Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder of Polygon Labs, takes on a fresh role in ZK

Polygon Labs, the company behind the Ethereum-based blockchain network Polygon, is strengthening its focus on zero-knowledge (ZK) solutions with a significant structural change. Sandeep Nailwal, the co-founder and executive chairman of Polygon Labs, has taken on a new role as the chief business officer (CBO), as announced on May 29. In this new position, Nailwal will concentrate on the growth of Polygon’s tools related to ZK-proofs, which are cryptographic techniques that allow parties to prove knowledge of a specific value without revealing the value itself. Specifically, Nailwal will work closely with Polygon CDK, a ZK-based software toolkit that empowers developers to create new layer-2 (L2) chains on Ethereum and transition between chains seamlessly. Additionally, Nailwal will lay the foundation for the integration of AggLayer, a decentralized protocol with two components that was launched in February 2024. This appointment comes after Nailwal spent several months overseeing strategy and execution as the executive chairman. The transition to his new role is almost complete and has been operationalized under CEO Marc Boiron. Boiron emphasized the value of Nailwal’s contributions, highlighting his active engagement with developers and enterprises in the industry and his instrumental role since the inception of the Polygon network. Nailwal expressed his excitement about the transformative technology Polygon Labs is developing, which will provide developers and enterprises with numerous opportunities to scale quickly and securely while accessing liquidity. Polygon, founded in 2017, is a blockchain platform that aims to establish a scalable multi-chain system compatible with Ethereum. By operating on the Ethereum blockchain, Polygon offers scaling solutions to alleviate congestion, accelerate transaction speed, and simplify adoption complexities. Leveraging ZKs and L2s, blockchain developers can significantly improve scalability by processing transactions off the main Ethereum blockchain. For instance, certain Ethereum L2 protocols experienced a 99% reduction in transaction fees after the network’s Dencun upgrade in March, while the mainnet Ethereum network was overwhelmed with congestion.