After a good amount of research, we decided to launch @SkyWeaverGame on @maticnetwork, at least until a better option comes along. We considered other options in 2020 and in the end we mainly debated between xDai and Matic.

Here's a few reasons as to why we picked Matic;

1/

Both are very similar in their nature. They are fully EVM compatible, they are delegated PoS and they saw similar amount of activity so far. Note here that I am *not* considering Matic's Plasma Chain, only their PoS chain.

2/

One key difference is their asset bridge design.

xDai *currently* uses a 3/4 authority bridge and these 4 authorities are Protofire, Giveth, POA, MakerDAO. Not only there is a good amount of trust involved, but if two of them go down (e.g. DDOS), the bridge is halted.

3/

This bridge only supports some ERC-20s. The Omnibridge they are working on will address some of the lack of tokens support and the "optimistic" bridge will be more secure, but the latter will require users to stake to withdraw, with a 24h delay, which will be bad UX.

4/

On the other hand, Matic uses a "true" bridge:

1. PoS validators submit a checkpoint (Matic state root) to mainnet once finalized (every ~30 minutes)

2. Users send merkle proof on mainnet to prove a given event occurred on Matic.

3. If proof is valid, user can withdraw.

5/

This is nice because the bridge is directly tied to their PoS security, unlike the xDai bridge which is a completely different system. It's also nice because the waiting period for the default bride on Matic is short, compared to the 24h the optimistic bridge xDai will have.

6/

Not only this, but the Matic bridges already supports any ERC-20, ERC-721 and ERC-1155. All in all, from what we've researched, Matic's bridge has better security, better UX and supports more assets, even when compared to the new incoming Optimistic Bridge xDai is working on.

7/

In addition, Matic uses Tendermint while xDai uses AuRa for their consensus algo and the former has more implementations and academic reviews. Anecdotally, Parity (AuRa's author) decided to use GRANDPA for finality and BABE for block authoring, while xDai uses AuRa for both.

8/

Here's some basic metrics regarding their PoS setup:

# of validators
Matic: 79
xDai: 15

Total $ staked
Matic: $22m
xDai: $3.2m

Source:
https://wallet.matic.network/staking/ 
https://blockscout.com/poa/xdai/validators

Lastly, both teams deserve to have their chance as Ethereum sidechains. One of the great benefit of EVM interoperability is that projects, including Skyweaver, can always migrate in the future to whichever L2 or sidechain proves to be more successful, whatever this means.

9/

Disclaimer: We own a small amount of $MATIC (~$500) to cover the future gas fees of our users.

end/