The blockchain market continues to expand through Layer-2 technologies that address scalability issues and offer new financial tools. Let's examine three of the most promising solutions: Mantle, Polygon, and Arbitrum.
Mantle: Banking Meets DeFi
Mantle introduced UR, a crypto banking app that combines traditional and decentralized financing. Users can manage both fiat and crypto accounts, receive virtual cards, and automatically invest in the tokenized MI4 fund. These features could simplify access to DeFi.
In addition, Mantle became the first Ethereum Layer-2 to partner with EigenLayer for integrating EigenDA, boosting scalability.
Polygon: Speed and Scale
The Bhilai upgrade significantly improved Polygon's performance, now handling around 1,000 transactions per second with a 5-second finality time. The upcoming AggLayer v3.0 is expected to increase capacity to 5,000 TPS using zero-knowledge technologies.
Polygon's stablecoin supply has grown by 8.2% to $2.1 billion, indicating rising interest in real-world asset tokenization.
Arbitrum: Depth in DeFi and Market Resilience
Arbitrum continues to enhance its DeFi ecosystem with the launch of Treehouse's fixed-income protocol, introducing tokenized yield assets. Despite a recent $38 million token unlock, ARB prices rose by 10%, signaling strong demand. With clearer regulatory frameworks for stablecoins, Arbitrum may attract more institutional adoption.
Layer-2 solutions are becoming key drivers in the growth of the blockchain ecosystem. Mantle bridges traditional and decentralized finance, Polygon showcases record scaling speeds, and Arbitrum deepens its DeFi tools. These projects are worth monitoring in the coming months.
