Conversation with Polygon Founder: Overcoming Poverty and Building a $30 Billion Market Cap Crypto Company

Source: 《When Shift Happens》, YouTube

Compiled by: Felix, PANews

From a storeroom where ancestors served as servants to building a $30 billion valuation blockchain company, Polygon founder Sandeep Nailwal has fought his way up. Sandeep Nailwal works 18 hours a day, dedicated to making Polygon a global payment platform like Stripe. Below are the highlights from the interview in the PANews-compiled 《When Shift Happens》 podcast.

Host: I hear your team says that no matter what time of day, you always reply instantly. Do you sleep very little every day?

Sandeep: Yes, I do sleep, but my mind is always on Polygon, online 24 hours.

Host: What’s your usual routine like?

Sandeep: My schedule is quite reversed. I have a three-and-a-half-year-old son, and my working hours follow U.S. time, so I only really start busying myself after 2 PM, working until midnight or 11-12 PM, and sleep around 2 to 2:30 AM. Sometimes, my son wakes up at 7 or 7:30 in the morning, and I get up to play with him. So I often only sleep 4 or 5 hours.

Host: I previously interviewed Tether CEO Paolo, who said he sleeps only 5 hours every night for 11 years, and wakes up every hour to check notifications.

Sandeep: Paolo is steering a much bigger “ship.” I have a good relationship with him; he’s an extremely talented and also crazy person. He’s completely immersed in his vision. I’ve never seen a team as small as Tether’s, yet every member is so dedicated to the blockchain spirit. They genuinely want a personal, sovereign monetary system. So I’m not surprised at their huge success now.

Host: What do you see as your mission?

Sandeep: My mission is the sovereign individual I’ve always talked about. Many in crypto want to build a monetary system. It should be a free, personal currency system where individuals can freely control their wealth. What I truly want is complete personal sovereignty: not just money. Money is a product of civilization, and civilization is built on “controlled violence,” which is law and order. Now we’re working on global currencies, like Bitcoin… but to realize a truly borderless world, money alone isn’t enough; you need to decentralize the layer of “controlled violence” as well.

It sounds very sci-fi, but it’s actually becoming feasible. In the future, there could be drone and robot police forces controlled by a fully decentralized AI, not by any company or government. Imagine a ‘superbrain’ controlled collectively by all humanity, with its own constitution, specifically to protect everyone’s safety. This would truly break down borders, allowing individuals to gain real freedom. That’s why I co-founded Sentient AI; the other three co-founders work full-time on it. I’m too busy with Polygon, but this is my deepest goal—to align AI’s interests with humans, ultimately achieving external governance and control.

It sounds like science fiction, but once Polygon and the entire crypto industry become more stable, I will invest more. Crypto is just entering the practical stage; DeFi is the most practical track, but 70-80% of lending is leveraged speculation. Now, stablecoins and cross-border payments are just beginning to rise. I’ve been in this industry for 8 years, planning to do another 10-15 years, and see it fully mainstreamed before considering what to do next.

Host: So, who are you really?

Sandeep: I am a global citizen seeking full sovereignty. I am very law-abiding and hope everyone else is too, but everyone should have the right to “opt out.” I can even imagine that 20, 30, 40 years from now, you could own a small space capsule, take off to escape all systems, and drift alone in the solar system. At that time, a currency system and neutral law enforcement not controlled by any single government will be needed, jointly guarded by humans and awakened AI, to protect all life (including AI itself), allowing everyone to live by their own rules. That’s why I am very serious about freedom—probably related to my Indian roots—many people don’t know that the core value of Indian civilization is freedom, which has persisted for thousands of years.

Host: What exactly happened in your life that made you so hungry for success?

Sandeep: I’ve been thinking about this. I had a really tough childhood, as I’ve mentioned in many podcasts. India in my childhood was almost a third-world country. My grandfather and great-grandfather were servants of wealthy families, and they met there. Later, they arranged marriages for their children, which is how my parents came about. I was always among the top students in school and respected wherever I went, but at home, it was a completely different world.

At 21 or 22, I wouldn’t even dare bring friends home, not wanting them to see what my family was like. Five people squeezed into a single room, plus a small kitchen. No living room, no bedrooms—just one room. We lived in a makeshift storage room on the roof of someone else’s house, rented out by the owner to earn some rent. Summers were boiling hot. When I was five or six, my grandfather was still alive; the family he served passed away, leaving a large hotel, and my grandfather became the caretaker. Sometimes, when no one from the family was around, he’d take me out to play. I naively thought that big house was my home. I’d boast to my friends, saying, “This is my house.” Maybe that’s when I first developed a fighting spirit. I’ve always said: I must become a big figure, never settle for small wins, and never accept failure. But I had no idea how to succeed, and everyone laughed at me.

Host: How did you get involved in blockchain and cryptocurrency?

Sandeep: I’ve mentioned before, I didn’t start in crypto because of Bitcoin. I saw Bitcoin several times and thought it was a pyramid scheme, so I ignored it. It had no backing, how could it have value?

But at the end of 2016 or early 2017, when I first read the Ethereum white paper and Vitalik’s blog, I was deeply moved. The idea of a computer run collectively by countless people, yet no single person could own it, and it would be online forever. Then came the second thought: what if I could write complex business logic on this computer, and no matter what happens, it executes exactly as programmed? I believed this was something that could truly change the world. So I started to get involved seriously, and I’ve been doing so ever since.

Host: During these 8 years of Polygon’s development, what was the hardest moment?

Sandeep: In the first year and a half, there were several times I almost couldn’t pay salaries. December 2019 was the worst; I woke up one morning to find someone massively shorting MATIC (then called MATIC), and the price dropped 70% in a day. The whole network was calling me a scammer, but those were just isolated incidents. The hardest period is actually now—Polygon always faces the most difficulty in the present.

Host: Why does Polymarket need to be built on blockchain?

Sandeep: That’s a very good question. Many of its competitors’ market data are not on-chain at all. If two platforms have similar user experience, one is blockchain-based: you own your content, funds, and followers; the other is centralized. The answer is obvious—people will choose the more open one. Today, Polymarket has achieved network effects; it has verifiability, transparency, and credibility. No matter who competes, Polymarket can maintain its dominant position long-term.

Host: But why specifically on Polygon?

Sandeep: In 2020, Polygon was the fastest-growing blockchain at the time, while Ethereum’s costs were extremely high. The choice of Polygon was related to the network effects of blockchain.

Host: Why is the intersection of AI and blockchain so important for humanity’s future?

Sandeep: Blockchain is a payment platform; AI is an intelligent platform. Technologically, they are not directly related. But the key point is: AI is the biggest centralized force in human history, and currently, the only technology pushing power decentralization is cryptocurrency.

Host: Why are you so invested in charity?

Sandeep: Everyone’s life experiences pain, and afterward, there are two choices: one is that I suffer, and you all must suffer too; the other is that I’ve suffered, so I can help others suffer less. I choose the second—purely for my own happiness.

Related: Polygon aligns with a new giant, the new bank Revolut, which is using its tech stack to promote crypto payments