Sandeep Nailwal Takes Helm of Polygon Foundation as CEO

After multiple years of decisions at Polygon Foundation being made by consensus, Sandeep Nailwal has taken unilateral control of Polygon Foundation and been named its Chief Executive Officer. 

As the inaugural CEO of the Foundation, Sandeep will guide long-term strategy, oversee key ecosystem initiatives, and ensure that the Polygon Foundation, which oversees Polygon Labs and other entities, decisively steers the project to exponential growth, increased focus and delivery of greater value to Polygon ecosystem, including users, applications, and POL stakers. This renewed control marks the beginning of a strategic push for Polygon to reclaim its position at the forefront of Web3.

Nailwal’s immediate impact has been felt with multiple quick moves to drive long-term value to POL stakers. Key initiatives include a product-first approach to rapidly launch a full-featured Agglayer, a transformative roadmap that evolves Polygon PoS into the high-throughput GigaGAS chain capable of supporting over 100,000 transactions per second for payments and real-world assets, the expansion of the Agglayer Breakout Program, sunset of Polygon zkEVM and renewed market maker engagement to reinforce our support for POL and ensure robust liquidity across DEXs, CEXs, and other trading venues Together, these moves signal a clear shift from a more passive chapter in Polygon’s history to a focused and ambitious founder-led vision for the future.

Sandeep Nailwal is the driving force behind Polygon’s success from the early days. He shaped the early community and built the biggest blockchain and DeFi ecosystem in web3 through aggressive technical and business tactics. Since then, he has continued to be instrumental in securing major partnerships and aligning the ecosystem with Ethereum’s long-term roadmap. Now it is time for him to take back strategic and major decision-making control to relentlessly push for faster execution, sharper operational discipline, and bold, high-conviction strategy. 

He has assembled a world-class team at Polygon Labs, bringing together top-tier talent with deep experience and proven track records. This includes Polygon Labs leadership: CEO Marc Boiron, who continues to guide the organization’s strategic vision and drive execution; Mudit Gupta, a highly regarded engineering leader recently named Chief Technology Officer; and Ryan Niedzialek, a longtime Polygon Labs executive now serving as Chief Operating Officer, overseeing business development, partner enablement, and core operational functions. Sandeep’s appointment as CEO of the Polygon Foundation formalizes the role he has long played while now exercising more control—and signals a renewed, focused commitment to delivering meaningful impact for builders, users, and POL holders across the ecosystem.

“At our beginnings, Polygon was all about bold execution and big goals. During 2021-23, we made a real effort to institutionalize the project by onboarding some amazing people as Co-founders, set up a board and had a period of intense tech research and exploration. Now, it is time to again move fast, aggressively and with full conviction and focus,” said Sandeep Nailwal. “With a world-class team in place and the Foundation under my leadership, we are fully aligned on our strategy and what matters most, building amazing products and delivering real value to POL stakers. That starts with my plan for several key priorities: completing Agglayer to become the trustless interoperability layer of Web3, evolving Polygon PoS to dominate payments and real-world assets, empowering our founders to launch independent, high-impact projects through the Agglayer Breakout Program. With focused leadership, this is the moment to scale the next chapter of Polygon.”

Multi-Point Plan to Deliver Value to POL Stakers:

1. Full Trustless Interoperability Coming by Year-End

Agglayer, the trustless interoperability protocol developed by Polygon Labs, is nearing its next major milestone with the imminent release of v0.3. This brings the ecosystem one step closer to its full launch by the end of the year. Designed to unify fragmented chains into a seamless, composable network, Agglayer enables shared liquidity, cross-chain communication, and frictionless experiences for both users and developers all while utilizing POL to facilitate alignment across the ecosystem.

With Agglayer CDK (formerly Polygon CDK) now multistack, the protocol has expanded its reach to help unify the broader Web3 landscape, starting with the CDK OP Stack configuration. This introduces native Agglayer connectivity, allowing builders to lean on the familiarity of OP Stack without the extractive fees imposed for interoperability. 

Using the framework, Katana—a DeFi-optimized blockchain launched through the Agglayer Breakout Program—is positioned to emerge as a key liquidity hub, unlocking greater productivity for assets through deeper liquidity and consistently higher user yields. Katana leverages other recent technical upgrades, including CDK OP Stack.

As Agglayer’s network of connected chains expands, so does the utility of POL, which serves as the foundational asset for staking, security, and ecosystem alignment. Additional stack integrations, including Arbitrum Orbit, ABC Stack, and more, are actively being explored to become native components of the Agglayer CDK—further enhancing interoperability and adoption across the Web3 ecosystem.

Additionally, we will be bringing the Polygon brand front and center into what was previously the neutral Agglayer brand. It’s time to align the ecosystem more clearly and boldly under the Polygon identity.

2. Polygon PoS Goes GigaGAS To Bring Payments and RWAs to Everyone

Polygon PoS is set to become the gateway to real-world finance: An ambitious roadmap lays out the milestones to become a GigaGAS chain (100k TPS) that handles payments at the pace of everyday life and secures trillions in tokenized assets.

Polygon is already a payments leader. With over $514 billion in stablecoin transaction volume and $2.5 billion in stablecoin supply over the past year, along with $3.7 billion in peer-to-peer volume in April 2025 alone, Polygon has firmly established itself as a core financial layer. Leading institutions and fintechs including Stripe, Reliance Jio, Nexo, and BlindPay have built real-world solutions onchain. More than 2.3 million wallets send stablecoins each month. On the RWAs front, over $271 million in tokenized assets are already live on Polygon PoS, including products from BlackRock, Apollo’s ACRED, JPMorgan, and Hamilton Lane.

