Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder of Polygon, is planning a new development path for the network, firmly believing that a single leadership model is crucial for Polygon's future.
In an exclusive interview with Cointelegraph, Nailwal pointed out that abandoning a board-led governance model is not only an organizational change but also a strategic adjustment aimed at addressing the inefficiencies that have long constrained Polygon's development momentum.
On June 11, he officially announced that he would take on the role of CEO of the Polygon Foundation, stating that this decision was a necessary step to bring "clear direction and execution" to the next phase of the project.
Under his independent leadership, this Ethereum scaling project will terminate its zkEVM chain and focus on developing real-world assets (RWA) and stablecoin payment services through Polygon PoS, while leveraging AggLayer technology to advance the vision of a blockchain internet.
In January of this year, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin announced that he held the sole decision-making power over the Ethereum Foundation's leadership, sparking widespread discussion in the industry.
"This is exactly the same, except I clearly state that I am the director," Nailwal told Cointelegraph when discussing his role.
After Polygon's rapid rise in 2021 and 2022, the project attempted to achieve "institutionalization" by mimicking the organizational structure of large enterprises. The Polygon Foundation was previously overseen by a board, a model that has now been abolished, with Nailwal as the sole decision-maker.
"The decision-making process indeed took too long. Decisions that should have been made within two weeks sometimes took two months to implement," he candidly stated.
Nailwal emphasized that streamlining the decision-making process does not mean abandoning empathy. He still maintains what he calls a "service mindset," a leadership style rooted in his upbringing. Both of his grandfathers worked as servants in a wealthy family, where they met and arranged his parents' marriage. "I believe this family history has instilled in me a deep-seated tendency—to want to make everyone happy, and that mindset still exists today. When you see others happy, you get a dopamine release—that's a human commonality—but in my case, that feeling is particularly strong."
He believes that this instinct helped establish the early community foundation of Polygon. Nailwal is one of the few top protocol founders who personally interacts with ordinary users, often responding directly to user messages on Telegram. It was only recently that he began to set appropriate boundaries for his personal social accounts.
"For ordinary users, when the token price goes up, they are happy; when it goes down, they are angry," he said. "After going through two or three cycles like this, I realized I couldn't invest all my energy into it."
Nailwal pointed out that the cryptocurrency industry itself is also evolving—from an early focus on theoretical research, such as the development of zero-knowledge proof technology, to a greater emphasis on practical application scenarios and revenue models.
"The industry generally believes this shift will eventually happen, but I think this trend is more evident now than ever," he said.
As Nailwal announced his decision, questions about the health of zkEVM began to emerge, with the technology set to gradually exit the market by 2026. This technology, once known as Hermez Network and acquired in 2021 for 250 million MATIC (POL) (then valued at about $250 million), was a strategic investment by Polygon to achieve Ethereum equivalence.
Nailwal stated, "It was launched with a lot of research support, and many people commented, 'This is amazing.' Vitalik [Buterin] and many industry experts praised this technology as incredible."
"However, when end users actually experienced it, its performance did not meet expectations. For a long time, we did not strongly incentivize user growth for zkEVM," he further added.
Assets locked in zkEVM have plummeted from over $35 million in July 2023 to just $2.75 million. According to DefiLlama data, the chain has continued to struggle with fee generation and has reportedly been operating at a loss.
As zkEVM gradually fades from the market, Polygon's strategic focus shifts to its PoS chain and AggLayer infrastructure. The PoS chain still locks in over $1 billion in total value, ranking among the top blockchains in the non-fungible token (NFT) trading space, and hosts approximately $1 billion each of USDC (USDC) and Tether's USDt (USDT).
Despite the overall decline in the NFT market, Nailwal pointed out that truly meaningful NFTs will continue to exist. He likened speculative NFTs to meme coins, believing that the "hype phase" has passed, making room for higher-quality projects. He further emphasized that the underlying NFT technology will still play a key role in asset tokenization, whether for fungible or non-fungible assets.
"NFT technology will undoubtedly be widely applied in tokenization and broader RWA application scenarios," he asserted.
"Our focus on substantive NFTs—rather than speculative, fake NFTs—has already begun to pay off. It is now very clear that stablecoin payments and asset tokenization will become two major application scenarios."
Polygon's strategic layout for these two blockchain application scenarios is highly aligned with global development trends. On June 17, the U.S. Senate passed the GENIUS stablecoin bill, and global regulatory discussions are deepening. Meanwhile, real-world asset tokenization (RWAs) is attracting significant interest from institutional investors, including BlackRock, which is currently running its tokenized money market fund on multiple blockchains, including Polygon.
Polygon raised $450 million in 2022, with investors including Sequoia Capital, SoftBank, and Tiger Global, and then attempted to establish a board to align with institutional trends.
But now it has returned to the entrepreneurial stage of going from zero to one. Nailwal dissolved the board to streamline execution. However, with zkEVM about to exit the stage, the industry's focus is rapidly shifting, and the burden of proving its value now entirely rests on whether single leadership can deliver tangible results.
Nailwal noted, "We need to return to actual product development. Your product must be good enough that people are willing to pay for it."
For him, this also means his evolution as a leader—from trying to please everyone to focusing on the best interests of Polygon.
"This will upset some people, whether they are within or outside our community. But we have no choice," he added.
Nailwal and Polygon are fully betting on the "Gigagas" roadmap, aiming to expand its network to 100,000 transactions per second. This aligns with modern competitors that are expanding networks or launching faster blockchains.
So far, the community's response to Nailwal's claim of leading Polygon alone has been mixed. Some professionals praise his wartime CEO stance, while others point out the costly detour of zkEVM.
Nevertheless, Nailwal firmly believes that a faster decision-making process is exactly what is needed: "Life has given me the opportunity to compete on a global level. I must become that 25-year-old again, ready to give it my all."
Whether this bet on himself will succeed may become clear by the end of this year, when the network will strive to achieve its TPS milestone and prove its relevance in an increasingly mature crypto ecosystem.
Related: Traders: The fund transfer from Bitcoin (BTC) to Ethereum (ETH) has gone unnoticed by the market due to the impact of "bear market trauma."
Original article: “Sandeep Nailwal Takes Full Control of Polygon, Seizing the Opportunity for a 'Full Bet'”
免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。
