“I want Indian developers to be at the forefront of protocol development. If we want to attract the best and brightest of Indian talent into Web3, we need to improve education on a protocol level,” Nailwal said, speaking at the Build for Web3 Summit in Bengaluru.
Polygon will zero in on protocol developers as part of its recently announced grant that seeks to attract Web3 startups to its ecosystem, where it previously primarily focused on Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) developers, Nailwal said.
The EVM lets developers deploy decentralised applications on Ethereum, a popular Blockchain technology, while protocols are the underlying rules, guidelines, and algorithms that define and control the functioning of a blockchain network.
Earlier in November, Polygon Labs announced Polygon Village, a grant for developers to build applications in its ecosystem. The company is offering a total of 110 million of its native token, Matic, to projects in decentralised finance, gaming and social media spaces.
Polygon Village was revamped as its second edition in November 2023. The first edition, launched in April 2022, aimed at creating a support system that included guidance, mentorship, co-working spaces and networking opportunities, apart from the grant itself.
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“We had an aggressive grants programme till before the collapse of FTX. We now need to go back to the drawing board… Previously, it was all about experimentation. Now, we are reaching a place where there’s been enough of that, now is the time to really build applications with more focus,” he told a room full of developers and Web3 enthusiasts.In an effort to streamline its partnerships, the cofounder said the company will cut down “a lot of random activities” and only engage in “highly concentrated and high-quality events”.
In February this year, Polygon had laid off 20% of its team, impacting 100 employees, ET had reported. Nailwal had announced in a blog post that the layoffs were part of a restructuring of the layer-2 blockchain company.
In 2022, Polygon had raised $450 million by issuing Matic to 40 marquee venture capitalist investors including Sequoia Capital, SoftBank Vision Fund II, Tiger Global, Elevation Capital, Accel Partners and Steadview Capital.
