If you bet on the MATIC token to deliver the strongest gains out of the top 50 cryptocurrencies in terms of market cap, then your bet would be deep in the money.

The last 24 hours have been great for the crypto market considering the price recovery witnessed in most of the top cryptocurrencies. MATIC, the native cryptocurrency on the Polygon network secured a win as one of the biggest gainers in the top digital currencies after surging by 30.25% and is currently trading at $0.924.

Source: Binance

In comparison, Bitcoin whose price is responsible for the market-wide gains has only rallied just 4.69% at the time of writing. MATIC’s impressive price performance is unsurprising considering that it also happens to be one of the digital currencies that have experienced strong selling volume in the last week or so. The cryptocurrency has been in the red for the last consecutive 9 days after crossing below the 99-day moving average, until yesterday when the bulls regained control.

Why did MATIC register such a big rally?

MATIC would likely not have registered such impressive gains under normal circumstances, suggesting that its rally might have been aided by other catalysts. Numerous potential catalysts might have turbocharged its dramatic rise, such as its listing on KrakenFX and the announcement that Polygon’s CEO contributed to a fundraiser for an NFT platform called NFTically earlier in the day. Another likely catalyst that contributed to the gains was the presale of a DeFi and NFT project called Polylama that is natively hosted on Polygon.

The market-wide bullishness provided the base template for MATIC’s bounce back from the depths of its strong bearish run, but the aforementioned factors made it possible for the bulls to push further.

What to expect from Polygon moving forward

MATIC’s impressive action in the last 24 hours is largely pegged on recent events, which means that the bulls might lose their momentum in the short term if it lacks more tailwinds. However, its rally is also pegged heavily on Bitcoin due to its market dominance, which means that an uptick of BTC will likely pave the way for MATIC’s continued rally. On the other hand, MATIC holders should expect another price drop if Bitcoin’s price experiences another sharp nosedive especially in the short-term.

The long-term outlook for the MATIC token is also vague considering the uncertainties presented by Ethereum 2.0. Polygon’s biggest growth driver at least in the last few months was demand as a layer 2 scaling solution for the Ethereum blockchain. The latter has been experiencing a lot of congestion and high gas fees, thus fueling demand for layer 2 solutions like Polygon which are cheaper and have a higher transaction throughput.

The uncertainty comes from the fact that Ethereum is solving most of its issues through Ethereum 2.0, which leads to a scenario where Polygon might be redundant. However, that might not necessarily be the case if Polygon manages to attract more projects to launch on its network. Fortunately, recent developments indicate that Polygon has become particularly attractive for the budding NFT industry.

Polygon has a potentially bright future as long as it continues growing its user-base by remaining attractive to developers. So far it seems that it is on the right track and it will likely also continue operating as a layer 2 for Ethereum. However, the team behind Polygon seems to be focused on making sure that it stands out on its own for maximum growth potential. Attracting more projects to launch on its blockchain will generate organic growth for MATIC.