Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal has formally assumed the function of CEO of the Polygon Basis, marking a pivot within the group’s management make-up and a sweeping overhaul of the community’s longterm roadmap.
Nailwal, who launched the challenge in 2017 when it was nonetheless known as Matic Community, will consolidate management and reorient the crew towards AggLayer — Polygon’s new cross-chain liquidity protocol that guarantees seamless interoperability throughout networks.
“This renewed management marks the start of a strategic push for Polygon to reclaim its place on the forefront of Web3,” the crew wrote in a press launch shared with CoinDesk
As chief government, Nailwal will steer long-term planning, information key ecosystem initiatives, and be certain that the inspiration — which oversees Polygon Labs and different affiliated entities — delivers “exponential progress, elevated focus and higher worth to POL stakers,” in keeping with the inspiration.
In its early days, Polygon’s proof-of-stake sidechain marketed itself as a low-cost, quick various to Ethereum, offering customers with entry to decentralized apps with out the burden of excessive fuel charges. It shortly rose to prominence as a go-to Ethereum scaling resolution.
However exercise has since cooled. Whole worth locked (TVL) throughout Polygon networks has fallen to round $1 billion, down practically 90% from its June 2021 peak of $9.79 billion, per DefiLlama.
Polygon has ceded floor to a brand new wave of Ethereum scaling networks — particularly “layer-2 rollups” like Optimism and Arbitrum — which supply related person experiences however with tighter Ethereum compatibility and extra refined safety methods. Polygon’s personal rollup, zkEVM, ranks simply twenty seventh by TVL amongst layer-2s, in keeping with L2Beat, trailing effectively behind its newer rivals.
Now, the zkEVM experiment is being phased out. Polygon mentioned it’ll sundown the zkEVM Mainnet Beta in 2026, citing developer friction, architectural limitations, and sluggish adoption. “To make sure a easy transition, the sequencer will stay dwell for the subsequent twelve months,” the crew famous.
The choice additionally comes with a key personnel shift: Jordi Baylina, Polygon’s zero-knowledge analysis lead, will go away to spin out his personal challenge, ZisK.
As a part of its strategic reset, Polygon will double down on its flagship PoS sidechain, now focusing on real-world monetary belongings (RWAs). The inspiration teased an “formidable roadmap” with milestones to remodel the chain right into a “gigagas” community able to processing 100,000 transactions per second and securing trillions in tokenized belongings.
Polygon’s reorganization mirrors adjustments on the Ethereum Basis, which just lately restructured its management and revamped its roadmap in a course of led by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin.
In a publish on X, Nailwal mentioned Ethereum’s “existential disaster” had pushed Polygon to revisit its core identification — returning to a bolder, extra nimble, and extra decisive “zero-to-one” mentality.
His acknowledged purpose: “to ship higher worth to POL stakers and produce elevated readability to the broader market.” POL, beforehand known as MATIC, is Polygon’s native token. The asset might be “staked” with Polygon’s PoS community to assist safe it in trade for rewards.
The timing of the revamp, Nailwal advised, might work in POL’s favor.
“The SEC has dropped its investigations and lawsuits associated to MATIC as a safety, which ought to have by no means existed given the character of MATIC (and now POL),” he wrote. “We’re excited to see a number of massive market makers coming again to the desk in latest days to make markets in POL that strengthens the liquidity of POL on exchanges globally.”
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