Latest news with #AggLayer
Time of India
11-06-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Polygon cofounder Sandeep Nailwal takes over as CEO amid restructuring
Sandeep Nailwal , cofounder of blockchain firm Polygon, will take over as the chief executive officer of Polygon Foundation , which includes Polygon Labs , as the company undergoes restructuring. The company, which was started in 2017 to solve the scaling issues of blockchain Ethereum , has been facing challenges in the last couple of years. It saw the exodus of co-founders, Jayant Kanani, Anurag Arjun, and Mihailo Bjelic, along with the exit of Ryan Wyatt, former CEO of Polygon Labs. The company had strengthened its US team, which created friction between the India and US teams, ET had earlier reported. The firm has been facing increasing competition from other players such as Coinbase's Base and Optimism, even as it saw most of its cofounders leave the firm. As a part of the restructuring, the company will focus on launching the AggLayer, short for aggregation layer, a blockchain protocol that facilitates interoperability between chains by FY25. It will shut down zkEVM, on the back of development hurdles. In a statement, the company said that the product lacked a strong strategic position and was no longer aligned with the evolving needs of the ecosystem. Other changes include Polygon PoS, which is now Gigagas, and will handle 100,000 transactions per second. The press statement said that the firm has processed $514 billion in stablecoin transactions in the past year and $3.7 billion in peer-to-peer (P2P) volume in April 2025. Discover the stories of your interest Blockchain 5 Stories Cyber-safety 7 Stories Fintech 9 Stories E-comm 9 Stories ML 8 Stories Edtech 6 Stories The company said that organisations such as Stripe, Reliance Jio, Nexo and BlindPay have built solutions on its blockchain.
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Polygon's Sandeep Nailwal Takes Over as Foundation CEO Amid Strategic Shakeup
Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal has officially assumed the role of CEO of the Polygon Foundation, marking a pivot in the organization's leadership makeup and a sweeping overhaul of the network's longterm roadmap. Nailwal, who launched the project in 2017 when it was still called Matic Network, will consolidate control and reorient the team toward AggLayer — Polygon's new cross-chain liquidity protocol that promises seamless interoperability across networks. "This renewed control marks the beginning of a strategic push for Polygon to reclaim its position at the forefront of Web3," the team wrote in a press release shared with CoinDesk As chief executive, Nailwal will steer long-term planning, guide key ecosystem initiatives, and ensure that the foundation — which oversees Polygon Labs and other affiliated entities — delivers 'exponential growth, increased focus and greater value to POL stakers,' according to the foundation. In its early days, Polygon's proof-of-stake sidechain marketed itself as a low-cost, fast alternative to Ethereum, providing users with access to decentralized apps without the burden of high gas fees. It quickly rose to prominence as a go-to Ethereum scaling solution. But activity has since cooled. Total value locked (TVL) across Polygon networks has fallen to around $1 billion, down nearly 90% from its June 2021 peak of $9.79 billion, per DefiLlama. Polygon has ceded ground to a new wave of Ethereum scaling networks — namely 'layer-2 rollups' like Optimism and Arbitrum — which offer similar user experiences but with tighter Ethereum compatibility and more sophisticated security systems. Polygon's own rollup, zkEVM, ranks just 27th by TVL among layer-2s, according to L2Beat, trailing well behind its newer competitors. Now, the zkEVM experiment is being phased out. Polygon said it will sunset the zkEVM Mainnet Beta in 2026, citing developer friction, architectural limitations, and sluggish adoption. 'To ensure a smooth transition, the sequencer will remain live for the next twelve months,' the team noted. The decision also comes with a key personnel shift: Jordi Baylina, Polygon's zero-knowledge research lead, will leave to spin out his own project, ZisK. As part of its strategic reset, Polygon will double down on its flagship PoS sidechain, now targeting real-world financial assets (RWAs). The foundation 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. Polygon's reorganization mirrors changes at the Ethereum Foundation, which recently restructured its leadership and revamped its roadmap in a process led by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. In a post on X, Nailwal said Ethereum's 'existential crisis' had pushed Polygon to revisit its core identity — returning to a bolder, more nimble, and more decisive 'zero-to-one' mentality. His stated goal: "to deliver greater value to POL stakers and bring increased clarity to the broader market." POL, previously called MATIC, is Polygon's native token. The asset can be "staked" with Polygon's PoS network to help secure it in exchange for rewards. The timing of the revamp, Nailwal suggested, could work in POL's favor. "The SEC has dropped its investigations and lawsuits related to MATIC as a security, which should have never existed given the nature of MATIC (and now POL)," he wrote. "We are excited to see several large market makers coming back to the table in recent days to make markets in POL that strengthens the liquidity of POL on exchanges globally." Read more: Polygon, GSR Release Katana Network Tackle DeFi Fragmentation
