Purple pill, or green pill: Polygon vs Flow

Many on crypto twitter have been talking about Polygon’s great BD.

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For those not in the clue, BD = business development.

So if a blockchain has great BD it means they're great at getting big brands to build on their blockchain.

Seeing all these tweets about Polygon’s BD got us thinking though, doesn’t Flow deliver as much? And also what could Flow learn from Polygon?

But before we get into it, some context on Polygon and Flow 👇

Polygon and Flow are both blockchains that aim to improve scalability and bring decentralised applications to the mainstream. Though they approach this goal in different ways:

• Flow is a performant layer one blockchain
• Polygon is a layer two scaling solution for Ethereum

In easy terms, this means Polygon is built on top of Ethereum and can enjoy the network effects that come with this.

Whereas Flow has its own thing going on and is highly scalable due to its unique architecture.

Setting aside these technicalities, they’re chains aiming to bring brands into web3 and NFTs

And this is what brings us to compare their BD in 2022.

Starting with Polygon. They had a stellar year, locking in HUGE partnerships with:

• Disney accelerator
• Meta
• Starbucks
• Reddit
• Robinhood

We also saw Solana projects moving to Polygon including Phantom, Magic Eden and recently DeGods & y00ts. Other big brands launched on Polygon too including Nike, CocaCola, Amazon, Mercedes-Benz, eBay, Prada, Liverpool, Adidas, Draft Kings, Adobe and Stripe.

RECUR - a company that launches NFTs for brands - also builds on Polygon bringing along the likes of Nickelodeon, Top Gun, Paramount.

It’s fair to say Polygon’s BD is great. But now let’s take a look at Flow Blockchain.

Flow’s the OG brand blockchain. Before brand NFTs were cool, there was Flow, the NBA and NBA Top Shot.

Flow’s BD in 2022 included MASSIVE brands and IP such as:

• Meta / Instagram (same as Polygon)
• Ticketmaster, NFL (moved over from Polygon)
• Mattel
• Bud Light
• Hot Wheels (moved over from WAX blockchain)
• La Liga
• OneFootball
• AFL

We also saw International Cricket Council (ICC) launch through FanCraze, Inspector Gadget through Gamisodes, Billboard and Intel through Unblocked as well as the Bundesliga + other top European sporting leagues on The Football Club.

The largest kids social network, Zigazoo came to Flow. As did other major sporting leagues such as the NBL.

Ok, so both blockchains have great BD, but what can the Flow community learn from Polygon?

Here are our 4 key takeaways:

• Bringing in brands from more industries: Many of Flow’s brand partnerships are sports-focused whereas Polygon’s partnerships have a greater spread of industries
• Being louder: Flow’s BD is top-tier and comparable to Polygon’s. It just needs to be spoken about more on Twitter and the Internet
• Encouraging collaboration: Polygon’s CEO famously advocates for connecting large brands together. There are learnings here in getting large brands building on the chain to build composable experiences
• Strong identity: Polygon is becoming known as the ‘BD’ chain. How can Flow have an identity like this?

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