Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal has formally assumed the position 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 venture in 2017 when it was nonetheless known as Matic Community, will consolidate management and reorient the group 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 group wrote in a press launch shared with CoinDesk
As chief government, Nailwal will steer long-term planning, information key ecosystem initiatives, and make sure that the muse — which oversees Polygon Labs and different affiliated entities — delivers “exponential progress, elevated focus and higher worth to POL stakers,” in accordance with the muse.
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 gasoline charges. It rapidly rose to prominence as a go-to Ethereum scaling answer.
However exercise has since cooled. Whole worth locked (TVL) throughout Polygon networks has fallen to round $1 billion, down almost 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 — specifically “layer-2 rollups” like Optimism and Arbitrum — which supply comparable consumer experiences however with tighter Ethereum compatibility and extra subtle safety methods. Polygon’s personal rollup, zkEVM, ranks simply twenty seventh by TVL amongst layer-2s, in accordance with L2Beat, trailing nicely behind its newer opponents.
Now, the zkEVM experiment is being phased out. Polygon stated it is going to sundown the zkEVM Mainnet Beta in 2026, citing developer friction, architectural limitations, and sluggish adoption. “To make sure a clean transition, the sequencer will stay dwell for the following twelve months,” the group famous.
The choice additionally comes with a key personnel shift: Jordi Baylina, Polygon’s zero-knowledge analysis lead, will depart to spin out his personal venture, ZisK.
As a part of its strategic reset, Polygon will double down on its flagship PoS sidechain, now focusing on real-world monetary property (RWAs). The muse 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 property.
Polygon’s reorganization mirrors modifications 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 put up on X, Nailwal stated 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 said purpose: “to ship higher worth to POL stakers and convey 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 alternate for rewards.
The timing of the revamp, Nailwal recommended, 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 giant market makers coming again to the desk in current days to make markets in POL that strengthens the liquidity of POL on exchanges globally.”
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