The co-founder of Polygon, Sandeep Nailwal, officially assumed the role of CEO of the Polygon Foundation, marking a pivot in the makeup of leadership of the organization and a radical overhaul of the long-term roadmap of the network.
Nailwal, who launched the project in 2017 while his name was still Matic Network, will consolidate control and redirect the team to Aggayer – the new transversal Liquidity Protocol of Polygon which promises transparent interoperability in networks.
“This renewed control marks the start of a strategic thrust for Polygon to recover its position at the avant-garde of Web3,” the team wrote in a press release shared with Coindesk
As chief executive officer, Nailwal will direct the long -term planning, will guide the initiatives of the key ecosystem and ensure that the Foundation – which oversees polygons and other affiliated entities – offers “exponential growth, increased concentration and greater value for stakers”, according to the foundation.
At its beginnings, the Sidechain chain of proof of Polygon has marketed as a quick and low cost alternative to Ethereum, giving users access to decentralized applications without the load of high gas costs. He quickly got importance as an essential Ethereum scaling solution.
But the activity has since cooled. Total locked value (TVL) on polygon networks fell to around $ 1 billion, down almost 90% compared to its June 2021 peak by $ 9.79 billion, by Defillama.
Polygon has given the ground to a new wave of Ethereum scaling networks – namely “layer 2 rollers” such as optimism and arbitrum – which offer similar user experiences but with stricter ethereum compatibility and more sophisticated security systems. According to L2Beat, Polygon’s own Rollup, ZKEVM, only ranks 27th by TVL among TVL among diapers.
Now the ZKEVM experience is being removed. Polygon said that it would sleep the beta version of the Zkevm Mainnet in 2026, citing the friction of the developer, architectural limitations and slow adoption. “To ensure a smooth transition, the sequencer will remain live during the next twelve months,” noted the team.
The decision also comes with a change of key staff: Jordi Baylina, head of research on zero knowledge of Polygon, will let his own project turn, Zisk.
As part of its strategic reset, Polygon will double its Flagship POS Sidechain, now targeting the financial assets of the real world (RWAS). 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 to secure billions of tokenized assets.
The reorganization of Polygon reflects changes to the Ethereum Foundation, which recently restored its leadership and reorganized its roadmap in a process led by the co-founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin.
In an article on X, Nailwal said that Ethereum’s “existential crisis” had pushed Polygon to revisit its central identity – returning to a more daring, more agile and more decisive mentality.
Its declared objective: “to offer greater value to police stakers and bring increased clarity to the wider market.” POL, previously called MATIC, is the native token of Polygon. The asset can be “dotted” with the POS network of Polygon to help secure it in exchange for awards.
The time of the overhaul, suggested Nailwal, could work in favor of Pol.
“The SEC has abandoned its investigations and its prosecution linked to MATIC as security, which should never have existed given the nature of Matic (and now POL),” he wrote. “We are delighted to see several major market manufacturers return to the table in recent days to manufacture markets in Pol which strengthen Pol liquidity on exchanges in the world.”
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