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Polygon, GSR Release Katana Network Tackle DeFi Fragmentation
Katana, a new decentralized finance (DeFi)-focused blockchain incubated by industry heavyweights Polygon and GSR, shared on Wednesday that its private mainnet has gone live. The new layer-2 blockchain will unify 'all liquidity in a set of protocols and collect yield from all potential sources," the team shared in a press release sent to CoinDesk. Katana's goal is "to power a self-sustaining DeFi engine for long-term growth,' it said. Marc Boiron, the CEO of Polygon Labs, told CoinDesk that Katana emerged to address DeFi fragmentation, where digital assets are distributed across various apps and ecosystems, making certain types of investing cumbersome. Katana was built using AggLayer — Polygon's platform for building interoperable blockchains. 'One of the things that we want is a super deep liquidity hub on the AggLayer, so that every chain can tap into that,' Boiron said. 'When you look across everything in crypto, what you realize is that there's actually no chain that's built very well for actually having deep liquidity.' Katana aims to improve blockchain liquidity — including lending, trading, and yield bearing strategies — by integrating with popular apps like Sushi, a major decentralized exchange, and Morpho, a popular decentralized lending ecosystem. Polygon Labs, the team behind the layer-2 network, helped design the chain, while GSR, the crypto market-maker, advised on the user experience and is lending liquidity to help get the platform off the ground. 'We are providing the on-chain liquidity — or 'grease' — to make sure that people can actually use the chain on day one,' said Jakob Palmstierna, President at GSR. Currently, Katana is open to a limited group of users. It includes a pre-deposit phase that allows users to park their ETH, USDC, USDT, and WBTC for a chance to win KAT tokens, the network's new governance and utility token. Though activity is limited at this private stage, early deposits are being incentivized through a lootbox-style reward system. Katana's public mainnet is expected to arrive at the end of in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
16-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Polygon Labs' Marc Boiron on Unifying Blockchains
Marc Boiron, CEO of Polygon Labs, speaks with a practiced clarity that reflects his background as a lawyer. Over the course of our conversation, he outlines Polygon's strategy to position itself as the connective tissue in an increasingly crowded blockchain ecosystem. As competition intensifies and market conditions fluctuate, Polygon is betting on a new product called AggLayer to unify the fragmented world of blockchain – a vision that's ambitious, though not without its challenges. Boiron's path to blockchain leadership followed an unconventional route through legal corridors. A former law firm partner, he served as Chief Legal Officer at dYdX before joining Polygon Labs in a similar capacity, eventually ascending to CEO. He talked about blockchain infrastructure, as the industry confronts questions of interoperability, scalability, and practical utility. Boiron is a speaker at this year's Consensus festival in Toronto May 14-16. CoinDesk: Your background is primarily in law rather than technology. Tell me about it? Boiron: I'm the CEO at Polygon Labs. I've been the CEO for about two years now. Before that, I was the Chief Legal Officer at Polygon Labs for about a year. I joined Polygon after having been the Chief Legal Officer at dYdX for a while. I was frankly just really excited about joining a team that was looking to scale Web3 in the way that Polygon is. Before being on the Polygon legal team, I was a partner at various big law firms in the U.S., advising on crypto since 2017. CoinDesk: Polygon describes itself as building an 'Internet of Value.' That's a compelling phrase, but what does it actually mean in concrete terms? Boiron: From Polygon's perspective, we're trying to build a trustless internet that makes it easily accessible to anyone to do whatever they want whenever they want with their assets. The way that shows up is