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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.

Is The Ethereum Foundation A ‘Shitshow’?

“Read this from Peter and realized that it’s time for me to also speak up,” Nailwal wrote, referencing core developer Péter Szilágyi’s decision on October 19 to publish a letter he says he sent to EF leadership roughly 18 months ago. Nailwal, who credits Ethereum and Buterin as his entry point and inspiration, said his long-standing moral loyalty to Ethereum has come at personal and corporate cost: “Though 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.”

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.”

The classification dispute, in Nailwal’s telling, has real-world consequences for recognition and index inclusion. He insisted “Polygon PoS effectively hinged on Ethereum, while Katana, XLayer, and dozens of other chains in Polygon’s ecosystem are true L2s,” yet “the Ethereum community ensures Polygon is never considered an L2 and is never included in the markets’ perceived Ethereum Beta.” He added that a “prominent Polygon Stakeholder” scolded him because he “can’t get Polygon on GrowthPie, which refuses to list the Polygon chain,” and contrasted how Polymarket’s success is credited to “Ethereum” even as “Polygon itself is not Ethereum. Mind-boggling.”

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.”

The thread drew immediate reactions from prominent builders. Andre Cronje — who says he burned “over 700 ETH on deployments and ETH infra” during his Ethereum years — questioned EF’s support priorities outright. “I tried contacting EF, never a response, no BD outreach, no grants, 0 support, not even a retweet,” Cronje wrote. Comparing his experience to Fantom’s Sonic ecosystem, he said he was “confused” to see teams there receive BD support, grants, TVL, audits and marketing, and asked: “If it isn’t the core builders, Peter & geth, and it isn’t the loudest L2 supporters (Sandeep and Polygon), where is it going?”

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.”

Vitalik Buterin Reacts

Buterin responded several hours later with an unusually personal note of appreciation for both Nailwal and Polygon’s contributions, while also offering a technical path forward. “I really appreciate both @sandeepnailwal’s personal contributions and @0xPolygon’s immensely valuable role in the ethereum ecosystem,” he wrote, name-checking Polygon’s role hosting Polymarket, its early and resource-intensive bets on ZK-EVM proving (“bringing in Jordi Baylina’s team”), infrastructure for proof aggregation via AggLayer, and support for “applications that have needed high levels of scalability.”

On the central technical question — whether Polygon can and should harden its security guarantees with modern zero-knowledge proofs — Buterin argued that the market has evolved toward a separation of concerns between L2 operators and ZK-prover specialists.

“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.

Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

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• The project’s stablecoin supply has crossed $2.76 billion.
• The metric has hovered beneath this level since 2021.
• A falling wedge pattern suggests POL rallies to $0.50.

Digital tokens remained elevated on Monday as most assets exhibited bullish structures after the latest rallies.

Polygon, which has displayed stability since its Heimdall v2 upgrade on 10 July, is in the spotlight again.

The Polygon PoS saw its stablecoin supply recovering past $2.76 billion over the weekend, touching levels not seen since the 2021 bull run (according to CEO Sandeep Nailwal).

We just surpassed all time stablecoin supply on @0xPolygon POS, crossed $2.76B first time since 2021

The acceleration is just beginning

We consistently
– Top 3 in bridged inflows
– Top 2 in NFT trading volume
– Top 3 in daily transactions
– 150b+ in stablecoin volumes
– Top 2… pic.twitter.com/i0Zy9bt5wv

— Sandeep | CEO, Polygon Foundation (※,※) (@sandeepnailwal) July 19, 2025

The prevailing bull run and the latest crypto bills’ approval in the United States fuel this stablecoin growth.

Stablecoins gain traction after Donald Trump signed the GENIUS Act into law.

These assets are vital for the markets’ stability as they peg real-world assets like fiat.

Increased stablecoins entering the Polygon network indicate growing trust in the project, with users betting on potential upticks in ecosystem growth, NFT trading, and DeFi activity.

