Monitor the Polygon Mempool with Blocknative

How developers and traders can create real-time transaction experiences on Polygon with Blocknative

Polygon is a protocol and framework used for building and connecting Ethereum-compatible blockchain networks. Their Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible sidechain allows Web3 developers to easily move or copy their existing decentralized applications (Dapps) on Ethereum and deploy them on Polygon. Traders utilizing Dapps on Polygon can then benefit from the network’s increased transaction speed and lower gas fees when compared to Ethereum. 

Polygon’s rapidly growing user base, low transaction costs, and compatibility with EVM smart contracts have led many developers to build on this public blockchain network. In this article, we will demonstrate how Blocknative’s proven real-time infrastructure helps Web3 developers improve the user experience of their Dapps and offer traders new profit opportunities.

The Polygon Mempool

Polygon is one of the fastest-growing Ethereum scaling solutions, as well as one of the fastest-growing protocols by user base. This rapid growth is largely due to the massive network effects of the Ethereum ecosystem and the need for scalability solutions so the network can support more users and lower transaction costs. 

As Polygon continues to reach more end-users, the need for mempool data becomes increasingly important for both developers and traders, which is why Blocknative worked with the Polygon ecosystem to support this chain.

How does the Polygon mempool work?

Between January 1-7, 2022, the average block time on Ethereum was 13.2 seconds with roughly 188 transactions per block. On Polygon, the average block time during the same period was 2.3 seconds with 48 transactions on average per block. This means, in the same 13.2 seconds, Polygon was able to confirm on average 271 transactions—44% more transactions than the Ethereum network. 

While the Polygon mempool works almost identically to the Ethereum mempool (with the only real difference being the use of a Proof-of-Stake consensus rather than Proof-of-Work), the increased speed and throughput of the Polygon network means unconfirmed transactions are sitting in the Polygon mempool for much shorter times.

This increased volume and decreased latency for transactions, when compared to Ethereum, means gaining an edge in the Polygon ecosystem requires enterprise machines and tools to facilitate real-time visibility into the network.

Why use Polygon mempool monitoring tools?

Although it is possible to run a node yourself to monitor the Polygon mempool, a single node would only contain a partial view of the global mempool. It’s difficult and expensive to accurately manage the mempool on your own. Blocknative can help. We offer a subscription to the Blocknative mempool API where traders and developers can monitor activity across multiple chains including Polygon and Ethereum.

Blocknative’s mempool monitoring tools enable users to track and monitor specific wallet or smart contract addresses, as well as filter mempool data by a number of different properties, such as transaction status, value, asset, and more. 

Our platform also offers a suite of blockchain developer tools for the Polygon mempool that are accessible through webhooks and websockets, allowing for seamless Dapp integrations.

How do Polygon mempool monitoring tools help Web3 developers? 

One of the main use cases of mempool monitoring tools for a developer is to build a more positive user experience on a Dapp or wallet. 

Currently, if you send a transaction on a decentralized exchange (DEX) like Quickswap, you don’t have transparency into the internal transactions and smart contract functions behind the scenes. This lack of visibility into the dark forest of the mempool can be scary for users, especially when bridging tokens from Ethereum to polygon can sometimes take up to 10 minutes.

With Polygon mempool monitoring tools, developers can improve the user experience (UX) of their decentralized application by providing real-time feedback to their users so they know the exact status of their transactions, whether that be pending, confirmed, sped-up, or any issues that may have happened along the way. 

Web3 developers can also utilize mempool data internally to analyze how their users are transacting in order to improve the overall performance of their Dapp. A great example of this is monitoring how long your Dapp users are spending pre-chain, waiting for a transaction to be confirmed. 

From a developer perspective, the longer it takes a user to receive confirmation about their transaction, the greater the worry and frustration from users. With Polygon mempool notifications, developers can provide real-time information to users about the state of their transaction, resulting in reduced transaction confirmation anxiety

However, before users can even transact it is important to ensure they can seemlessly and intuitively shift between networks like Ethereum and Polygon. Tools like Blocknative’s Onboard can help ensure a frictionless user experience and ensure your dapp has multi-wallet, multi-network support. We consider it to be web3's most powerful connect wallet button. Our actively supported open-source library contains multi-chain wallet support for Ethereum, xDai, Binance Smart Chain, Boba, Fantom, and Polygon.

