum

Revolutionary zkEVM

• Full compatibility with the Ethereum Virtual Machine
• Horizontal scaling powered by Plonky2
• A composable zkEVM that scales with the total compute available to the network

8. Polygon Supernets

Polygon Supernets are the fast-track for blockchain adoption in new private and public networks for dApps and enterprises alike. Polygon Supernets uses powerful Polygon Edge as the configurable infrastructure solution in a highly secure and decentralized environment.

Higher security and decentralization

• Validators verify all the transactions on Supernets
• Validators stake MATIC tokens on the mainnet before validating the network
• Any validator misbehavior is met with instant repercussions on the amount staked

Powered by Polygon Edge

• Ethereum compatible
• Interoperable with other EVM compatible blockchains
• Customizable
• High performing

Current Features

• Ability to have a decentralized PoS network that you don’t have to maintain yourself
• Achieve decentralization and high security from day one, with staking from professional validators
• High performance & scalability of Enterprise / dApp Networks running on the highly performant Polygon Edge infrastructure
• Reward schedule for professional validators securing your Supernet

Upcoming Features

• Gas-efficient bridging to Polygon/Ethereum
• Configurable checkpointing to Polygon or Ethereum Mainnet, for extra security
• Shared benefits: Blockexplorer for all Edge networks Infura or Alchemy-like RPC for all Edge networks Cross-chain bridging between Edge networks which requires it

9. Polygon ID

Polygon ID is a blockchain-native identity system with programmable privacy that empowers people and enables the creation of trusted interactions with web3 services.

Scalable blockchain ID with ZK-based privacy

A new class of technological solutions for a censorship-resistant digital identity. Prove access rights and reputation on-chain while keeping user privacy, boost dApps, and DeFi. Open to existing standards and ecosystem development.

Privacy by default is achieved using protocols designed natively for zero-knowledge zkSNARK technology, a battle-tested cryptography, and the most efficient for proof verifications on-chain.

Universal identity

• Scalable model for permissionless identity and low-cost claims
• Expressible claim format based on the extended Verifiable Credentials data model
• Relayer as a L2 trustless agent to sponsor user identities claim issuance

Prove access rights, not identity

• Circom 2.0 zero-knowledge based privacy of identity and user information
• Unique zkProof Request Language to specify private requirements from apps
• Onboarding developers and partners via Polygon ID toolkit and examples

Advanced on-chain verification

• Private verification of user rights can be done from a Smart Contract
• zkSNARKs is the protocol with the smaller proof size for optimal on-chain verification
• The zkProof composability enables reputation models for people-powered networks