Glossary
Polygon
Originally a Plasma sidechain to Ethereum, now an umbrella for several scaling stacks (Polygon PoS, zkEVM, CDK) under a unified ZK-based roadmap.
Polygon began life as Matic Network in 2017, a Plasma + PoS sidechain for Ethereum that became the cheap-and-EVM-compatible home for many large dApps (Aave, Uniswap, OpenSea).
The brand now covers several stacks: Polygon PoS (the original sidechain), Polygon zkEVM (a ZK rollup), and the Polygon CDK (developer kit for spawning ZK-secured app chains). The 2.0 roadmap unifies them under an aggregation layer with shared liquidity.