Polygon makes the case for scaling solutions after ETH 2.0 (ft. Sandeep Nailwal)

Word on the Block | Forkast.News

Highlights

• Polygon’s early struggles: “We all know that Ethereum is very decentralized, secure but has scalability issues. So what Polygon started to do is that we wanted to provide this entire Ethereum development capability on this layer-2, basically. So that’s where we started. And we also were very much focused on building something that gets used and all that. There were a lot of nuances in between. Like it took us a lot of time. We were not from Silicon Valley. We did not have fancy big [venture capitalists] supporting us.”
• High gas fees directed users to Polygon: “Ethereum was seeing the second or third wave of these high gas prices. The first time it happened and then it dipped, people were like, “Okay, it was a one-time phenomenon.” But then it happened the second time, the third time, and people realized something needs to be done. By that time, because of this bottom-up approach, we were fully production-ready. And if you ask me what is the reason for Polygon’s success, because we are production-ready.”
• The case for zero-knowledge technology: “As an enterprise, you really need to derive some value out of these blockchain solutions. It has to be on a public blockchain. Now, you need privacy. You need scalability. Yes, we all are building on it. So I feel in 18 to 24 months, there will be fewer enterprises which will have actual value generating use cases on these blockchains. And most of them then would probably be funded by or kind of being run on some sort of zero-knowledge technology. That’s why we at Polygon also, we have invested so much of our time, energy and resources in the last six months in the zero-knowledge space, and then now we are in a stage where in two to three months you will see Polygon will emerge as the powerhouse of zero-knowledge in the whole industry.”
• India’s crypto brain drain: “Soon, the Indian government has to realize that the brain drain in the blockchain space is so big because you are not building for your local users … I would never want to live out of India. I want to go back to India, work from there to the ecosystem there. But then due to this uncertainty, and I’m not saying there’s anything positive or negative, this uncertainty, nobody knows.”
• India’s crypto ban rumors: “I think most of that is media sensationalism, actually. I’m from India and generally, I would say 95% of any team that is building out of India either know me or I know them and I know what they are doing to reach out to me for the investments and all that. And I’ve not found even a single team which is trying to build some technology-related solution being haggled by the government. Nobody has been touched upon by the government. The government is only trying to curb or kind of trying to figure out how to stop this, speculation or kind of gambling, which nobody can deny that a lot of retail loses their money in this.”