Is Polygon in Bother? One other Government Departs Amid Crypto Market Downturn

Polygon co-founder Jaynti Kanani revealed on Tuesday that he’s been absent from each day work on the mission for the previous six months, having moved on to “new adventures” after serving to launch it in 2017.

“I made a decision to step again from the day-to-day grind,” Kanani tweeted on Wednesday. The developer mentioned he stays assured in Polygon’s future, and is “bullish on Polygon 2.0.”

That makes Kanani the third of 10 Polygon co-founders to announce their departure this yr. And within the crypto business—though it’s not distinctive to digital finance—a number of government departures is usually a signal of hassle.

Former Alameda Analysis CEO Sam Trabucco stepped down final August, three months earlier than FTX’s calamitous collapse. Matteo Liebowitz, Uniswap Labs enterprise lead, introduced his departure final week amid hypothesis that regardless of its current courtroom win, the mission isn’t faring nicely whereas below SEC investigation. Jesse Powell, CEO and founding father of crypto trade Kraken, stepped down in the course of backlash over his “anti-woke” sentiments and the corporate paying the SEC a $30 million settlement. And a lot has been made in regards to the tempo at which Binance and Binance US execs have headed for the exits because the crypto trade landed within the SEC’s crosshairs.

To be truthful, it’s solely doable that every one the departing founders determined to maneuver onto new tasks across the identical time. Nevertheless it’s additionally true that it’s been a punishing yr for Polygon.

Polygon Labs didn’t reply to Decrypt’s request for remark.

Polygon is a layer-2 scaling answer for Ethereum, utilizing a multi-chain ecosystem to allow cheaper, quicker, and extra non-public transactions. Its governance token, MATIC, is the thirteenth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, standing at $5.2 billion, in response to CoinGecko.

Apart from being one in all Polygon’s ten co-founders, Kanani co-authored the Polygon whitepaper itself, alongside Anurag Arjun, Mihailo Bjelic, and government chairman Sandeep Nailwal.

Again in March, co-founder Arjun left the corporate to work on a modular blockchain spinoff mission referred to as Avail. Later, Polygon Labs President Ryan Wyatt stepped down from his position to get replaced by the corporate’s former Chief Authorized Officer, Marc Boiron.

Since its all-time excessive in December 2021, MATIC has dropped 80% from $2.92 to only $0.56. Whereas seemingly bleak, rival cash—together with Cardano (ADA), Solana (SOL), Polkadot (DOT), and Avalanche (AVAX)—have every fallen greater than 90% from their respective peaks that yr, in response to CoinGecko.

Polygon additionally stays forward of most rivals in decentralized finance, boasting the fifth-highest complete worth locked (TVL) in comparison with different networks at $794 million. Certainly one of its rivals within the realm of Ethereum scaling, Arbitrum, stands above it with $1.7 billion TVL.

TVL refers back to the worth of digital property presently on a blockchain and has lengthy been the go-to metric by which buyers gauge the well being of DeFi ecosystems.

Although on-chain metrics seem wholesome, Polkadot’s regulatory scenario might not be.

Upon suing Coinbase in June, the Securities and Alternate Fee (SEC) named MATIC amongst a bunch of tokens it deemed to be unregistered securities listed by the trade. Others swept up within the controversy included ADA and SOL. Polygon Labs dismissed the SEC’s accusation on the time, noting that it had distributed MATIC to non-US buyers.

The corporate is now planning to transition to Polygon 2.0, an interconnected community of layer-2 chains powered by zero-knowledge expertise. The improve will rework Polygon’s present MATIC token into POL.