We built Polygon because Ethereum was too expensive for regular people. A farmer in India shouldn't have to pay $50 in gas fees to make a $10 transaction. That's broken.
When Reddit put millions of users on Polygon for NFT avatars, most of them had no idea they were using a blockchain. That's the goal — crypto so seamless that people don't even know it's there.
India has the developers. India has the users. India has the problems that blockchain can solve. Polygon was built in India, and I'm proud of that — we proved that world-class crypto infrastructure can come from anywhere.
We rebranded from Matic to Polygon because we outgrew the original vision. We started as one sidechain. Now we're building a whole ecosystem of scaling solutions. The name needed to match the ambition.
Every week a new Layer 2 launches. People ask if I'm worried. No. A bigger market means more users for everyone. We don't need to be the only L2 — we need to be the best one.
During the COVID crisis in India, we raised $100 million for oxygen and medical supplies. Some people build companies to make money. Some build them to make a difference. I want both.