May 31, 2021
By Sandeep Soni | Financial Express
India’s crypto platform for Ethereum scaling and infrastructure development Polygon (erstwhile Matic Network) has raised a “sizeable” investment from American billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban best known for being the owner of the Dallas Mavericks NBA basketball team and one of the ‘sharks’ on the reality TV show Shark Tank. Polygon, which described itself as the ‘Ethereum’s internet of blockchains’, transforms Ethereum into a full-fledged multi-chain system and is more secure and powerful in terms of the architecture it supports, its developers wrote on Medium earlier this year.
“Very recently we had seen that Mark was talking on social media about Polygon and he had some applications which were built on Polygon. Jack Dorsey, Cuban, Elon Musk, etc., were using applications too which were in the background using Polygon Chain. So, we realized that he might be interested in it. He knew in-depth a lot of things that we would expect from only crypto experts. He even knew our competitive landscape and how applications can be better. It was an inspirational and mindboggling call for me. The amount is sizeable from his side,” Sandeep Nailwal, Co-founder, Polygon told Financial Express Online.
Cuban is already helping the startup by connecting the team with his portfolio applications who are interesting to build on Polygon. “With him being present, we will be able to generate a lot of institutional interest as well from the US,” he added. On the other hand, Nailwal would also want to write to Elon Musk and other crypto backers for his near future investments. “For sure we want to reach out to him (Elon Musk). We would definitely want to touch base with others as well. So, we will be figuring out the best way to get in touch with them.”
However, the investment from Cuban in Polygon may not be that surprising considering the ecosystem growth of Polygon. Cuban is a seasonal investor in the Blockchain industry with investments in more than 10 projects in the last one year including Injective Protocol, CryptoSlam, etc. “Polygon is the fastest growing Blockchain ecosystem to date, and more than 250 Blockchain applications are using Polygon network currently. Polygon is a layer 2 Blockchain network that is scaling the Ethereum network and provides an instant transaction speed. That’s the key reason for this major shift of Blockchain applications on Polygon. After the investment news arrived, Matic which is a network token of polygon witnessed 50 per cent growth in price,” Hitesh Malviya, Crypto Expert and Founder, itsblockchain.com told Financial Express Online.
Meanwhile, Nailwal wants Polygon’s token to be on the top, at least right after Bitcoin and Ethereum. As per CoinMarketCap, Polygon was already the 12th largest token with a market cap of nearly $14 billion. “It feels great to be among the top, but the growth from around $200 million (market cap) in January to this big has happened as there was a lot of pent-up demand. We launched in 2020 June but the background work was underway since 2017,” he added. Polygon’s solutions have seen significant adoption with over 250 decentralised apps, around 7 million transactions, and around 790,000 users. The company has already been added to Cuban’s list of his portfolio on his website.
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