{"id":54018,"date":"2025-10-21T15:01:36","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T15:01:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/?p=54018"},"modified":"2025-10-21T15:01:36","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T15:01:36","slug":"ethereum-in-revolt-polygons-nailwal-turns-on-the-foundation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/?p=54018","title":{"rendered":"Ethereum In Revolt: Polygon\u2019s Nailwal Turns On The Foundation"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Polygon Foundation CEO Sandeep Nailwal has publicly questioned his \u201cloyalty toward Ethereum,\u201d igniting a rare, unvarnished bout of soul-searching across the ecosystem that drew immediate responses from core contributors, investors, and ultimately Vitalik Buterin himself. The exchange, which unfolded on X over the past 10 hours, centers on whether the Ethereum Foundation (EF) adequately supports its builders, how Layer-2 projects are recognized within Ethereum\u2019s narrative and market \u201cbeta,\u201d and whether the community\u2019s culture has drifted from its original ideals.<\/p>\n

Is The Ethereum Foundation A \u2018Shitshow\u2019?<\/h2>\n

\u201cRead this from Peter and realized that it\u2019s time for me to also speak up,\u201d Nailwal wrote<\/a>, referencing core developer P\u00e9ter Szil\u00e1gyi\u2019s decision on October 19 to publish a letter he says he sent to EF leadership roughly 18 months ago. Nailwal, who credits Ethereum and Buterin as his entry point and inspiration, said his long-standing moral loyalty to Ethereum has come at personal and corporate cost: \u201cThough I\/we never got any direct support from the EF or the Ethereum CT community \u2014 in fact, the reverse. But I have always felt moral loyalty towards Ethereum even if [it] costs me billions of dollars in Polygon\u2019s valuation perhaps.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nailwal\u2019s critique is both cultural and financial. \u201cThe Ethereum community as a whole has been a shit show for quite some time,\u201d he wrote, adding that recurring public crises force major contributors to \u201cquestion what they\u2019re even doing here.\u201d He said friends, including AkshayBD (Chief Marketing Officer of the Solana Foundation and a co-founder of SuperteamDAO), have urged him to declare Polygon an L1 and \u201cwalk away from this circus,\u201d and claimed the community\u2019s \u201csocialistic behavior\u201d has trolled Polygon despite its contributions \u201cbecause of some arbitrary \u2018technical definition.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

He argued that market structure punishes Polygon for refusing the L1 label: \u201cIt\u2019s widely believed that if Polygon ever decided to call itself an L1, it would probably be valued 2\u20135\u00d7 higher than it is today,\u201d pointing to a now-widely discussed comparison: \u201cLike think about it, Hedera Hashgraph an L1 is valued higher than Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism and Scroll combined.\u201d<\/p>\n

The classification dispute, in Nailwal\u2019s telling, has real-world consequences for recognition and index inclusion. He insisted \u201cPolygon PoS effectively hinged on Ethereum, while Katana, XLayer, and dozens of other chains in Polygon\u2019s ecosystem are true L2s,\u201d yet \u201cthe Ethereum community ensures Polygon is never considered an L2 and is never included in the markets\u2019 perceived Ethereum Beta.\u201d He added that a \u201cprominent Polygon Stakeholder\u201d scolded him because he \u201ccan\u2019t get Polygon on GrowthPie, which refuses to list the Polygon chain,\u201d and contrasted how Polymarket\u2019s success<\/a> is credited to \u201cEthereum\u201d even as \u201cPolygon itself is not Ethereum. Mind-boggling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the frustration, Nailwal said he intends to try once more to realign technical and social consensus around scaling: \u201cI\u2019m going to give this a final push that might just revive the entire L2 narrative. Just bear with me for a few more weeks.\u201d He concluded with a qualified defense of the messiness: \u201cEthereum is a democracy \u2014 and in any democracy, people on all sides end up disgruntled. But it\u2019s still the only system that truly works in the long run.\u201d<\/p>\n

The thread drew immediate reactions from prominent builders. Andre Cronje \u2014 who says he burned \u201cover 700 ETH on deployments and ETH infra\u201d during his Ethereum years \u2014 questioned EF\u2019s support priorities outright. \u201cI tried contacting EF, never a response, no BD outreach, no grants, 0 support, not even a retweet,\u201d Cronje wrote. Comparing his experience to Fantom\u2019s Sonic ecosystem<\/a>, he said he was \u201cconfused\u201d to see teams there receive BD support, grants, TVL, audits and marketing, and asked: \u201cIf it isn\u2019t the core builders, Peter & geth, and it isn\u2019t the loudest L2 supporters (Sandeep and Polygon), where is it going?\u201d<\/p>\n

Tommy Shaughnessy of Delphi Ventures framed the problem as under-compensation of irreplaceable talent. \u201cThe Ethereum foundation should be paying its developers like professional athletes.[\u2026] The Ethereum foundation is basically paying people to leave. Top developers should be paid like Pro Athletes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vitalik Buterin Reacts<\/h2>\n

Buterin responded<\/a> several hours later with an unusually personal note of appreciation for both Nailwal and Polygon\u2019s contributions, while also offering a technical path forward. \u201cI really appreciate both @sandeepnailwal\u2019s personal contributions and @0xPolygon\u2019s immensely valuable role in the ethereum ecosystem,\u201d he wrote, name-checking Polygon\u2019s role hosting Polymarket, its early and resource-intensive bets on ZK-EVM proving (\u201cbringing in Jordi Baylina\u2019s team\u201d), infrastructure for proof aggregation via AggLayer, and support for \u201capplications that have needed high levels of scalability.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the central technical question \u2014 whether Polygon can and should harden its security guarantees with modern zero-knowledge proofs<\/a> \u2014 Buterin argued that the market has evolved toward a separation of concerns between L2 operators and ZK-prover specialists.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very difficult to be both the best L2 and the best ZK team, the two are very different skill sets,\u201d he wrote, citing standalone ZK providers and urging Polygon to \u201cpick up off the shelf ZK tech that has now gotten quite good and apply it to the PoS chain to get full stage 1 and later stage 2 guarantees from the ethereum L1.\u201d<\/p>\n

He emphasized how far the economics have moved: \u201cProving costs are around $0.0001\/tx,\u201d and said many L2 teams \u201care very surprised when I tell them the recent numbers\u2026 The latest ZK-EVMs, and live projects like @Lighter_xyz, show that this is false\u201d with respect to the idea that ZK is unviable at hyperscale.<\/p>\n

At press time, ETH traded at $3,873.<\/p>\n

\"Ethereum<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Polygon Foundation CEO Sandeep Nailwal has publicly questioned his \u201cloyalty toward Ethereum,\u201d igniting a rare, unvarnished bout of soul-searching across the ecosystem that drew immediate responses from core contributors, investors, and ultimately Vitalik Buterin himself. The exchange, which unfolded on X over the past 10 hours, centers on whether the Ethereum Foundation (EF) adequately supports […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3,4,5],"class_list":["post-54018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-crypto","tag-doge","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54018\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}