Polygon Bags $450 Million in Funding Round to Advance Web3

Polygon has secured $450 million in a fresh venture funding round. With a market capitalization of about $13 billion, it aggressively expands its Ethereum scaling solutions portfolio and strives to engage the wider developer community.

Polygon’s Funding Round

Blockchains, according to Polygon, are the way of the future. The project is also investing in zero-knowledge technology that it claims will be essential for onboarding the next billion users to Ethereum.

Sequoia Capital India was the lead investor in Polygon’s initial large financing round. Tiger Global, SoftBank, Galaxy Digital, Republic Capital, Makers Fund, Alameda Research, Sino Global Capital, and Kevin O’Leary, among others, joined in the secret private token sale.

This marks the first time many investors have banked on an Ethereum scaling solution. Ethereum has the most diverse developer community of any blockchain, but it is hampered by sluggish speeds and costly transactions (also known as gas fees).

The news reported on Monday confirms an earlier December TechCrunch report that outlined some of the early terms of the transaction. Sandeep Nailwal, the co-founder of Polygon, told TechCrunch that the firm had spent almost $1 billion in recent quarters to acquire businesses to expand its services.

Polygon is one of a few companies helping Ethereum’s network by moving a lot of transaction information off the blockchain. This helps free up space on the blockchain and makes it faster and easier for people to use.

Polygon’s incredible success is a tale of perseverance. In its early years, the publication struggled to persuade venture capitalists, according to several web3 entrepreneurs. Many startup founders in the web3 sector criticized Polygon for being overlooked because it was largely staffed in India and had a strong technological foundation and fast execution.

Advanced Web3 applications

There has been a lot of interest in Web 3, the third generation of internet services. This kind of internet is made possible by decentralized networks. As of January 20, the platform had processed more than 23 million blocks and 1.3 billion transactions. The platform’s growth is attributed to its quick adoption in recent years.

Polygon supports over 7,000 decentralized apps, including DeFi platforms Aave, Curve, Sushiswap, Pool, Uniswap, and OpenSea’s massive NFT marketplace. Decentraland and Sandbox are metaverse projects that have been deployed on Polygon.

The money will also help Polygon develop larger developer ecosystems in several regions. In the end, Polygon needed at least three to five years of runway. The company, which has a $100 million ecosystem fund, will also utilize the new cash to help and expand similar initiatives with additional accelerators, hackathons, and scholarships.

Nailwal also said that Polygon is likely to enter the identity space in the near future.

“Polygon’s mission is to become the AWS of Web3. The need for an identity segment will emerge in the future. So, we’ll be making some investments in this area,” he added.

Polygon’s new chief executive believes that having institutional investors will aid in the hiring of big names, pointing to Ryan Wyatt’s recent hire as an example.