Two decentralized finance (DeFi) projects, HedgeUp (HDUP) and Polygon (MATIC) are pulling in experienced investors from other chains. And why not? Both projects have layers of utility to offer. Not a stand-alone blockchain, Polygon is built as a Layer 2 scaling solution on the Ethereum blockchain. Even after The Merge, Ethereum does a poor job of handling the blockchain trilemma. On its own, it is slow and expensive to process transactions. Hence the need for scaling solutions.