By leveraging Blocknative's Mempool API and integrating Onboard’s ​​open-source JavaScript library, developers get the benefits of enterprise-grade hardware and our deep Dev Ops expertise. 

How do Polygon mempool monitoring tools help traders? 

Traders use mempool data in a vastly different fashion than web3 wallet and Dapp developers. Traders and MEV searchers want signals on imminent transactions before they reach consensus so they can make real-time decisions. With Polygon mempool data, traders open themselves up to multiple profit opportunities through arbitrage and front running. 

The mempool is the strongest piece of confluence on what is going to happen in the future, allowing traders to position themselves ahead of competing traders and MEV searchers that are waiting for Polygon transactions to be confirmed on-chain. 

For example, traders using Blocknative’s Polygon mempool monitoring tools can see pending transactions that will have a significant impact on the liquidity in a specific pool, and because this change in liquidity impacts the exchange rate, traders can submit a transaction in front of or behind the pending transaction to take advantage of the exchange rate delta. 

For example, many Polygon traders monitor popular contracts like Quickswap’s factory for new trading pairs. By tracking mempool data they can see what is about to happen and use this information to create new trading strategies. 

While these arbitrage opportunities are usually out of reach for the average trader on Ethereum due to infrastructure and capital constraints, emerging Ethereum scaling solutions like Polygon make advanced crypto trading strategies possible for traders and MEV searchers. This opens the space to a new demographic of traders that were previously priced out of trading on Ethereum.

Polygon mempool monitoring in action on the Uniswap v3 deployment 

After a recent Uniswap governance vote, Uniswap v3, one of the largest Automated Market Makers (AMMs) on Ethereum, has launched on Polygon, enabling traders to save a tremendous amount on gas fees, increase the speed of transactions, and welcoming new traders onto the platform.

With one of the largest communities in the Ethereum ecosystem and over 72 million votes (more than 99% of the total vote) in favor of deploying Uniswap v3 on Polygon, it is clear that the additional deployment on Polygon was a highly welcomed decision.  

Blocknative provides Polygon network traders with real-time visibility into the status of every in-flight Polygon transaction so your existing real-time trading strategies can be readily applied to Polygon network opportunities. Specifically: 

• Mempool Explorer — To easily build real-time transaction event streams.
• API and SDK — To integrate Blocknative mempool event streams directly into your trading strategies.
• Contract decoding — Upload custom ABIs for any arbitrary Polygon-based smart contract.

You can monitor the Uniswap v3 contracts on Polygon using Blocknative’s Mempool Explorer here.

Get Started Today

Polygon is an exploding ecosystem that has the ability to tap into the largest community of Web3 developers and traders in the world—all at a fraction of the cost of operating on Ethereum mainnet. The low barrier to entry for developers and traders creates a conducive environment and need for mempool data.

The value of accessing every state change, error, and anomaly plus a filtering system to find meaningful data will make an immediate impact for you, your customers, and your organization. 

Advantages of Blocknative’s Polygon Mempool Tools

Developers and traders use Blocknative’s suite of Dapp developer tools including our API, SDK, Mempool Explorer, Notify, and Onboard to monitor transaction lifecycles. Users experience the following benefits with Blocknative’s Polygon mempool monitoring tools:

• Lightning-fast, commercial nodes capable of processing up to 5,000 pending transactions per second.
• Unified monitoring of Dapp performance across multiple blockchains with one API and a consistent schema payload.
• A notification pipeline optimized for low latency delivery of transaction state changes.
• Nodes with the capability to process up to 5,000 pending transactions per second.
• Polygon mempool data streams of accurate, real-time flow of in-flight transactions.
• Full support for replacement transactions on Polygon including speed-ups and cancels.
• An API and SDK that allows you to run an enterprise-grade infrastructure on Polygon without the hassle of setting it up yourself.
• A team focused on creating easy-to-use Dapp developer tools so you can spend more time building world-class products or trading.

Try Blocknative for free by creating and saving your own custom configurations on Mempool Explorer and check out our Discord to connect with others transacting on Polygon.