Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal, has taken to social media to voice his discontent, publicly stating that he has begun to “question his loyalty toward Ethereum.” He argues that despite Polygon’s vast role in the Ethereum ecosystem, the Ethereum community and foundation haven’t acknowledged or supported Polygon proportionately.
He has described the community as “dysfunctional” and “dismissive” despite Polygon’s efforts of helping scale applications, onboarding users, and reducing gas friction on the Ethereum network. According to Nailwal, if Polygon were treated as a full independent Layer 1, its valuation could be multiple times higher. Currently, its being being pigeon-holed as ‘ust another L2’. Nailwal’s complaint is that the community has played a blind eye and refused to integrate Polygon more deeply into the ‘Ethereum Beta’ narrative. He argues that despite the evidence of sizable usage, it’s worth has been neglected.
Are founders frustrated with Ethereum?
Nailwal’s frustration echoes other founder-level gripes around Ethereum. For instance, core contributors or early developers have criticized governance, funding decisions and recognition within the ecosystem. Nailwal was in fact responding to Péter Szilágyi tweet who was voicing his thoughts on #Ethereum existential crises.
While Ethereum remains the dominant smart‐contract platform, the layered-2 and sidechain wave has created tension around who gets credit, who has runway, and how value is shared. Polygon’s public airing of grievances signals that these tensions may be coming out into the open.
Recent shake up at Polygon
Polygon, originally launched as Matic Network in 2017, was one of Ethereum’s leading scaling solutions. But in recent years the project has lost momentum, with total value locked falling. Newer rollups like Arbitrum, Optimism have edged ahead.
In June 2025 Nailwal assumed the CEO role at the Polygon Foundation, dissolving the board, streamlining governance, and announcing a pivot. He said that the zkEVM chain would be winding down by 2026 and the focus would return to the PoS chain. Polygon would also shift focus to a cross-chain interoperability layer dubbed “AggLayer.”
Nailwal says the governance model was too slow, causing delays in decision-making and innovation. He emphasises “clear direction and focused execution” as key. The planned shift will primarily focus on real-world asset tokenization, high throughput targets (100,000 TPS), and bridging across networks.
If Polygon decides to go independent, the L2 landscape will shift, and this could change how value flows in the broader Ethereum ecosystem going forward.