Sandeep Nailwal Opens Up About the Past, Present, & Future of Finance

Nicole Grinstead (@NrdGrl007)

When you hear the name “Polygon” with respect to cryptocurrency, you probably think about the chain that has been integrating with large corporations from Instagram to Disney. Since 2020, Polygonpreviously known as MATIC - has exploded in adoption. So much so that you might find the humble roots from which this chain was born difficult to believe. But long before Matic became Polygon and Polygon became a household name, Sandeep Nailwal and Polygon’s now legendary cofounders (Jaynti Kanani, Sandeep Nailwal, Anuraj Arjun, and Mihailo Bjelic) had a dream - to help Ethereum scale.

Sandeep wistfully recalls, “I remember saying ‘we know we made it when we can no longer keep up with the number of projects that are building on our chain.’ We went from a small group of coders hacking together nightly in the same house we lived in to running a chain with $15 billion in TVL and many teams working on various scaling solutions like zkEVM.” Luckily, CryptoMag was able to snag a few moments of the busy co-founder’s time to catch up on the past, present, and future of Polygon and finance.

Humble Origins

We started out by asking Sandeep what it was like in Polygon’s early days. We’d heard that few people then thought a scaling solution for Ethereum would be necessary, so we asked how he knew otherwise.

“When we founded Polygon in 2017, many people thought that Ethereum’s transition to PoS was just around the corner, and it would solve all of the chain’s scalability issues. Of course, we knew better because we were software engineers. People laughed at me/us, but I was used to it. Throughout my life, friends would always laugh at me because I always said that someday I was going to do something really big… Granted, I had no idea what it would be, but I always knew, and that was my guiding light. Back then, few people believed that a small team of engineers from India could pull off something of this scale. They thought we couldn’t make it sustainable or last for a long time, which only motivated us more. We had to prove them wrong.”

Prove them wrong, they did!

In the years since crypto’s last bull run, Polygon has exceeded all expectations. They’ve announced partnerships and integrations with mainstream institutions like JP Morgan, Starbucks, and Instagram - just to name a few. In 2023, former US President Donald Trump launched an NFT collection on Polygon to fund his next run for the highest office in the land.

So we asked Sandeep what he would say the turning point was. When did the broader crypto/ blockchain industry start to realize that Polygon was a contender? Did anything specific happen, or was it more gradual?

“In the years since 2017, the perception about Indian people has shifted dramatically. Now, we’ve seen so many successful Indian entrepreneurs. I’ve even joked that what I used to call the brown discount has become the brown premium.”

“In the last bull run, Ethereum’s lack of scalability became very apparent. People could no longer deny the need for sidechains and layer 2 solutions.”

“Internally, at Polygon the turning point came when we realized that scaling Ethereum was just the tip of the iceberg. We saw the need for a broader, more versatile scaling solution that could support multiple chains and bridge them together seamlessly. That’s also when we decided to rebrand Matic as Polygon and focus on building a full-stack scaling solution for the entire blockchain industry.”

The past, the present, & the future as well

Polygon’s team is far more than the four Mumbai-based software engineers who founded the Matic Network. Today, Polygon is a multi billion dollar empire in-the-making with dozens of departments and hundreds of employees worldwide.

Everyone is thrilled with Polygon’s present, but don’t worry, the team isn’t slowing down anytime soon. Sandeep says he’s let go of the chip on his shoulder that used to drive him. Instead, the desire to exceed the high standards he set for himself as a child when he said “I’m going to be a big man” motivates him to keep pressing forward.

We closed out the interview by asking Sandeep what he’s most excited about for Polygon’s future and if he has any alpha to share with readers today.

“I’m excited to keep expanding and improving the Polygon ecosystem. I can’t disclose any ‘alpha’ per se, but tune in to my keynote speech at PolyCon 2023 February 23-25 for some hints about what the future could hold.

More broadly, I remain enthusiastic about blockchain technology because it represents an evolution. Blockchain is more than a technology. It’s the evolution of humanity.”