To meet this accelerating demand, Polygon is entering its GigaGAS era. This evolution will massively scale the network to support more than 100,000 transactions per second, enabling it to function as the universal layer for payments and RWAs. The transformation is already underway. In July 2025, the Bhilai upgrade will increase throughput to over 1,000 transactions per second, reduce transaction finality to around five seconds, stabilize gas fees, and modernize the validator infrastructure. By the end of the year, Polygon PoS will scale to 5,000+ transactions per second, reduce block times to one second, eliminate chain reorganization with a new validator model, and integrate deeply with Agglayer to support cross-chain liquidity.

Looking ahead to 2026 and beyond, the roadmap brings GigaGAS to Polygon, with 100k TPS. Alongside this technical infrastructure, Polygon will see deeper institutional integrations for a chain where users can buy anything from tokenized bonds to groceries.

This marks a pivotal shift for the network. With the July upgrade, Polygon becomes one of the highest throughput chains in crypto. For POL stakers, the impact is profound. MATIC upgraded to POL for precisely this moment: to power a network with Internet-level throughput. More transactions and higher-use drives greater rewards and economic alignment POL stakers who do the work to secure the network. The token will also power core Agglayer functionality, reinforcing its role as the foundational asset of the Polygon ecosystem.

3. Sunsetting of Polygon zkEVM

Given the increased focus on Polygon PoS, Polygon zkEVM Mainnet Beta will be deprecated in 2026. 

Sandeep’s decision to deprecate Polygon zkEVM reflects a clear-eyed assessment of the product’s trajectory. Development hurdles like delayed support for EIP 4844, limitations of ZK counters in DeFi, and the use of a custom client made it difficult for developers to build effectively. The product lacked a strong strategic position and struggled to keep pace with the shift toward modular architectures. Despite the ambitious goals set at launch, Sandeep recognized that the product was no longer aligned with the evolving needs of the ecosystem and made the call to reallocate focus toward higher-impact initiatives.

To ensure a smooth transition, the sequencer will remain live for the next twelve months. Forced transactions will stay permanently enabled so users can exit at any time. All funds are safe, and bridged assets can be withdrawn without restriction. For projects migrating to other environments, such as Polygon PoS, we will offer grant support to cover qualifying capital and infrastructure costs for promising projects. 

4. Redefining the Role of Founders via Agglayer Breakout Program

The Agglayer Breakout Program is a cornerstone of Polygon Labs strategy to decentralize innovation and drive value to POL stakers. By spinning out high-impact projects led by Polygon’s co-founders, the program is expanding the Agglayer ecosystem while aligning incentives through targeted airdrops.

Privado ID (formerly Polygon ID), led by David Z and Antoni Martin, is now fully independent, and is developing Billions—a ZK-powered identity framework for humans and AI. Already tested by HSBC and Deutsche Bank, and selected for the EU Blockchain Sandbox, Privado ID may airdrop ~5% of its token supply to POL stakers for securing transactions on Agglayer. 

Miden, led by Bobbin Threadbare, is a zk-based chain with a novel architecture designed to rival Solana, Aptos, and Sui. As it prepares to graduate from the Breakout Program, Miden is expected to allocate ~10% of its token supply to POL stakers. 

Katana, a newly launched DeFi-focused chain incubated through the Breakout Program, is the third project to emerge from this initiative. The team has signaled that approximately 15 percent of its token supply may be airdropped to POL stakers, further reinforcing the value of participating in the Polygon ecosystem. 

Next up is Zisk, a high-performance zkVM developed by Polygon Labs and set to be led by Jordi Baylina—continuing the momentum of founder-led innovation. Zisk enables efficient, trustless computation by allowing developers to generate and verify proofs for arbitrary program execution with speed and scalability. 

Through these breakouts, Polygon is not only scaling trustless infrastructure but also rewarding the community that powers it—delivering real utility and long-term value for POL stakers. 

5. Strategic Liquidity Alignment to Power Liquidity for POL Stakers

As part of our broader strategy to enhance the desirability of POL staking, we’re excited to announce that FalconX will engage in a strategic liquidity initiative. This program aligns deeply with key liquidity participants across Web3 to create a more efficient, accessible, and scalable trading environment across major exchanges. 

With institutional-grade liquidity providers, durable infrastructure can be created that supports builders, empowers investors, and enables seamless access to POL staking for everyone at the center of Web3 capital markets.

As these intiatives take off, we will launch a coordinated communications campaign delivering a clear message: MATIC has officially evolved into POL. This was never a rebrand—it’s a transformation. And it marks the next chapter for the Polygon ecosystem. 

This strategic move marks a defining moment for the Polygon ecosystem—one rooted in clarity of vision, decisive leadership, and a commitment to long-term value creation. With Agglayer nearing full launch, Polygon PoS evolving into the leading platform for payments and RWAs, and a new wave of founder-led projects expanding the network, the Foundation is doubling down on what has always set Polygon apart: speed, innovation, and alignment with its community.

Under Sandeep Nailwal’s leadership, the Polygon Foundation is entering a new era—one where execution accelerates, decentralization deepens, and POL staking becomes the engine powering a unified, trustless Web3.