through a product that we are developing called the AggLayer. The AggLayer is intended to be a form of settlement for every chain across crypto in general. The Internet of Value contrasts with today's internet, which is primarily the Internet of Information. Web3's fundamental innovation is bringing actual value on-chain. The challenge we face is how to scale this capability across the entire digital ecosystem Right now the answer is many different blockchains that exist. But if you actually want to have something that feels like the internet of information becoming the internet of value, you need something that brings together all of those chains so that you can get a massive amount of transactions happening across all of these chains, but in a seamless way that feels just like the current internet. So the Internet of Value really gets brought to life through AggLayer. CoinDesk: Interoperability has been promised by many projects over the years. What technical approach is Polygon taking with AggLayer that you believe will succeed where others have struggled? Boiron: AggLayer is a product designed to unite all of Web3 on a single settlement layer. Currently, what's missing in the ecosystem is a secure way to move between different chains. The only effective solution for secure and rapid cross-chain movement is to use a settlement layer like AggLayer. In practice, this means the ability to finalize transactions between two different chains in less than two seconds. Our model differs from other cross-chain infrastructure in how it handles asset transfers. We monitor all assets moving in and out of chains. When someone initiates an asset transfer out of a chain, we use pessimistic proof to verify and confirm the assets' existence on that chain before allowing the transfer. Currently, this system works exclusively with Polygon CDK chains. However, we're launching an update soon that will allow any EVM chain to connect to AggLayer. This expansion brings us closer to our vision of unifying all of Web3 through AggLayer. CoinDesk: Real-World Assets on blockchain have been discussed for years with limited practical implementation. What's your perspective on RWAs, and how do they fit into Polygon's overall approach to the market? Boiron: One of Polygon's core strengths has always been our relationships with financial institutions, which is crucial for both real-world assets (RWA) and payments. When it comes to payments, Polygon POS hosts nearly 50 stablecoins. Every major fintech player that operates on other chains is also on Polygon, though many Polygon-based companies operate exclusively on our platform. For instance, Lemon Cash in Argentina operates exclusively on our platform. Other major payment companies like Stripe process most of their volume through Polygon POS, while companies like Grab in Singapore use Polygon POS alongside other chains. We've established 18 tokenized funds on Polygon POS, and our strategy focuses on making these assets truly functional. Currently, most tokenized assets across chains remain dormant after creation, offering little advantage over their traditional counterparts. Our focus is integrating these assets into DeFi, starting with enabling them as collateral in lending pools for borrowing purposes. CoinDesk: How is Polygon responding to recent market volatility and regulatory developments? Boiron: From our perspective, we just keep building regardless of what the environment is. We know what it is that we want to build, and we just keep building away at it. The market reactions obviously impact adoption. Ultimately, the economy ends up impacting the adoption for everything in the world, and it's no different for crypto. The only thing that we can do is keep building away, and as the market turns, being very well-positioned with great products that users want to use. CoinDesk: Several new blockchains have launched with claims of superior performance metrics. How does Polygon position its original POS chain in this increasingly competitive landscape? Boiron: I think Polygon POS is already very well-positioned for that. There's a reason why we see payments being adopted on POS — it is because it is actually already fast and low-cost. The thing with everything that we build, including Polygon POS, is that we're continuing to adapt it. One of the things that's exciting is that we get to see innovations across the space. People get to see how Polygon POS is innovated and adopt some of those things. We get to look at what others are doing and adopt some of their ideas as well as continuing to research and bring in new ideas ourselves. So I think what you'll end up seeing on POS is a chain that's just as fast or faster than all of the new chains that we're talking about here. The nice thing is that comes along with years of very good security and still maintaining the low costs that currently exist on-chain.
