Polygon Foundation CEO Sandeep Nailwal has publicly questioned his “loyalty toward Ethereum,” 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’s narrative and market “beta,” and whether the community’s culture has drifted from its original ideals.
Nailwal’s critique is both cultural and financial. “The Ethereum community as a whole has been a shit show for quite some time,” he wrote, adding that recurring public crises force major contributors to “question what they’re even doing here.” 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 “walk away from this circus,” and claimed the community’s “socialistic behavior” has trolled Polygon despite its contributions “because of some arbitrary ‘technical definition.’”
He argued that market structure punishes Polygon for refusing the L1 label: “It’s widely believed that if Polygon ever decided to call itself an L1, it would probably be valued 2–5× higher than it is today,” pointing to a now-widely discussed comparison: “Like think about it, Hedera Hashgraph an L1 is valued higher than Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism and Scroll combined.”
Despite the frustration, Nailwal said he intends to try once more to realign technical and social consensus around scaling: “I’m going to give this a final push that might just revive the entire L2 narrative. Just bear with me for a few more weeks.” He concluded with a qualified defense of the messiness: “Ethereum is a democracy — and in any democracy, people on all sides end up disgruntled. But it’s still the only system that truly works in the long run.”
Tommy Shaughnessy of Delphi Ventures framed the problem as under-compensation of irreplaceable talent. “The Ethereum foundation should be paying its developers like professional athletes.[…] The Ethereum foundation is basically paying people to leave. Top developers should be paid like Pro Athletes.”
“It’s very difficult to be both the best L2 and the best ZK team, the two are very different skill sets,” he wrote, citing standalone ZK providers and urging Polygon to “pick 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.”
He emphasized how far the economics have moved: “Proving costs are around $0.0001/tx,” and said many L2 teams “are very surprised when I tell them the recent numbers… The latest ZK-EVMs, and live projects like @Lighter_xyz, show that this is false” with respect to the idea that ZK is unviable at hyperscale.
At press time, ETH traded at $3,873.
