Anurag Arjun, X Hall of Flame

Contrary to reports at the time, Polygon never attempted to kill Ethereum. In 2021, various organizations including CoinGecko and Nasdaq classified Polygon as a “faster and cheaper” blockchain than Ethereum, building a perception among some that the project’s proof-of-stake blockchain would be an “Ethereum killer” .

Anurag Arjun, co-founder of Polygon and Avail, argues that labels could not be more accurate.

“I don’t think that was the intention. Of course, this may be perception, but in terms of actual action, it means that Polygon has built one of the first zkEVM rollups on Ethereum.” This is what the Indian-born tech entrepreneur tells Hall of Flame.

“I think that fact alone can tell you a lot about the strategy and the future,” he said on the phone from Dubai, like other cryptocurrency giants these days.

He explains that Matic (Polygon’s original name) was initially built on the premise in 2017 that it would be a Plasma solution, one of the first L2 scaling solutions for Ethereum.

Also read: Slumdog Billionaire: The Amazing Rich Story of Polygon’s Sandeep Nailwal

“So the motivation for founding the company was to build a scaling solution for Ethereum. Of course, plasma wasn’t working properly back then. Ultimately, it wasn’t feasible,” says Arjun.

He says this is why Polygon transitioned to the Polygon PoS network in 2020 before ultimately deploying its ZK rollup suite of solutions.

“So we had to switch to the Polygon PoS chain. Of course, it also took time to build the rollup solution that exists today.”

Arjun admits that, from the outside, the move from a plasma solution to a PoS network may look like trying to “build a competitor to Ethereum.”

But internally, it was simply a product pivot. Polygon needed to “give users something useful to get feedback back.”

The feedback has helped the team’s ZK Rollup solution “massively.”

History of polygon networks

Arjun, Jaynti Kanani and Sandeep Nailwal founded Matic Network in 2017 after meeting in a bustling co-working space, a typical startup for cryptocurrency scammers.

He noted that Kanani and Nailwal already have a close relationship, having connected through a WhatsApp cryptocurrency trading group.

Despite the trio now being labeled as India’s first “crypto billionaires” by GQ India, Arjun says the journey hasn’t always been smooth sailing, especially after Plasma Solutions failed to perform well “in the depths of a bear market”. I repeat that it was not the case.

It was difficult for the team to secure any kind of large-scale funding. By 2024, Polygon is considered to be one of the largest players in the blockchain industry.

Arjun left Polygon in 2023 to focus on operating Avail, a product within the Polygon family that was spun off from the company at the same time.

There were no hard feelings when Arjun and Avail parted ways at Polygon Labs. They just thought there were too many products under Polygon’s umbrella.

Avail was going in a different direction as an independent layer 1, focusing on power infrastructure, while the Polygon brand was sticking to its Ethereum L2 ecosystem play.

Polygon is currently led by Marc Boiron, with Nailwal serving as the company’s last co-founder and chief business officer.

Why did Arjun get X fame?

With 123,900 followers, Arjun has more followers than many shameless “influencers” could dream of.

But if you’re at a dinner party playing the ‘who is most likely to have over 100,000 followers’ game, his humble and polite tone will probably make him your last choice.

In Polygon’s “early days,” it wasn’t even active on Twitter (now X). He was too busy working on the project.

“In the beginning, I generally avoided social media because I was so in over my head, but I started tweeting probably about four years ago,” he says.

As the project began to grow, Arjun felt a responsibility to let everyone know what was happening and “inspire others to learn.”

Over the years, as Polygon has become more successful, its follower count has skyrocketed. His content still contains the same learning threads as in the early days, but now also provides hints about his success.

For example, there’s a cheeky public service announcement that says they’re willing to invest cash in projects that build something meaningful in their industry.

Also read Slumdog Billionaires 2: Polygon’s Sandeep Nailwal lists ‘Top 10… ‘Not satisfactory’.

What type of content does Arjun provide?

Arjun says his social media content is mixed. It’s a bit of a brain dump for “anything”, but for blockchain-related work, it’s “mainly a rollup role.”

“Primarily, what infrastructure is required to run these rollups? Basically, because I believe this is really useful for blockchain,” he says.

The reason he keeps talking about rollups is because he thinks a lot of people don’t really get what they want.

“Rollups are very poorly understood in terms of how they actually change the way blockchains are structured,” he declares.

“Rollup is also a blockchain, but it is not a standalone blockchain. You have this base layer and you can build a lot of roll-ups on top of that,” he added.

What type of content does Arjun like?

Arjun says he keeps his follower list “very strict.” During the chat, he quickly checks and notes that he’s “following 800 people.” This may not sound too tight, but for a founder, it means that many of the people he meets will not be followed after the interaction.

After our chat, he followed 24 more people, but unfortunately I haven’t become one of them yet.

When it comes to content he likes, he is particularly a fan of the work of Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and content from many Ethereum Foundation researchers, such as core developer Peter Szilágyi. According to Arjun, Szilágyi “can be very aggressive, but he is a true builder.”

What is Arjun’s prediction? roll up to the moon

When asked about the potential price movement of Polygon’s native token, MATIC, over the next six months, Arjun was quick to let us know that he is not a trader.

“I don’t comment on prices. I am not a merchant. I generally don’t do any trading at all,” says the billionaire.

After chatting with Arjun for 45 minutes, it was pretty clear that he wasn’t the type to shout out optimistic price predictions.

He took the opportunity to shift the topic from talking about price predictions to explaining how optimistic he is about blockchain rollups.

“I’m very optimistic that rollups will be the future of how blockchains are created,” he says.

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Ciaran Lyon

Ciaran Lyons is an Australian cryptocurrency journalist. He is also a stand-up comedian and radio and TV presenter for Triple J, SBS and The Project.