Jio Platforms said it plans to add web3 features to its existing applications through an alliance with the Polygon blockchain. However, the announcement was a little thin on the details of what it’s planning specifically. Jio is the largest mobile phone operator with 448 million active users, a market share of around 42%. It’s owned by energy firm Reliance Industries.
“This is a significant step forward for web3 adoption in India,” said Polygon’s founder Sandeep Nailwal. “We look forward to working with Jio as they introduce Web3 to their millions of customers.”
Polygon has proven popular for traditional finance applications. For example, Germany is one of the most advanced economies in terms of tokenization, and Polygon appears to be the public blockchain of choice with the vast majority of security token issuances under the Electronic Securities Act (eWpG) using it.
However, it appears to have lost its luster amongst the DeFi community. Its token value is down 40% in the past year, whereas Solana’s has doubled, Avalanche is up by around 15% and Hedera’s HBAR is up sixfold. It under-performs on one of the key metrics – total value locked (TVL) on DeFi platforms. However, it has a comparatively high number of active addresses.
While Jio has a massive customer base, the devil will be in the details. How will web3 be used? And will a large proportion of its customers engage?