Such developments have renewed interest in native POL, the new coin replacing MATIC.

The alt has formed a bullish reversal pattern after extended dips since March.

Overcoming the $0.42 – $0.45 resistance could propel POL toward the obstacle at $0.50.

That would translate to a 95.38% increase from the digital currency’s market price of $0.2559.

Network activity confirms trend shifts

Stronger fundamentals support Polygon’s bullish trajectory.

It has topped charts in the last few months, consistently ranked as:

• The top three in bridged inflows
• The top two in NFT trading volume
• The top three in daily transactions
• 150b+ in stablecoin volumes
• The top two in daily active users on several days.

These stats reflect Polygon’s competitiveness in the hot Ethereum-scaling and L2 landscape.

The impressive growth suggests that Polygon remains a perfect choice for traders, institutions, and developers.

With many sectors, including NFTs, DeFi, gaming projects, and real-world assets (RWA) heating up amid the materialising bull run, Polygon might see further stablecoin surges.

POL price outlook: Is $1 next?

The alt trades at $0.2559 after gaining over 5% in the past 24 hours (CoinMarketCap).

It has rallied from June lows of $0.1666, and the 60% surge in daily trading volume suggests further gains for POL.

Technical indicators back the bullish case. A textbook falling wedge is emerging on the weekly charts.

This classic formation often welcomes massive breakouts once confirmed.

Falling wedge patterns trap sidelined cautious buyers and short-sellers before robust gains.

With the prevailing broad market optimism, Polygon bulls will target the key resistance at $0.50, a 95% upswing from POL’s market price of $0.2559.

The soaring stablecoin supply hints at stable gains for the digital currency.

Overcoming $0.50 could catalyse surges to $0.90 before exploding toward the psychological mark at $1.

Cryptocurrencies appear ripe for extended gains as bulls dominate amid shifting trends and increased institutional appetite.

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, and Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder of Polygon, have pledged $100 million to help accelerate COVID-19 research and relief efforts in India. 

With COVID-19 variants continuing to emerge and spread, and with a very high number of people experiencing long-term symptoms speeding up, research efforts are critical.

How The Donation Will Be Used To Support COVID-19 Research

The donations from Buterin and Nailwal are some of the largest philanthropic contributions ever made in crypto. Buterin made the announcement in a Twitter thread and according to the thread, the fund will be donated to Crypto Relief, with the funds going directly to researchers working on solutions to combat the long-term effects of coronavirus. 

Crypto Relief is a project led by set up by Nailwal during the height of the COVID pandemic as an emergency relief fund. The polygon co-founder said the non-profit organization is now upgrading into a long-term strategic fund for healthcare donations in India. Buterin also confirmed this change of approach in his Twitter post, noting that dealing with Covid and future pandemics needs to take an integrated global approach.

“Work in India continues to be a key part of the solution, but we also need an integrated global approach,” the co-founder said.

The money will go to fund research projects related to cutting-edge scientific discoveries & inventions in India and other developing nations. Overall, it’s a win for science, a win for global health, and a win for humanity.

ETH price falls to the $1,700 level | Source: ETHUSD on TradingView.com

Past Donations Of Vitalik Buterin To COVID Relief

Vitalik Buterin has a history of donating to important causes like COVID-19 relief, with him donating cryptocurrencies worth $1.5 billion to several non-profit organizations in 2021. During this period, Buterin donated over $1 billion worth of Shiba Inu coin to aid India’s fight against the coronavirus. 

Buterin made the donation by offloading 50 trillion SHIB tokens worth $1.2 billion, which he was gifted by the creators of the Shiba Inu coin. With India being one of the most badly affected countries during the pandemic, the fund helped provide medical equipment and supplies as the country battled a deadly second wave of COVID-19 infections.

Outside of the pandemic, Buterin has donated millions of dollars in crypto to various charities and causes. Last year, he quietly donated $5 million to Ukraine relief efforts following the Russian invasion.

Featured image from Coingape, chart from TradingView.com