Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder of Polygon, has officially taken on the role of CEO of the Polygon Foundation, marking a significant shift in the organization's leadership and a major revamp of its long-term strategy. Nailwal, who launched the project in 2017 under the name Matic Network, will now oversee the consolidation of control and the reorientation of the team towards AggLayer, Polygon's new cross-chain liquidity protocol designed to provide seamless interoperability across networks.
According to a press release, this move marks the beginning of a strategic push for Polygon to regain its position at the forefront of Web3. As CEO, Nailwal will be responsible for long-term planning, guiding key ecosystem initiatives, and ensuring the foundation delivers exponential growth, increased focus, and greater value to POL stakers. Initially, Polygon's proof-of-stake sidechain offered a low-cost, fast alternative to Ethereum, providing access to decentralized apps without high gas fees, quickly rising to prominence as a go-to Ethereum scaling solution. However, activity has since declined, with total value locked across Polygon networks falling to around $1 billion, a nearly 90% drop from its June 2021 peak of $9.79 billion, according to DefiLlama.
The rise of new Ethereum scaling networks, such as layer-2 rollups like Optimism and Arbitrum, which offer similar user experiences with tighter Ethereum compatibility and more advanced security systems, has led to Polygon ceding ground. Polygon's own rollup, zkEVM, currently ranks 27th by TVL among layer-2s, according to L2Beat, significantly trailing its newer competitors. As a result, the zkEVM experiment is being phased out, with Polygon announcing the sunset of the zkEVM Mainnet Beta in 2026 due to developer friction, architectural limitations, and slow adoption.
The sequencer will remain live for the next twelve months to ensure a smooth transition. This decision is accompanied by a key personnel shift, with Jordi Baylina, Polygon's zero-knowledge research lead, leaving to spin out his own project, ZisK.
As part of its strategic reset, Polygon will focus on its flagship PoS sidechain, now targeting real-world financial assets. The foundation has teased an ambitious roadmap with milestones to transform the chain into a gigagas network capable of processing 100,000 transactions per second and securing trillions in tokenized assets.
This reorganization mirrors changes at the Ethereum Foundation, which recently restructured its leadership and revamped its roadmap under the guidance of Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. Nailwal stated that Ethereum's existential crisis prompted Polygon to revisit its core identity, adopting a bolder, more agile, and decisive zero-to-one mentality. His goal is to deliver greater value to POL stakers and bring increased clarity to the broader market. The timing of the revamp, Nailwal suggested, could work in POL's favor, as the SEC has dropped its investigations and lawsuits related to MATIC as a security, and several large market makers are returning to make markets in POL, strengthening its liquidity on exchanges globally.