Polygon CEO questions loyalty to Ethereum amid growing criticism of the Foundation

Polygon Foundation CEO and founder Sandeep Nailwal is doubtful about his loyalty to Ethereum, the network he claims inspired him to start a career in blockchain. Nailwal made the remarks in a lengthy post on X late Monday, where he reflected on Ethereum Foundation’s treatment of Polygon, the Layer-2 scaling platform built atop it.

In his message, Nailwal said he had always viewed Ethereum as the foundation of his work in blockchain, but recent developments had forced him to reconsider his “moral loyalty” to the network. 

“I/we never got any direct support from the EF or the Ethereum CT community in fact, the reverse. But I have always felt moral loyalty towards Ethereum even if it costs me billions of dollars in Polygon’s valuation perhaps,” the Polygon CEO wrote.

Nailwal wrote his sentiments in support of Ethereum Geth core developer Péter Szilágyi, who had published a memo in May 2024 bashing the Ethereum Foundation’s leadership for “not appreciating developers enough to stick around.”

Polygon co-founder asks why Ethereum core developers are leaving?

Sandeep Nailwal believes the Ethereum community is dysfunctional because the foundation has supposedly been running “a shit show for quite some time.” He questioned why contributors are publicly expressing frustration with the project, although the network has brought in 16,000 new developers in the last 9 months, Cryptopolitan reported. 

“Why does it feel like every other week, someone with major contributions to Ethereum has to publicly question what they’re even doing here?” he asked. “Just go your own way already.”

The blockchain internet personality mentioned that he agreed with what Péter Szilágyi had written in his GitHub memo to EF last year. The Hungarian developer told his followers there was a “disconnect” between what the public had been saying and the behavior within the organization behind closed doors.

“I’ve often felt bad about Ethereum, about my role within the Geth team, at the Ethereum Foundation or even within the Ethereum ecosystem in general. This is not me resigning, at least not yet,” he jotted down.

Szilágyi insisted he had been openly discussing his frustrations with colleagues, including fellow developers Felix and Martin, but the conversations did as much as nothing. 

“I keep ending up back in the same original place over and over again,” he said, adding that he struggled to even “formulate what my problem is.”

Excerpt from Geth core developer Péter Szilágyi memo to EF. Source: GitHub.

One of Szilágyi’s pain points was about how EF handles compensation and recognition for its contributors. He said that while the Foundation publicly calls him a leader in the ecosystem, its internal actions do not reflect that status.

“Almost all the initial employees of the Foundation have left long ago as that was the only reasonable way to actually have a compensation proportional to the value being created,” Szilágyi propounded.

He accused the Foundation of taking advantage of developers’ commitment because it “overly abused the fact that some people were in this for principles, not for the money,” further citing Vitalik Buterin’s quote that “if someone’s not complaining that they are paid too little, then they are paid too much.”

Polygon still in the shadows of Ethereum

Nailwal also used his post to address Polygon’s decision to stick in line with Ethereum, but admitted the direction may have come at a financial cost. He estimated that if Polygon were to brand itself as a standalone Layer-1 network, it could be valued “two to five times higher” than it is today.

“Like think about it, Hedera Hashgraph, an L1, is valued higher than Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism and Scroll combined,” he reckoned.

He added that the Ethereum community undermines Polygon’s position, neither recognizing it as a true Layer-2 nor including it in the “Ethereum beta.” 

“They don’t seem to understand that Polygon PoS effectively hinged on Ethereum, while Katana, XLayer, and dozens of other chains in Polygon’s ecosystem are true L2s…When Polymarket wins big, it’s ‘Ethereum,’ but Polygon itself is not Ethereum. Mind-boggling,” Nailwal complained. 

Yearn Finance founder Andre Cronje also supported Nailwal’s and Szilágyi’s outcry of having zero support from EF. 

“So who is EF paying/supporting? While building on ETH I have burned over 700 ETH on deployments and ETH infra. I tried contacting EF, never a response, no BD outreach, no grants, 0 support, not even a retweet,” he continued, “If it isn’t the core builders, Peter & Geth, and it isn’t the loudest L2 supporters, Sandeep and Polygon, where is it going?”

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